"Australian Governments (Federal, Territory and State), journalists and cattlemen's associations are attempting to cloud facts about Australia's live export trade, known for at least 18 years: Indonesian halal is intended to inflict pain, employing a slow sawing motion to cut throats, rather than the less-than-a-second two-motion movement used by Australian professionals. Moreover, halal knives are invariably blunt. Even if animal rights were legislated in Indonesia, the Indonesian Government is simply too corrupt to maintain regulatory controls." (Tony Ryan)
Article by Tony Ryan
Government, journalists, cattlemen's associations, and various politicians, are attempting to cloud the issues about Australia's live export trade.
Here are some facts:
- Governments (Federal, Territory and State) have known the facts of halal cruelty for 18 years. Indonesian halal is intended to inflict pain, employing a slow sawing motion to cut throats, rather than the less-than-a-second two-motion movement used by Australian professionals. Moreover, halal knives are invariably blunt. Even if animal rights were legislated in Indonesia, the Indonesian Government is simply too corrupt to maintain regulatory controls.
- Australian live export feeds only the rich in Indonesia. Indonesian farmers and their families who supply this market are being driven bankrupt by our exports, and have been calling for cessation since imports began. This harms, not helps the Indonesian people.
- Government warned Australian Meat and Livestock of this crisis six months ago. Crush boxes were sent as a sop to this pressure. Government knew this full well.
- Live export contributes little to Australia's prosperity; only to the handful directly engaged, and on stations that are often foreign-owned.
- Live export is endemically cruel, in spite of public relations stunts and media releases organised by the export lobby. Worse, when animals reach their destination, they may be tied up for hours or days without water, before finally being killed in acts of horrific and indifferent cruelty.
- Live export cost Australians a quarter of a million jobs in: abattoirs, meat packaging, yarding, leather tanning, leather manufacturing, meat distribution, package manufacturing, meat grading dyes, meat and bone cutting implements, organic fertilisers, casein, meat inspection officers, butcher's supplies, freezing works uniforms and laundry services, transport services, and retail.
- That cattle farming is non-viable in the Top End has been known since at least 1982. Buffalo thrive while cattle starve, and the Department of Primary Production urged a move to buffalo domestication as far back as 1975. Buffalo were largely eradicated by 1988/89 to please US cattle lobbyists. Powerful interests in the NT's Country Liberal Party profited immensely from compensation payments made for the buffalo eradication (BTEC) programme. Claims of buffalo damage to the northern environment were falsified, and were in fact caused by feral pigs and disastrous fire regimes executed by the Commonwealth scientists of then ANPWS, which also destroyed one third of Kakadu northern cypress.
- There is talk of Indonesia's lack of refrigerators and how this justifies live export, but since 1978 there has been a plan to export dried meat and fish to Malaysia and Indonesia; exploiting the NT's massive fish by-catch, buffalo, and feral camel and donkey populations, during the six months of perfect Top End dry season drying winds. The Federal Government has sat on this potentially lucrative industry ever since; no doubt under pressure from meat export lobbyists and foreign aid programmes executives.
- Claims that live export employs a significant Aboriginal population are simply untrue. Where there is employment it is only for the few weeks of muster. By contrast, a buffalo and dried meat/fish industry could employ and feed thousands of Aborigines in the Top End, Kimberly, North Queensland and elsewhere. Moreover, this is the kind of industry they can operate without outside interference and this can lead to economic independence and an end to welfare dependency.
10. Australia's reputation as a nation of decent and civilised human beings is at stake. If we fail to end live export, our good name will be gone forever.
Julia Gillard will say whatever her powerful lobbyists tell her to say, and we cannot rely on her assurances that live export will only proceed on the basis of animal welfare guarantees. It must be stopped now, forever.
There is also the issue of jobs, and regional and rural industrial recovery. Australians need every job we can get, and the elimination of the live export industry will create the biggest explosion in rural and urban jobs in Australia's history.
There is no sound argument to support live export, and ten good reasons (above) why it should be terminated.
We must e-mail to, write to, harangue, and nag our state and federal politicians to end live export. They need to understand that this issue has been embraced by almost the entire nation, and that politicians who do not vote to end live export, will see their names entered on the electoral black list prior to the next elections.
Finally, well done Lyn White of Animals Australia, for her courage in collecting and presenting the evidence of this crime to Four Corners.
