1. Rewards for reports of animal cruelty
Meredith Griffiths reported this story on Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Meredith Griffiths reported this story on Tuesday, June 22, 2010
A new animal welfare organisation will pay farm workers to dob in businesses where chickens or pigs are cruelly treated. The Animal Justice Fund is funded by a $5 million donation from Jan Cameron who founded the Kathmandu chain of outdoor stores. She says Australia is lagging behind other countries in improving intensive farming and she will keep supporting the cause. However a farmers' group says its disappointed it wasn't consulted and warns cash rewards will lead to unfounded accusations driven by money or revenge.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: A new animal welfare organisation will pay farm workers to dob in businesses where chickens or pigs are cruelly treated. The Animal Justice Fund is funded by a $5 million donation from Jan Cameron who founded the Kathmandu chain of outdoor stores.Meredith Griffiths reports from Bicheno on Tasmania's east coast.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Jan Cameron pocketed about $275 million when she sold the Kathmandu chain of outdoor stores and she swiftly started donating to various causes. In 2006 she paid $200 to remove 200 hens from a battery farm. But that's piecemeal compared to her latest venture. Ms Cameron has just announced that she'll spend $5 million over the next five years supporting a new Animal Justice Fund.
JAN CAMERON: This is more about public awareness and people understanding what is happening to the animals along the way to arriving on their plate. So I think if people do understand what is actually happening they will be able to make more informed choices when they're at the supermarket.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Are you vegetarian?
JAN CAMERON: No, no. It's probably more of a motivation actually being a carnivore because they're giving up their lives to feed us so I think we've got that duty of care.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: It's the largest single amount that Ms Cameron has donated to any cause and she says she'll spend whatever it takes to improve intensive farming practices. Ms Cameron says that Australia is trailing other countries when it comes to the treatment of animals.
JAN CAMERON: The European community about a decade ago banned the use of chicken cages. Also the UK has banned sow stalls.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The Animal Justice Fund will promote the cause of animal welfare through public awareness campaigns and strategic litigation. It will also pay up to $30,000 to industry workers for information that leads to successful prosecutions or significant animal welfare outcomes.Are you concerned that that kind of incentive is going to ruffle some feathers so to speak among the farming industry around the country?
JAN CAMERON: I think that anyone who is feeling motivated to report any instances of cruelty, extreme cruelty is not going to be hugely interested in the reward.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The new fund will be administered by Animals Australia. Its communication director Lyn White says the cash rewards are essential.
LYN WHITE: We've had industry workers ring us over the years wanting to report cruel treatment and not reporting it because they were fearful of losing their jobs. So really this is more about providing workers with some financial security.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Ms White is a former policewoman who's spent the past 10 years investigating animal cruelty in several countries. She says tip-offs from workers are the only hope for many animals because Australian police can't easily inspect farms and enterprises are exempt from many laws.
LYN WHITE: Codes of practice actually exempt industry operators from the same duty of care as is required of every other member of the community. Were they to keep a dog confined, barely able to move in a metal and concrete crate they would be prosecuted for cruelty. It's only legal exemptions, not laws that protect animals that allow pigs or hens to be kept in battery cages.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Farmers are appalled by the new fund. Jan Davis is the chief executive of the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association. She says that the cash rewards will lead to unfounded accusations driven by revenge or money.
JAN DAVIS: It's not getting the money that's the issue. It's the potential of getting the money I think. Whilst I hear what is being said about the successful prosecution anybody who's known anybody who's been accused of something that is as emotive and as damaging as these sorts of accusations will understand that even if an accusation doesn't proceed to a successful prosecution there is untold emotional and financial angst caused as a result.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Jan Davis says the association doesn't condone cruelty to animals whether they are farmed conventionally or intensively.
JAN DAVIS: There are already appropriate channels for any instances of animal cruelty to be dealt with. There are legal sanctions. There are codes of practice. There are channels within government and within industry bodies that can be taken to have those accusations dealt with already.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: She is concerned that Jan Cameron didn't speak to the association before setting up the fund. Animals Australia says that up to 500 million animals live in factory farms around the country.
2.
