The live animal shipments overseas have been a problem since their inception. Because the countries that demand this living flesh being delivered are those who kill animals in a special way, and they don't trust other countries and cultures to kill them the way they wish. Their lack of trust and the special killing are a problem. Yet the cattle producers, the government of Australia and those whom they appoint to oversee this transport, realising this. Because don't for one minute think they didn't know, still wanted to cash in on the lucrative overseas market opportunities available and so the live animal trade went ahead. It was a mistake. After a couple of decades this madness becomes not evident, because the inhumane treatment of animals overseas has always been known, but rather comes to the public eye and ear and finally receives some much overdue attention.
Australia says they are trying to educate the countries that are recipients of the live animal trade to become aware of cruelty issues. They have helped them by creating boxes of torture to assist with this cruelty before killing, and using Australian tax payers money to do so. This and even the live animal trade, rather than paying the wages and accommodation of qualified people to come and live and oversee the work of halal killing and packaging in appropriately registered and authorised abattoirs in Australia.
My last missive to the minister in charge of and regarding this débâcle was in December 2010. Letters to previous ministers with responsibility for this cruelty need not be mentioned, because they were never going to be held accountable and cannot now be touched. This minister the Hon Joe Ludwig, like those before him realised what was going on. In a reply to my letter sent one saying many things and that he has asked the industry to investigate and report back to him by June in this year. It's June, but I'm certain that with a little imagination he would suggest that he meant by the 30th of June.
To send animals overseas alive is a treatment harsh in the extreme though few will see it, because there are few quality stock people who actually work with animals now to ensure they are best handled. The stock people of this day and age are those who have eyes only for money and nothing much else, unless it's what they can buy with it.
Taking the animal from the pasture, the mustering and hunting them up a race and enclosing them in terror increased by the restriction of a pen on a truck is pretty terrifying. Especially when they could be confined with a paddock enemy who is equally terrified. Then travelling along noisy roads and see sights and smell scents which are coming at them faster than they can be processed, never having seen anything like it previously, and because we don't know how they're feeling is just not going to be an enjoyable experience. People like to travel, but most animals, if they travel at all, would like to do so at their own pace and adjust to new sights at their ability to engage anything new. So far, the stress has been considerable and they are then held in holding yard or paddocks awaiting slaughter under normal conditions.
The live animal trade ensures these animals are placed onto a new terror conveyor. Another race to be pushed up and more fear if they have become accustomed to the sights and scents of the sea. Then penned again with paddock or yard mates and enemies on a constantly moving deck. Then the sea voyage rocking, rolling and storms of a kind they have never before experienced. This is not a pleasure cruise for animals that are accustomed to having a solid surface beneath their feet. These are not pampered though they are fed and watered. We have no idea about how animals show motion sickness because most do not vomit or if they do have little opportunity to do so in the crowded conditions forced upon them. They die and are cast overboard with little if any ceremony and just some effort.
For those who survive it's back down a race and onto solid ground, do they walk as if they have never been on a rocking, rolling surface or are they unsteady on their feet? Does anyone notice?
Into a holding paddock or pen and finally onto a truck to travel to a feed lot, where they are fattened, crowded, bored and finally on a truck again, back to have unspeakable things done to them after more terror causing sights and sound. After unspeakable brutality they are finally killed. How long does this terror continue? Do they recognise a respite or is there none for these whom we eat?
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