The live animal trade

…death.
Over half a century later it is still a very vivid memory.
Perhaps as a consequence I have little sympathy for the live animal trade. Over
the years, we have seen sheep by the thousands die in ships on the way to the
Middle East in hot and inadequately ventilated ships and now the recent appalling
cruelty in Indonesia. If we eat meat we should ensure that an animal’s
end is as humane and swift as possible. No animal should be conscious when killed
no matter what traditional or religious excused are brought forward. To me they
are archaic and barbaric practices and have no place in today’s world.
We should join with New Zealand which not only does not export live animals
but also bans kosher and halal slaughter where the animal is conscious when
slain. Maybe there was some hygiene reason many centuries ago for this practise
but it is an insult to contemporary ethics and intelligence. If we eat meat
it is the very least that we can do to see that animals die painlessly with
a modicum of dignity and after a reasonably happy life.
This is not an attack on religious freedom because this barbaric ritual slaughter
does not have an over-riding ethical or moral authority. We do not permit cannibalism
or female genital mutilation in Australia, (though the male of the species can
have his willy surgically altered at parental whim), and if some strange new
religion mandated that all its disciples should bite off the back legs of live
rabbits in an initiation ceremony, we would not permit it either. To maintain
that a particular way slaughtering animals mandated either 1500 or 4000 years
ago is core to a religion and is in no need of examination, beggars belief,
though totally consistent with the desire to maintain hierarchical clerical
authority. And I’m sorry that the odd study that it is actually less cruel
to cut the throat of a live animal than to stun it, does seem to exist on the
same level of debate as climate change deniers.
There an option for those who believe that live ritually slaughtered meat is
the defining moment of their beliefs and that nothing else will pass their lips.
Vegetarianism
It is obvious that the meat industry has known about the treatment of exported
animals for ages and has studiously turned a blind eye. They should now ensure
that any and all exported meat is killed in Australia to the highest standards
of humane treatment as defined by the RSPCA. There used to be abattoirs throughout
the north of Australia which have closed through what can only be described
as financial expediency. Farmers may be upset, but their anger should be addressed
to the organisations that they fund which have led them to this end.
Another defining moment was a decade ago when flying into Dallas. It dawned
on me as the plane got closer to the ground that the enormous circular brown
stains on the desert landscape were cattle pens. This is where the grain fed
beef came from – cattle standing around in piles of their excrement being fed
corn from automated troughs. Not a blade of grass in sight in the arid Texan
landscape. The next steak I was offered by my American hosts did not taste good.
Somehow it was just an industrial product.
We should take this further and reform the pig and poultry industries as well.
Pigs are intelligent animals but are treated appallingly, stacked in cages and
fed antibiotics, and chickens, whilst not exactly brilliant, are treated the
same way. Yes, it will cost more, it certainly costs our family more, but we
compensate by eating more vegetables.
If I were a better person I am sure that I would be a vegetarian but – as St
Augustine never said, “Lord keep me from temptation – but just not
yet.”
However, somehow it tastes better to eat ethically.
As a footnote to this I would add that in Australia we treat our pets better
than we allow us to treat ourselves. We have had cats that have been diagnosed
with terminal diseases and which we have had put down by lethal injection. My
wife says that the last cat died purring.
Yet if I were in the same condition as the cat was I would be compelled to hang
on through the potential agony to whatever death awaited. I am sorry but this
is not good enough, as I recall a conversation I had with a dear friend whose
wife had died of cervical cancer. In summary he said she died in dreadful agony,
her face contorted with the pain that no amount of palliative care could ease.
The anger was palpable and remained so for years.
As with animals – of which we are just another species – we too should
be allowed to die with dignity. And – and this is what we don’t
give animals either – at the time of our own choosing.