ALV Writers Group A FORTNIGHTLY NEWSLETTER Issue #14 - October 9, 2005 “Speaking up for Animal Rights” RSPCA and Pigs industry publicly". SOURCE: Canberra News Bureau, Rural Press Pork industry Agricultural Publishing. blasts RSPCA's 'fair go for farm Letter sent to The Age animals' campaign The RSPCA's Fair Go For Farm Animals campaign Farm online 4.10.05 caught the pork industry off guard, when it was launched last month. The pork lobby has hit out at the RSPCA for betraying joint efforts on animal welfare issues. www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=29591 Obviously the ALP has been caught out and feeling The pork lobby has hit out at the RSPCA for betraying guilty, threatened by what the RSPCA and public might joint efforts on animal welfare issues and launching a discover about intense pig farming! They are not being unilateral ‘Fair Go For Farm Animals’ campaign last given a fair go and they know it. Dr Hugh Wirth's month that places itself in the position of "self- acknowledgment that the sow stalls might protect pigs appointed judge and jury". from aggression and injury is a lame defence. Prisoners in jail might acknowledge that they are safer from some The campaign targets battery hen production, live dangers that others in society face (such as road animal exports, and the use of sow stalls, which the accidents)! RSPCA says may result in pigs developing "severe physical and behavioural problems". Their ‘scientific farming’ means treating animals as a process, with inputs and expected outputs, without In making the claim, however, the RSPCA considering the natural behaviours, expressions and acknowledges the fact sow stalls also provide protection emotions that these intelligent, sentient animals have. from injury and can limit aggression between animals. The RSPCA campaign is hitting the right places already. Well done! Not surprisingly, APL was not impressed by the V Ortega 6.10.05 campaign, describing it as "inconsistent with the spirit of partnership" that Dr Wirth has previously espoused and APL attempts to engage with the RSPCA on animal The usual comforting rejoinder we hear—that it’s in the welfare issues. interest of farmers to take good care of their animals—is false. Each day, in every intensive farm in Australia, you In a letter sent late last week to RSPCA executive will find cull pens littered with dead or dying creatures officer, Jenny Hodges, APL's senior policy officer, discarded like trash. Kathleen Plowman, expresses APL's disappointment For the piglets, it’s a regimen of teeth cutting, tail with the RSPCA and its "failure to consult with the docking (performed to deter tail biting - the natural industry about the campaign before attacking the response to mass confinement), and castration – all done without anesthetic. After five or six months trapped in Page 1 one of the grim warehouses that now pass for barns, FARM (Farm animal reform movement) Founder and they’re trucked off, for processing at slaughter houses President Alex Hershaft was arrested Monday morning where workers use earplugs to muffle the screams. (3.10.05) for blocking a truck hauling pigs from Almost 300,000 breeding sows in Australia are confined entering the Smithfield Packing Plant slaughterhouse in in a metal and concrete stalls, smaller than a child's cot. Smithfield, Vancouver, Canada. The arrest followed an The sow can not walk, turn around or even lie down all-night vigil by ten activists. (see photo on this page) with comfort. RSPCA’s own website states: due to the repeated physical restriction and boredom, a sow in a The plant slaughters 18,000 pigs per day. Smithfield stall may develop severe physical and behavioural Foods is the world's largest killer of pigs, accounting for problems. Muscles and bones may deteriorate, causing 20 million victims per year. The occasion was the 23rd pain and difficulty in moving. Increased aggression and annual observance of World Farm Animals Day. The a repetitive swaying of the head may also develop. observance continues through October. Doesn’t this constitute Aggravated Cruelty? The www.farmusa.org Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 (Vic) sets out a definition of what constitutes cruelty. According to section 9 of this Act, cruelty can range from wounding, torturing and overworking an animal to neglect, Live Exports abandonment, ear cropping and debarking. 'Aggravated cruelty' occurs where a person commits any act of cruelty and the animal dies or is seriously disabled. Why Push for Live Export Voice in hasn’t the RSPCA taken action and prosecuted pig Local RSPCA farmers who fail to remove sows from extreme confinement when muscle and bone deterioration or severe behavioural problems occur? Instead the The West Australian newspaper 7.10.05 RSPCA advises us to sign petitions and become ‘more (Thanks S Cass (TAS) for sending in this article with her informed.’ comments in italics) The very modesty of those needs—their humble desires The State Government and farming groups have called for straw, soil, sunshine—is the gravest indictment of for pro-live animal exports interests to be represented the men who deny them. Conservatives are supposed to on the RSPCA's state council. Three positions are up for revere tradition. Factory farming has no traditions, no election with several former farmers standing. rules, no codes of honor, no little decencies to spare for a fellow creature. The whole thing is an abandonment of The RSPCA's national policy is to end WA'S $700 veterinary medicine, with its sworn oath to “protect million live export trade. The State Government - which animal health” and to “relieve animal suffering.” You contributes $250.000 to the RSPCA's $3.5 million wouldn’t think that ALP who are unwilling to grant annual budget - supports live exports. (This biased view even a few extra inches in cage space, so that a pig can suggests that the WA State Government would cut off turn around, would be in any position to fault others for those funds unless these farmers are re-elected!) pettiness. Why are small acts of kindness beneath us, but not small acts of cruelty? Sow stalls are banned in Agriculture Minister Kim Chance said it was desirable Florida and the UK. They are being phased out in the that a range of views were represented on that council. European Union and New Zealand. WA Farmers spokesman said it respected the RSPCA but balance was needed to counter extreme animal rights elements. WA Farmers was telling its members to re-elect former farmers Des Gooding and Neville Marsh. Mr Gooding said his aim was to bring both sides of the debate together and foster a mutual respect. RSPCA national president Hugh Wirth said the WA RSPCA continued to campaign "long and hard" against the live trade. (Yeah, right, with two live export farmers on the Council). The Pastoralists and Graziers said it supported ongoing links between farmers and animal lobby groups. The West Australian takes letters at their website www.thewest.com.au Page 2 News article 28.9.05 move by Senator Bartlett to disallow regulations governing the nation's meat and livestock industry, was Cattle last week were trucked more than 3,000 backed by the Australian Greens, but failed to win the kilometres from the Kimberley region in Western support of government and Labor senators. Australia to Roma because they were fetching better prices in the saleyards than for the live trade. The live trade was resumed in May, following an extensive review of animal welfare practices. We're paying double what we paid a couple of years ago, double freight and that's pushed our prices up But Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett says the Keniry significantly and there's not too much we can do about review was based on narrow terms of reference, and the it." said the QLD Livestock Exporters Association. trade is inherently cruel. OK, so they're not being exported live, but surely this "There's been a litany of disasters in the live export length of journey would contravene Codes of Practice trade, particularly to Saudi Arabia, and after each one, in both WA and QLD? How are they getting away with there's an inquiry, there's a report, there's it RSPCA? recommendations, there's changes, and they're all assured it'll all be fine," he said. "The Democrats' view Charity Tax Hit is that enough is enough. We've had 20 years, we've had more than that to fix up these problems, to address the inherent cruelty in the trade, and it hasn't been able to be Herald Sun 05.10.05 done satisfactorily." CHARITIES that run anti-government campaigns Senator Bartlett said the suffering and death of during elections may lose their tax deductible status. thousands of sheep aboard the Cormo Express, stranded The RSPCA is at the top of a hit-list after a campaign for months in the Persian Gulf two years ago, exposed against live animal exports during the last election. The the cruelty of the trade to all Australians. Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society are also in Special Minister of State Eric Abetz's The Australian livestock trade to Saudi Arabia was sights for campaigning against the Coalition's forests suspended in August 2003 after the Cormo Express, policy last year. laden with 57,000 sheep, was turned away by Saudi Arabia. The following is the funding that the RSPCA is to receive from governments this year: Senator Bartlett, a former state president of the Queensland branch of Animal Liberation, said the live Victoria $200,000 (which includes a one-off grant of trade failed to measure up to even the most basic of $50K) Australian animal welfare standards.