Research suggests possible link between animal cruelty and domestic violence
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1431501.htm]
PM - Friday, 5 August , 2005 Reporter: Nance Haxton
PM - Friday, 5 August , 2005 Reporter: Nance Haxton
MARK COLVIN: It's only anecdotal evidence so far, but some new work on violence against women suggests that one way to predict it might be to find out if the man in the relationship has been cruel to animals.The research, by South Australia's Women's Information Service, involved telephone interviews of women victims.Four out of every five of the victims the service talked to said a household pet had also been abused.There was also a suggestion that one of the reasons women don't leave their abusive partners is to protect vulnerable domestic animals.Nance Haxton reports from Adelaide
NANCE HAXTON: When Elle - not her real name - left her husband, she thought the abuse that had marked her marriage was over. But little did she know that her ex-husband would find another target close to home on which to take out his anger.ELLE: He came to the house to drop the children off from an access visit. Whilst he was there he pushed his way into the house and took the family dog. And it was a dog that the children had grown up with. He was quite an elderly dog, he took the dog back to the place where we had been living and kept the dog locked in a shed without any adequate food or water for two weeks.I had to go back and get the dog myself. The police did not want to be involved, and thought it was quite silly that I was complaining to them about him having taken the dog.The children were just devastated, and when the dog came back he was permanently ill and injured from the treatment that he'd received, and it wasn't about him wanting the dog, it was about him punishing us for leaving him.NANCE HAXTON: Family counsellor Trish has worked with families like Elle's. She says children who observe their parents being violent often become abusers themselves.
TRISH: Where kids are troubled because they are being abused, they often start abusing pets. And that's a really big early warning sign for issues with kids.
NANCE HAXTON: So it's not only the partner that you're seeing this cruelty, it's also coming out through the children?
ELLE: Yeah. I guess the children are modelling or are frustrated.
NANCE HAXTON: Elle's case, in fact, is far from unique.Studies by Psychology Professor Frank Ascione at Utah State University in the United States show that abuse of animals and humans often go hand-in-hand, and even leads to other crimes later in life if children start practicing on pets.Work now being done by South Australia's Women's Information Service supports overseas data.The Adelaide-based Information Service has been interviewing victims of abuse by phone hook-up. Service manager Wendy Thompson says while they are still collating the results, anecdotal evidence shows that many women do not leave their violent partners for fear of abandoning family pets that are also targeted.
WENDY THOMPSON: One woman wanted to leave the relationship, and find a safe place for her pet to go, but didn't have the networks that she felt were safe enough that the pet could go.And then one woman, her partner had killed her dog, and she just said look, there's nothing else that he can do to me, and that was the catalyst to make her sort of leave the relationship.
NANCE HAXTON: Is it even a factor keeping some women in abusive relationships?
WENDY THOMPSON: Oh, absolutely. It's the power or the threat of abuse or actual abuse over the pet. Yeah. And women don't also want to split the children from their pet as well.
NANCE HAXTON: Because of that link, the service is hoping to establish a fostering network for pets so victims of abuse feel confident to leave.Veterinarian Ian McBryde is working with the Women's Information Service in the hope of preventing animal abuse before it occurs.
IAN MCBRYDE: There are two or three cases that I've had which are not particularly pleasant. One a husband put a substance down the dog's ears to get at the wife, and the other one was actually a gay couple where one partner shot the other one's dog so to get at them when they had an argument.So there are lots of incidences, but they're the two that sort of spring to mind straight away.
NANCE HAXTON: It must be incredibly sad for you to deal with really the after effects of that domestic violence?
IAN MCBRYDE: Yes. That's not good. The other side of it of course is that we do in our practice do a lot of work with the RSPCA, which also includes neglect, and that's just as sad, when you get them coming in, they've being starved for many months.And some of that is actually the people refusing to let the partner spend money on them, and that type of thing, so it's the control situation again.
NANCE HAXTON: Elle says she only hopes that organisations can learn not to dismiss cruelty against family pets, but rather understand that violence against an animal is a sign of worse to come.
ELLE: If somebody is going to go to the extent of abusing an animal in that way, what does it say about their boundaries around any forms of abuse that they would be willing to perpetrate to get what it is that they want?
MARK COLVIN: A domestic violence victim, who's real name we've suppressed, the name that Nance Haxton was using was Elle.
© 2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
© 2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
3.
Questions over new live sheep export rules
Tom Nightingale reported this story on Monday, February 6, 2012
Tom Nightingale reported this story on Monday, February 6, 2012
New rules will apply in Australia's biggest live sheep export markets in three weeks. But there are questions over whether they'll stop sheep mistreatment and whether Australian farmers may lose customers.
MARK COLVIN: Live sheep exports are forecast to increase this year after a record low in 2011 and new rules are set to apply in Australia's biggest markets for live sheep exports in three weeks.But there's concern that the rules don't go far enough to stop sheep suffering in the Middle East.On the other hand, some farmers say the changes are too sudden and will only decrease Australian exports.Tom Nightingale reports.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: It's a long way from rural Western Australia to the Middle East but every year millions of Australian sheep take a boat journey of two to three weeks to countries like Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey.
