Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty

Pity the poor animals

PITY THE POOR ANIMALS

Mirko Bagaric

August 07, 2007 12:00am

AN inquiry into the practice of slaughtering animals by cutting their throats without stunning them is absurd.

Cultural and religious norms cannot justify abject cruelty.

But that is why a Warrnambool abattoir is not stunning animals before bleeding them to death.

It is to appease the abattoir's Middle East market.

Australians have zero tolerance to practices such as female circumcision and the repression of minority groups.

But we have become inhumane in the way we treat many animals.

Animal welfare laws in Australia don't extend to most of the 500 million production animals in this country.

If the level of pain experienced by these animals were inflicted on dogs or cats, it would land people in jail.

Lambs have their tails cut off, and the males are castrated. Anaesthetic is not even an optional extra.

But these animals feel the same pain we do.

Most battery hens never get the chance to spread their wings. Their cages are about the size of an A4 page and the birds are painfully debeaked.

This causes shock that sometimes results in death.

For most of their lives, factory-farmed pigs are confined in concrete pens so small they cannot turn around.

The pigs are denied contact with other pigs and suffer myriad painful ailments including lameness and sores caused by standing on hard floors.

The paradox relating to an increase in animal suffering in Australia is that most of us abhor animal cruelty.

So much so, that many people pay as much attention to the needs and wants of their pets as to their own family members.

But the enormous goodwill in the community towards animals has not translated to their treatment, largely because most of us don't know of the intolerable conditions in which some farm animals are kept.

To some extent this ignorance might be blissful, but we are better off knowing the facts.

It is only then that we will be empowered to make decisions for creatures that have no voices of their own.

Humans have a low tolerance to pain and usually recoil from witnessing animal suffering.

We find ways to ignore the shrieks from behind the farm fence.

But we need to find ways to make ourselves aware of cruelty. We can do this by taking notice, for example, of labels saying eggs are free-range.

As for cutting the throats of conscious animals, it is embarrassing that anyone should suggest this macabre practice can be justified.

Civilising people means that we have to humanise animals, if only slightly.

I'm not suggesting we should accord animals the full catalogue of rights we are starting to attribute to all humans.

Animals can't vote, but they would benefit from a less painful existence.

By failing to accord them this, we are ourselves diminished.

MIRKO BAGARIC is a lawyer and ethicist

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22198984-5000117,00.html

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