Crying for a profit lost
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 13 Feb 2019
Dear Editor,
Dorothea Mackellar had it right a century ago when she wrote in her famous poem "My Country" about a land "of droughts and flooding rains," proclaiming "when sick at heart around us, we see the cattle die". Today, the news channels and social media feeds are full of stories of graziers who are sick at heart at the deaths of hundreds of thousands of cattle – drowned or, a few weeks ago, dying of heat exhaustion and thirst.
What these stories don’t mention is that these animals were never fated to have a long life. If the animals hadn’t drowned or died of dehydration, they would have been hanged by their back legs in a slaughterhouse only to have their throats slashed open, sometimes, due to the speed of processing, while still fully conscious. The graziers are now mostly "sick at heart" because they are not making money from the appalling deaths these animals faced at the hands of the sunburnt country.
Droughts and flooding rain were a reality a hundred years ago, and they will only become more intense as climate change, to which animal agriculture is a major contributor, continues to intensify. But, as long as we continue to buy the flesh of these unhappy animals, graziers will continue to breed them, on land that is totally unsuitable. Please – if your heart is sick at the sights of hundreds of thousands of dead animals this week – go vegan, and break this vicious spiral of death.
Mimi Bekhechi
Campaigns Consultant,
PETA Australia
PO Box 20308 World Square
Sydney, NSW, 2002
(08) 8556-5828
mimib@peta.org.au
Dorothea Mackellar had it right a century ago when she wrote in her famous poem "My Country" about a land "of droughts and flooding rains," proclaiming "when sick at heart around us, we see the cattle die". Today, the news channels and social media feeds are full of stories of graziers who are sick at heart at the deaths of hundreds of thousands of cattle – drowned or, a few weeks ago, dying of heat exhaustion and thirst.
What these stories don’t mention is that these animals were never fated to have a long life. If the animals hadn’t drowned or died of dehydration, they would have been hanged by their back legs in a slaughterhouse only to have their throats slashed open, sometimes, due to the speed of processing, while still fully conscious. The graziers are now mostly "sick at heart" because they are not making money from the appalling deaths these animals faced at the hands of the sunburnt country.
Droughts and flooding rain were a reality a hundred years ago, and they will only become more intense as climate change, to which animal agriculture is a major contributor, continues to intensify. But, as long as we continue to buy the flesh of these unhappy animals, graziers will continue to breed them, on land that is totally unsuitable. Please – if your heart is sick at the sights of hundreds of thousands of dead animals this week – go vegan, and break this vicious spiral of death.
Mimi Bekhechi
Campaigns Consultant,
PETA Australia
PO Box 20308 World Square
Sydney, NSW, 2002
(08) 8556-5828
mimib@peta.org.au