PETER BOYLE: Well that's my bread and butter as far as sheep trading goes. If it wasn't there I wouldn't be doing it, it's as simple as that.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: That's Peter Boyle, a grazier from near York, east of Perth.Australia's sheep flock is at a historic low, causing high prices on the supermarket shelf. Today the industry body, Meat and Livestock Australia, predicted growth in live exports would keep domestic prices high this year.But Peter Boyle isn't so sure. He's worried new Australian regulations will mean some Middle Eastern processors will start buying sheep from other countries.
PETER BOYLE: There'll be a reduction in the number of countries bidding for the sheep here and so any reduction in competition is just what we don't want.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: But he does accept change is needed.
PETER BOYLE: Well we've seen the TV footage of you know, them being thrown in boots and legs tied with wire and dragged along and those sorts of things, and that's … that's not acceptable.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: The Government says the new regulations are the biggest ever changes to live export rules. From the first of March every sheep exported to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey will have to be traced and monitored, and meet international animal welfare standards.The changes came about thanks to pressure on the Government in the wake of last year's Four Corners program on cattle exports. The aim is to prevent sheep being mistreated. Lyn White is the head of the Animals Australia, the animal welfare group which exposed practices in Indonesian abattoirs.
LYN WHITE: Primarily the major concern always is, of course, that they're not stunning animals prior to the throat cut and that leads to all sorts of variables. So I mean our position is that the Government at the very least should have mandated that importing countries needed to stun our animals prior to slaughter.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: But exporters like Peter Boyle are worried the changes are coming too quickly for their Middle Eastern customers.
PETER BOYLE: What it's probably done is reduce the number of buyers. Some countries will be able to make the deadline and others won't.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Today the Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig left himself some wiggle room when asked if the changes would be delayed.
JOE LUDWIG: I'm not ruling anything in or out here in terms of extension. What I've said to industry and to the department is that we need to work cooperatively to secure the future of this industry for the longer-term.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Animals Australia's Lyn White says the entire live export trade is ethically wrong.
LYN WHITE: It's illogical to send animals halfway around the world only to be slaughtered. And times are changing, and if Australia actually took a stand and refused to supply live animals then they would change even sooner.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: But the chief executive of the Sheepmeat Council, Ron Cullen, isn't worried.
RON CULLEN: Both Ian McColl, president of the Sheepmeat Council, and myself went over with some degree of concern, but we're actually very surprised and given confidence that the importers are taking the new arrangements seriously.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: Ron Cullen returned today from a trip to the Middle East and Turkey and he's confident the rules will have the desired effect without disrupting trade.
RON CULLEN: They're going to have companies like, well I won't mention company names, but highly-regarded international audit companies going into those facilities and checking that what they say they were going to do, they are going to do.
TOM NIGHTINGALE: He says everyone in the meat industry is aware of the drastic changes to Australia's live cattle exports.
RON CULLEN: They're all aware of it. They've all seen that footage. And our visit, and particularly the Minister's visit, was able to cement the seriousness with which we take this new regime; that we're fair dinkum about putting it in place.
MARK COLVIN: The Sheepmeat Council of Australia's Ron Cullen ending that report from Tom Nightingale.
4.
New live export rules under fire
Stephen Dziedzic reported this story on Friday, October 21, 2011 18:22:00
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The Federal Government's new live export regulations have pleased the industry but infuriated animal welfare advocates. The guidelines don't mandate stunning, although they do include new requirements to trace animals and monitor their welfare. -->
MARK COLVIN: The Federal Government has unveiled new regulations for the live animal export trade. The Government's been agonising over live exports ever since the ABC's 4Corners program exposed cattle being abused in Indonesian slaughterhouses earlier this year. The program sparked an outcry and the Government briefly suspended all live exports to Indonesia.Since then it's resisted calls from animal welfare groups, the Greens and some Labor MPs, for the trade to be phased out entirely. It hopes the new regulations will neutralise public hostility towards live exports.Stephen Dziedzic reports from Parliament House.
