Fair go for farm animals

Each day, more than 6 million animals are slaughtered around the world for food. Yet if animals can feel, but cannot vote nor control their own destiny, who is looking after their interests?

In the absence of adequate laws regulating the production and sale of animal-derived food products, our fellow animal beings are routinely used and abused, treated as objects, kept while convenient and disposed of when no longer profitable – all this without access to meaningful legal recourse.

Despite this, there is hope for Australian animals and it comes from the growing number of animal lawyers, advocates and a new breed of ethical consumers committed to giving farm animals a ‘fair go’. I’d like to think I’m now one of them...but it wasn’t always the case.

Less than five years ago I was like 98 per cent of Australians – a flesh eater. I even had kangaroo served at my wedding! Yet if I knew then what I know now, there’s no way Skippy would have ended up on my wedding plate. So why the sudden gastronomic change? I discovered the morally egregious reality of modern farming.

I learned that over recent decades, the number of farmers has significantly declined due to economic pressures and a drive for efficiency and so-called ‘progress’. For the most part, the traditional family farm has been replaced by extensive large scale corporate farming operations whose aim is to maximise wealth for shareholders. Sadly, in such organisations, animal welfare is only ever a means to that end, never an end in itself.

Inside the factory farm, there are too many animals squashed into too small a space, without adequate air or grass or nature to process their urine and faeces. The stench has to be smelt to be believed. Depressed, sick, stressed, anxious animals, whose sole raison d’être is to be slaughtered for food (or in the case of almost 80 per cent of chickens, to produce an unnatural quantity of eggs and then be killed when production levels dwindle), have no quality of life. They merely exist.

Depending on the species, these animals may be pumped full of antibiotics, branded, dehorned, teeth and beak clipped, kept in tiny cages, unable to exercise, run, jump, roll, play or engage in any number of natural and entirely necessary behaviours. Forced to lie on concrete floors, possibly tethered or in tiny metal cages, with no freedom of movement or natural interaction with others for the entirety of their days. As human beings we know this is no quality of life. Why then, do we so readily resign our fellow sentient beings to this plight?

In fact, along my journey of discovery I have often been amazed by the paradoxical nature of human psychology – how intelligent, caring individuals, particularly those who claim to love animals, can turn a blind eye and dismiss the suffering of so many fellow sentient beings. Would you sit by and allow your pet to be castrated without anaesthetic? Or have their tail cut off or teeth pulled out in a similarly barbaric fashion? I suggest not. Yet these inhumane practices (which would likely be criminal if performed on your cherished cat or dog), and many more are an everyday reality for millions of farm animals. The fact that factory farming occurs in remote locations, in massive sheds, behind closed doors, does not make it any more acceptable – only less visible to us as consumers.

I’ve learned that in the eyes of the law, animals are considered ‘property’, leaving them frighteningly vulnerable and open to abuse. While state laws protect certain animals from certain types of extreme cruelty, the animals we eat fall largely outside the protective domain of animal welfare laws. Indeed there are certain lax standards, (not-so) Model Codes and Codes of Practice denoting how farm animals should be treated, yet misleadingly these rules – developed with overwhelming input from industry – serve only to legalise the routine inhumane treatment of animals.

It seems farm animals are treated as widgets on a production line. A disturbing example is the fate of the male chicks of the ‘egg-laying’ species. These babies are considered worthless – neither suitable for egg-laying nor meat production. Disposal of one or two day old chicks usually involves throwing them into a grinder to be crushed alive. Alternatively they may be gassed or tossed into a dumpster – hundreds of them, one on top of another...left to die...by suffocation, starvation...whichever comes first. This cruelty is a direct result of society’s love of cheap eggs and insufficient legal mechanisms protecting these sentient beings. Surely the law should recognise the intrinsic value of all animals. Surely their true worth is much greater than their mere market value.

Australia’s animal welfare legislation is also problematic as it is premised on the oxymoronic concept of ‘no unnecessary suffering’. In general, infliction of ‘unreasonable, unnecessary or unjustifiable pain and suffering on an animal’ is prohibited, unless deemed ‘necessary’ according to human capitalist driven desires which prioritise access to cheap meat for the masses over animal welfare. The underlying message sent by our law is that it’s okay to inflict suffering on animals when the benefit of doing so weighs in favour of human beings (which it inevitably does).

I’ve discovered that the law’s mismanagement of the corporate form is at the heart of the animal cruelty debate. The law created the corporation and is charged with its regulation, yet as one of Australia’s pre-eminent Animal Lawyers, Katrina Sharman states, “The interests of farm animals ... have been largely disregarded in this relentless pursuit for profit.” I dare say most agribusiness directors have never bothered to experience day-to-day interaction with the animals they eventually send to slaughter, making it easier to turn a blind eye to animal welfare.

The journey towards compassion and comity for animals is different for each individual. I implore you to open up your heart and mind to, at very least, the possibility of learning about the plight of Australian farm animals. Get back in touch with the empathy and natural affinity you had for animals as a young child, before you were taught that animals are lesser beings who exist solely for our consumption and exploitation.

http://careers.law.unimelb.edu.au/go/current-students/melbourne-law-scho...
 www.voiceless.org.au