Drought: pulling the wool over our eyes
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 15 Jun 2018
Dear Editor
Drought: the word causes shivers of fear in many Australians, particularly those in the bush. A 2015 poll found that people were more worried about drought than any other consequence of climate change.
Now farmers are complaining that the big dry means that they are having to “de-stock” or, in plain English, kill thousands of animals even earlier than they would usually be killed. Meat and Livestock Australia have revised the number of lambs that will be slaughtered this year to 22.85 million, while sheep slaughter is expected to reach 7.8 million, totalling an astonishing 30,665,000 animals, most of them little more than babies. Many of these animals will have suffered barbaric treatments such as mulesing, ear-tagging and castration, and will have been repeatedly mutilated during shearing.
The Climate Council has concluded that droughts are likely to worsen in severity and duration in southern Australia if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut deeply and rapidly. The quickest way to achieve this is to eliminate the wool and sheep meat industries. These businesses add significantly to greenhouse emissions through “enteric fermentation,” or animals belching and passing gas, as well as causing vegetation change and soil erosion and water pollution through faecal contamination and sheep dips.
For the farmers, it’s an easy equation: if you can’t feed them, don’t breed them. The rest of us can take a stand for animals, and help to preserve natural ecosystems by not buying woollen garments, and not eating baby lambs.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577416
DesmondB@PETA.org.au
Drought: the word causes shivers of fear in many Australians, particularly those in the bush. A 2015 poll found that people were more worried about drought than any other consequence of climate change.
Now farmers are complaining that the big dry means that they are having to “de-stock” or, in plain English, kill thousands of animals even earlier than they would usually be killed. Meat and Livestock Australia have revised the number of lambs that will be slaughtered this year to 22.85 million, while sheep slaughter is expected to reach 7.8 million, totalling an astonishing 30,665,000 animals, most of them little more than babies. Many of these animals will have suffered barbaric treatments such as mulesing, ear-tagging and castration, and will have been repeatedly mutilated during shearing.
The Climate Council has concluded that droughts are likely to worsen in severity and duration in southern Australia if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut deeply and rapidly. The quickest way to achieve this is to eliminate the wool and sheep meat industries. These businesses add significantly to greenhouse emissions through “enteric fermentation,” or animals belching and passing gas, as well as causing vegetation change and soil erosion and water pollution through faecal contamination and sheep dips.
For the farmers, it’s an easy equation: if you can’t feed them, don’t breed them. The rest of us can take a stand for animals, and help to preserve natural ecosystems by not buying woollen garments, and not eating baby lambs.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577416
DesmondB@PETA.org.au