This document has been produced by the Ryan Institute of Evidential Demographics (RIED)
PO Box 1786. Sunshine Plaza Qld
4558(07) 54754009
tonyryan43 [ AT ] gmail.com
And also by the: Tariff Restoration Bloc (www.oziz4oziz.com/)
Note: Since 2001, RIED has provided free statistics on unemployment, homelessness; and electoral consensus on current national issues.
Note: The principal of RIED, Tony Ryan, commenced his working life in the cattle industry in 1961 and began studying Top End rural industries after moving to the NT in 1971. He later conducted related socio-economic research for the Commonwealth and NT governments, between 1974 and 1983, and in 1982 wrote about the decline of the cattle industry and recommended replacement by buffalo. He is semi-fluent in several Aboriginal languages, and also worked in NT Aboriginal community development. He is currently developing a demographic and market research service for Australian Business, and the concomitant establishment of an Internet news service, coupled with e-library on the globalisation of Australia ... with particular reference to how this nation can regain control of its economy.
© Copyright 2011: Tony Ryan; RYAN INSTITUTE OF EVIDENTIAL DEMOGRAPHICS
See also: Bring Back the Music - the demise of Oz bands of 22 Oct 08 also by Tony Ryan
Comments
Sheila Newman
Tue, 2011-06-21 15:36
Permalink
Relocalisation of meat industry
This article makes several highly contentious statements as fact without supplying documentation, so I would expect some of our readers to raise a number of objections on those grounds. However the article is published for the obvious merits in its advocation of relocalisation and steps towards this. Some of its statements about aboriginal employment in the live export industry are common sense. It won't please those among our readers who want all meat consumption to cease.
People who admire the camel for its remarkable adaptations, and then again those who also see it as a form of transport - indeed a major part of such an economy - to replace petroleum (in a futuristic nomadic culture for Australia) won't be impressed at any idea that reduces this animal to its value as meat alone. Advocating the use of camels for meat runs the risk of entrenching the camel further since it would acquire industrial value and similar industrial lobby strength as cattle and sheep. However the camel, even if it is a damaging eater, has virtuously padded rather than hoofed feet
The article also won't please ecologists who would see buffalo as highly destructive to the northern territory environment, although, in the buffalo's defense, its hoof has been described as wider and bigger than that of other cattle in proportion to its size and therefore less compacting to the environment. Another argument is that the buffalo has existed in wetlands in northern Australia for 150 years and the harm attributed to it needs to be taken in the context of the many other causes of damage to the wetlands.
I cite from "The Water Buffalo: New Prospects for an Underutilized Animal," where you will find more on the buffalo and the environment.
"Soil Compaction
Water buffaloes have larger hooves than cattle of comparable size and thus they compact the soil less. But buffaloes often live in damp, boggy areas where their feet may compact soft soils. Also, buffaloes are creatures of habit and, when able, they set up fixed points for drinking, feeding, defecating, wallowing, and sleeping. Between the points they wear sharply defined trails in the vegetation and soil.
Wallowing
Possibly the water buffalo's greatest environmental limitation is its propensity to build wallows. In hot climates every buffalo will wallow at some time during the heat of the day if water is available. When they can, buffaloes will make their own wallows, enlarging a mud puddle by rolling in it or even using their heads to flip water out of a drinking trough and muddying the ground nearby.
The pasture in the immediate area of the wallow is usually damaged by trampling and waterholes may become fouled, but buffaloes return to the same wallow day after day and do not build new ones indiscriminately. Thus, the muddied area is not a large proportion of the location in which they graze unless a large number of animals are confined in a small space(At Gainesville, Florida (possibly because of its subtropical but not hot climate), a herd of 52 buffaloes concentrated in a one-hectare field did not attempt to build a wallow at all. - Information supplied by H. Popenoe.) . In addition, man-made wallows can be dug at safe sites and the animals will use them. The problem of wallowing is therefore not generally a serious one." Source:
http://www.cd3wd.com/cd3wd_40/lstock/001/CattlGen/Wat-Buffalo/B1723_13.HTM
Sheila Newman
Tue, 2011-06-21 16:04
Permalink
Is Halal killing meant to be cruel?
Bandicoot
Tue, 2011-06-21 16:22
Permalink
government ineptitude and reliance on coverup
Bandicoot
Wed, 2011-06-22 20:21
Permalink
ANIMAL ADVOCATES RECEIVE DEATH THREATS
Sheila Newman
Wed, 2011-06-22 20:50
Permalink
Population activists also targeted
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