This document is an extract from Animal Welfare in Australia: Politics and Policy, published by Sydney University Press. ISBN: 9781743324738 (paperback) 9781743324745 (ebook: epub) 9781743325025 (ebook: PDF) All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below: Sydney University Press Fisher Library F03 University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA [email protected] sydney.edu.au/sup Parts of this work are available on the University of Sydney eScholarship Repository at hdl.handle.net/2123/15349. Please cite the full work as: Chen, Peter John (2016). Animal Welfare in Australia: Politics and Policy. Sydney: Sydney University Press. The book may be purchased from Sydney University Press at the following link: http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/sup/animalwelfareinaus. Animal welfare in Australia ANIMAL PUBLICS Melissa Boyde & Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Series Editors Other titles in the series: Animal death Ed. Jay Johnston & Fiona Probyn-Rapsey Animals in the Anthropocene: critical perspectives on non-human futures Ed. The Human Animal Research Network Editorial Collective Cane toads: a tale of sugar, politics and flawed science Nigel Turvey Engaging with animals: interpretations of a shared existence Ed. Georgette Leah Burns & Mandy Paterson Fighting nature: travelling menageries, animal acts and war shows Peta Tait Animal welfare in Australia Policy and politics Peter John Chen First published by Sydney University Press © Peter John Chen 2016 © Sydney University Press 2016 Reproduction and Communication for other purposes Except as permitted under the Act, no part of this edition may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or communicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All requests for reproduction or communication should be made to Sydney University Press at the address below: Sydney University Press Fisher Library F03 The University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Email: [email protected] sydney.edu.au/sup National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Creator: Chen, Peter J. (Peter John), 1972– author. Title: Animal welfare in Australia : politics and policy / Peter John Chen. ISBN: 9781743324738 (paperback) 9781743324745 (ebook: epub) 9781743324752 (ebook: Kindle) 9781743325025 (ebook: PDF) Series Animal Publics. Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Animal welfare—Government policy—Australia. Animal welfare—Political aspects—Australia. Animal welfare—Moral and ethical aspects—Australia. Human–animal relationships—Australia. Australia—Politics and government. Dewey Number: 636.0832 Cover image: Hand feeding sheep in feedlot at Connemara Station, Tarcutta, New South Wales. Photographer: Carl Davies. CSIRO Science Image, http://scienceimage.csiro.au. Used under CC Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). Cover design by Miguel Yamin Contents Acknowledgements xi List of figures ix List of acronyms xiii Nomenclature xv Introduction xvii Part 1 1 1 History 3 2 Ethics 21 Part 2 37 3 Attitudes to animals 39 4 In the media 85 5 Mapping the policy domain 123 Part 3 149 6 Animal protectionism 151 vii Animal welfare in Australia 7 Animal-using industry 223 8 Political and administrative policy elites 275 Conclusion 319 Appendices Appendix A: Research methods 323 Appendix B: Major ethical positions regarding animals 326 Appendix C: Australian animal protection organisations – a 330 sample Appendix D: Animal-using industry in Australia – 334 representative bodies and their relationships with policy-makers Appendix E: Timeline of animal welfare policy in Australia 338 Appendix F: Significant legal instruments 350 Appendix G: Top Google queries relating to the 10 most 360 frequently searched-for animals Reference list 365 Index 401 viii Introduction The direct inspiration for this book was the temporary cessation of live animal exports to Indonesia in late 2011. This decision of the Gillard Labor government directly followed the broadcast of footage of slaugh- terhouse practices in Jakarta. In response to this footage, the websites of activist organisations crashed due to dramatic surges in traffic (AAP 2011a), and members of Parliament reported being deluged with calls about the show. Popular concern led some government backbenchers to advocate that the live-export industry be phased out, while competing legislative proposals emerged from the Australian Greens and inde- pendent senators to ban or restrict the practice. In the following two years, successive reports of animal mistreatment in Egypt and Pakistan sparked further unrest (Rout and Crowe 2012). A few years before these live-export scandals, PETA (USA) had led an influential campaign against the practice of mulesing in Australia, focusing