The final Easter Show
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 14 Mar 2020
Dear Editor,
Next month's Easter Show has been cancelled, due to concerns about the proliferating coronavirus. It should remain cancelled in the future, and not just for health reasons. The Show does its best to deceive children and even adults who attend, by presenting an idyllic but inaccurate picture of how farmed animals are confined, tormented and killed. People see a handful of well-groomed animals that, temporarily, avoid the routine cruelty experienced by farmed animals. For the millions of others (and many of the ones being shown, when they return to the farm), profit is the only concern governing their lives, and suffering the only fate awaiting them.
People attending the Show usually have no idea that, in NSW, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1979) section 24 specifically excludes "stock" animals from most of its provisions. Yet the Show leaves children with the fantasy that all animals are treated with kindness and respect. When children are invited to "pat a chick", they are not told that it is standard procedure for millions of male chicks to be discarded by being minced alive or suffocated because they don't lay eggs. Nor that pigs are confined in tiny cages until slaughter. Cows have their babies torn from them within hours of birth so that humans can steal their milk. Lambs may be "mulesed" (have skin sliced from their hind-quarters) and later are often brutally beaten during shearing. Animals bred for their meat are slaughtered while still little more than babies.
Of course, none of this is disclosed at the "Show". The government should permanently close down this marketing deceit and instead educate kids about the living nightmare animals endure before ending up on our plates.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
DesmondB@PETA.org.au