Pet tick, flea and worm treatments

 Cat and dog owners routinely treat their pets for tick, flea and worm prevention, often throughout the year, but have you stopped to consider where the chemicals in these treatments end up?  Needless to say they end up in the environment, and in us.

There are five common chemicals used in these treatments that end up in the environment that are not certified for agricultural use, yet they have a perpetual licence for use, so no routine way to revoke it.  The table below, extracted from a Pesticide Action Network website details the chemicals and impacts involved.

It makes no sense to ban chemicals from agricultural use but allow them to leach into the environment via our pets. There are over 300 alternative products that do not use these chemicals, so the next time you purchase, or are offered by your vet, a tick, flea or worm treatment, please check the label and look for/request an alternative if it contains one of the chemicals above. 

We can treat our pets safely and protect ourselves and the environment.

Technical notes:

• An ectoparaciticide is an antiparasitic drug (usually a ‘spot-on’ treatment) used to kill parasites that live on the body’s surface (such as ticks and fleas).
• An endectocide is an antiparasitic drug (usually in tablet form) used to kill parasites that live both inside the body (such as worms) and on the body’s surface (such as fleas).
• An endocrine disruptor interferes with hormone systems and can cause birth defects, developmental disorders and reproductive problems such as infertility.

Cop 30 – I found a drum!!

Three travellers set off from Leicester FoE to Birmingham on Saturday 15^th November ’25 to take part in the Global Day of Action to join with allies in the climate movement across the country to stand up for a better future.

The UN talks are well underway at COP 30 – the gathering of World Leaders in Brazil to talk about Climate Change - so we are calling on the UK Government to :

Honour the UK’s pledge to protect forests and particularly the Amazon where the talks are taking place.

Demand justice for frontline communities and make polluters pay for a cleaner, fairer future.

End UK complicity in genocide and environmental ruin in Palestine.

We caught the train to Birmingham and went to our meeting place where we were greeted by a very friendly group of people from Birmingham Friends of the Earth sharing their morning activities with us which were banner making, chanting and ooh yes….  We were asked if we wanted to join a drumming workshop!

We were quickly strapped up with drums for a marching band, taught how to use them and shown how the ‘conductor’ controls the band with hand signals and a series of whistles.  Then we spent an enjoyable morning ‘playing’ on them or at least trying to follow what they were all doing. 

We shared an tasty lunch and were then asked if we wanted to march with the drummers!!  So, we did! 

It was great fun, one of the best things I’ve done for a long time – marching through the streets of Birmingham with a group of enthusiastic, like-minded people, joining in with a Global event, making our voices and drums heard.  Fantastic!

A big thank-you to Birmingham Friends of the Earth for making us so welcome – especially when we didn’t always keep up with the rhythm! 

Let’s hope we can ‘find a drum’ at another event!! 

#ThisWorldIsOurs #cop30

 

Melanie Wakley

Has your dog been ill?

When we talk about pesticides we tend to focus on the harm to flora and fauna (especially pollinators) followed by the impact on human health.  But there’s another group that are impacted that we tend to forget: our dogs and cats. 

Just as our children are in contact with pesticides as they make contact with sprayed areas, so are our dogs and cats. Children playing on the ground can easily make contact with sprayed areas but our pets have no choice: by walking on the ground they are bound to make contact.  Symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning (single incident exposure) in cats and dogs can include vomiting, diarrhoea, drooling, irritation to the skin or eyes, chemical burns, breathing problems, lethargy, disorientation, seizures and even death. While instances of acute pet poisoning are sometimes studied and recorded, there is almost no research on the long-term, chronic effects on pets’ health of regular, ongoing direct exposure to pesticides that have been linked to diseases in humans such as cancer.

Spraying in our parks and green spaces is exactly where we walk our dogs. We recently heard a case where somebody had tied their dog to the railings around a play area, while they took their child inside where dogs aren’t allowed, then ran up a vet’s bill of over £1,000 when the dog fell ill.  The area along the railings had been sprayed.  There has even been a case of a dog dying after lying on a sprayed area and ingesting the poison through its skin.

Making the connection between pets falling ill and pesticide use is in its infancy. The Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) has recorded a 55% increase in pesticide related poisoning enquiries between 2019 and 2021, but this is only through voluntary contact with the VPIS, so the issue is likely to be much greater.

The lessons to be learnt from this are:        

• Keep your dog away from sprayed areas and especially don’t tie your dog up where it can make contact with a sprayed area.
• If your dog does fall ill with any of the symptoms above and you suspect poisoning visit the VPIS website to get advice.
• Be aware this can affect cats too and as we have no control of where they go outside we have no way of controlling pesticide exposure to cats.
• If you take your dog or cat to the vet and poisoning is suspected, please ask the vet to report it to the VPIS – we need more data.  Vet membership of the VPIS is only £8/month.
• Don’t spray your garden.
• If you get the opportunity to stop the council spraying on the areas outside where you live, please take it.
• If you take your dog across the fields try and avoid sprayed areas.  Farmers often spray round field edges and some crops are sprayed too if the crop has been specially developed to resist pesticide spraying.  Look for the tell-tale tractor wheelings through crops that indicate the passage of a spraying vehicle or brown grass round field edges.
• Be wary of footpaths through crops where the footpath has been cleared of the crop by spraying.
• Don’t let your dog drink from puddles and ponds near sprayed areas.
• If you see spraying taking place try and keep upwind of it and better still avoid the area altogether - for your health too!

Please join Leicester Friends of the Earth in pressing your council not to spray in public parks and green spaces.

Make them pay - a different way?

The “Make them pay” campaign focuses on taxing the super-rich.  Rather than focusing on taxing individuals wouldn’t it be better to tax the source of their wealth, in an ongoing fashion?

The super-rich are all owners of multi-national companies, companies that are able to move their profits to low tax countries claiming money owed for things like licencing, where the tax haven owns the licence for something the company in another country (e.g. the UK) is using, for example the use of the Amazon logo.  This is just a way of moving money around to avoid tax.  There are two obvious consequences of this behaviour: 

1. The UK (and other governments) lose out on tax revenue. In the UK this is corporation tax, a 25% tax on company profits.

2. Companies based purely in the UK that cannot move their profits abroad, so have to pay true corporation tax, cannot compete with multinationals so get squeezed out of business.  Nowhere is this more apparent than Amazon and the impact can be seen in most town shopping centres.

This table of Amazon corporation tax paid, extracted from Ethical Consumer, illustrates the extent of the problem.

So how should we go about changing things?

What we could do is work out tax due as follows:

UK Sales  x Global profit  =  profit from UK sales.
Global Sales

Then tax the profit from UK sales at 25%, with deductions for investment in UK infrastructure, e.g. start-up costs to mitigate against claims we are preventing investment.

Yes, there would be squeals of protest from the super-rich (mostly from the USA) and their tax consultants, but perhaps then we’d breathe some life into our high streets and get some pot holes repaired!  Also we might get some UK based competition going.

The Tax Justice Network is campaigning along these lines but eight countries are blocking UN tax reform, and as you might have guessed, one of them is the UK. This article from the Tax Justice Network outlines the scale of the problem and this article states that eight out of the top ten tax havens are British Overseas Territories: 8 out of the 10 biggest tax havens are British territories. Why?

In conclusion, rather than taxing the super-rich, let’s just level the playing field and create some fairer competition and press our government to get behind the UN tax reform initiative.