particularly on the lack of pain relief during this invasive pro- cedure. In response, in 2004 the wool industry had agreed to invest in research that would allow mulesing to be voluntarily phased out (mulesing is defined by the Primary Industries Council as the surgi- cal removal of well-bearing skin from the tail and breech area of a sheep, and is performed to prevent insect infestation; Primary Indus- tries Ministerial Council 2006, 17). Between these two controversies, xvii Animal welfare in Australia by 2014 it appeared that a significant shift in the political balance over animal welfare standards had emerged in Australia. Since then, however, it is possible to see a shoring up of the pre- existing status quo towards policy regarding the treatment of animals. The government’s decision to temporarily halt live export negatively affected the operations of exporters and tested Australian–Indonesian relations, with wider implications for co-operation between the two nations that spilled over into debates about border protection and asylum seekers. However, exports resumed in 2013 and the live-export sector has since benefited from free-trade negotiations that look set to grow this agricultural subsector in Australia dramatically. In the same period, key members of the sheep industry abandoned their commit- ment to PETA to phase out mulesing in favour of a longer-term strategy of research and breeding (Jepson 2012). And although animal welfare activists have enjoyed other victories, such as a 2014 ban on the use of cages for chickens and pigs in intensive production in the Australian Capital Territory, this occurred only after the last of these industries had been paid by the ACT government to leave the jurisdiction. The policy landscape may shift, but one thing is constant: Aus- tralians’ attitudes to animals are complex and contradictory. In 2013 Australians directly consumed hundreds of millions of animals as meat while lavishing money and affection on their companion animals, 25 million of whom reside in 5 million (or 66 per cent of) Australian households (Animal Health Alliance 2013). Australians spend $8 billion annually on this subclass of favoured animals – four times the total amount individuals gave to charitable causes (McGregor-Lowndes and Pelling 2013). Another case that unfolded during the writing of this book captures this complexity. In 2014, following a slight rise in the small number of shark attacks (AAP 2014), the Western Australian govern- ment implemented a program of shark culling. In response, the public rallied to the largest pro-shark protests in Australian (and possibly international) history (ABC 2014). That sharks, the focus of a common, visceral phobia that is often seen as being hardwired and is far beyond a rational estimate of the actual risk of attack (Ritter et al. 2008, 47), mobilised so many, shows how complex our political relationship with animals can be. Millions of domesticated animals go to their deaths xviii Introduction annually in Australia largely unremarked, yet a small number of sharks prompted vigorous protests. These events demonstrate the difficulty of policy-making around animal welfare and protection issues. Add a scarcity of scholarship on policy-making pertaining to animal protec- tion in this country, and the political response to animal protection issues in Australia cannot be readily explained or understood. The status quo Where do animals fit in the Australian political landscape? If, as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued, we are the sum of our actions, then the overwhelming majority of Australians would appear to support the idea that non-human animals should be subordinated to human desires. This status quo is what Joy (2010) calls ‘carnism’: an ideology that normalises animal use whether or not it is necessary for human survival. In giving a name to the ideology of animal use – just as those who avoid animal products are called vegetarians or vegans – Joy highlights a previously ‘unmarked category’. That we usually have no names for such categories reflects the tendency for the characteristics of the powerful (be that whiteness, maleness or adherence to a ‘normal’ diet) to neither have, nor need, a specific designator. This is an irony that sees the privileged as invisible, with only deviations from the norm marked out by special terminology. The assumption that the status quo is simply ‘normal’ conceals the power relations behind it. In the case of humans and animals, the per- sistent subordination of the species with which we share the planet is driven by two forces. The first is inertia. The consumption of ani- mals and animal products often occurs in the most intimate of settings, and forms the pattern of our daily lives and habits. Here Bourdieu’s