Stephen Dziedzic reported this story on Friday, October 21, 2011 18:22:00
Listen to MP3 of this story ( minutes)
Alternate WMA version MP3 download
The Federal Government's new live export regulations have pleased the industry but infuriated animal welfare advocates. The guidelines don't mandate stunning, although they do include new requirements to trace animals and monitor their welfare. -->
MARK COLVIN: The Federal Government has unveiled new regulations for the live animal export trade. The Government's been agonising over live exports ever since the ABC's 4Corners program exposed cattle being abused in Indonesian slaughterhouses earlier this year. The program sparked an outcry and the Government briefly suspended all live exports to Indonesia.Since then it's resisted calls from animal welfare groups, the Greens and some Labor MPs, for the trade to be phased out entirely. It hopes the new regulations will neutralise public hostility towards live exports.Stephen Dziedzic reports from Parliament House.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The Agriculture Minister, Joe Ludwig, says the new regulations will improve animal welfare and help the industry meet public expectations.
JOE LUDWIG: There is no doubt that in the last couple of months the live animal export industry has been through a difficult time. It's about ensuring that the industry is put on a sustainable footing for the longer term.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The changes don't guarantee that animals will be stunned before they are killed, but Mr Ludwig maintains that that will be strongly encouraged.By the end of next year all livestock exporters will have to ensure animals sent overseas are handled and processed to internationally accepted welfare standards. That means they will be able to traced with independent verification and performance audits. The chief executive officer of the Sheepmeat Council of Australia, Ron Cullen, says the new rules will present challenges.
RON CULLEN: When most of us sell something and ownership changes hands, we can go away, we can forget about where that product's going to go. But in this instance industry now has to be able to ensure that all of those animals go through assured supply chains that we know when they come off the boat what truck they go on, what feedlot they go into, how they're transferred then to a processing works and which processing works they go to. And that those facilities all meet OIE (Office International des Epizooties; World Organisation for Animal Health) standards for animal welfare.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The Nationals leader, Warren Truss, agrees that it won't be easy for the industry to enforce the new standards.
WARREN TRUSS: The changes that are proposed will require a good deal of cooperation between industry, the Australian Government and, indeed, our international customers if they are to be delivered according to the very ambitious time schedule that the Government has laid down. To get 75 per cent of the trade fully traceable within four months is, I think, a very significant task.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: But the live export industry and the Coalition have broadly welcomed the changes. There's also relief the Government has again indicated that it is committed to the industry.Animal welfare advocates, on the other hand, are bitterly disappointed. And the president of the Australian Veterinary Association, Dr Barry Smyth, says his organisation would have liked the Government to go further.
BARRY SMYTH: Well it appears that there hasn't been a change to the current practice of short voyages not having veterinarians and longer voyages must have a veterinarian. But we think that there should be a veterinarian on all voyages no matter how long they are. This is to ensure that animals are examined properly of a daily basis; that any abnormalities are detected early and any appropriate treatments delivered promptly. And we think that this is important for animal welfare.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: And the live export industry will continue to be a political hot potato. The Independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, says he'll push ahead with a private members bill that would mandate stunning. And the Greens Senator, Lee Rhiannon, says the Government's failed to tackle animal cruelty
LEE RHIANNON: What we do know is that when an animal is stunned, that in most cases its cruelty diminishes enormously. I've been informed that cattle that have not been stunned can remain conscious for up to two minutes after their throat is cut. That's why we had to have pre-slaughter stunning made mandatory.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: The issue's been a divisive one for the Government. Some Labor MPs have been pushing for more stringent animal welfare standards, including mandatory stunning, or advocating for the trade to be wound up entirely. But they realise that today's announcement is about as far as the Government's willing to go.The Member for Makin, Tony Zappia, says the new monitoring process is crucial, and will improve animal welfare.
TONY ZAPPIA: It was clear from the debates and the discussions within caucus and outside of caucus, that it is complex. And therefore, trying to come up with simplistic solutions is simply not possible. Whilst stunning was not something that the Minister agreed to, in terms of making it, mandating stunning with respect to those animals that are exported, it's clear that the Minister will be encouraging stunning wherever possible. And it's a matter that I will personally be continuing to lobby on because I believe that, ultimately, stunning should be part of the export permit approval process.
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: But Senator Rhiannon says the Government hasn't neutralised the issue yet.
LEE RHIANNON: From what I'm hearing there is already considerable disquiet about the Government's announcement today. Many of the backbenchers in Labor and some in the Coalition do feel strongly about animal welfare issues and are certainly under pressure from their own constituents. What we do know is that there will be more cases of cruelty revealed in other overseas abattoirs. This is just a problem that has not been solved and the Government certainly has not taken it off its books.
MARK COLVIN: The Greens Senator, Lee Rhiannon, ending that report by Stephen Dziedzic.
SOME FURTHER LINKS
See the original 4 Corners program exposes gross cruelty in Indonesian abbatoirs
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