Livestock have been scapegoated for all agricultural greenhouse emissions. But, properly managed, their contribution is negligible for methane, and they can be key to tackling the climate crisis, write Elena Garcia and Alan Broughton.
animal rights
Melbourne Save Animals in Laboratories president Doug Leith spoke with Green Left Weekly’s Mary Merkenich about the real motivations behind animal testing.
In the racing industry the horses always lose, no matter it seems, even if they win.
More than 200 people from across the country attended the annual Animal Activist Forum, which was held this year at Melbourne Town Hall over October 19-20.
Eating meat is increasingly condemned as an unethical choice that murders sentient beings. But we need to understand that more animals die in plant food production than in abattoirs, writes Elena Garcia.
Humans experience the brutality of capitalism in wars, harsh working conditions and widespread poverty caused by a class-based society. Every minute a child dies a preventable death.
Capitalism has also been waging a war on animals.
Thousands of people rallied across Australia on June 9 in a National Day of Action against live animal exports.
There were demonstrations in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide calling on the federal government to ban the inhumane practice.
A recent survey has revealed that 73% of Australians now want to ban the practice. Two bills calling for live sheep exports to be phased out will be put before federal parliament in mid-August.
Animals Australia released a video on April 8 that showed sheep suffering horribly on board a ship bound for the Middle East.
The footage apparently even appalled the agriculture minister David Littleproud, who said he was horrified and shocked at what he saw. However, he said the Agriculture Department had investigated the case last year and, according to the minister, gave him a report that was nothing like the reality documented in the video.
There is ample evidence of systematic cruelty and regulatory failure with which to justify the New South Wales government's decision to ban greyhound racing. But this is a single industry in a single state. If we step back and look at the wider picture we see a telling lack of consistency in animal welfare policy and practice around the nation.
New South Wales has become the first state in Australia to ban greyhound racing, with an announcement on July 7 that it will be banned from July 1 next year.
Premier Mike Baird said the government was left with "no acceptable course of action except to close this industry down" after it considered an 800-page report by a special commission into the "widespread and systemic mistreatment of animals" in the industry.
In 2013 the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics (OCAE) was commissioned by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Cruelty Free International to produce an independent review of the ethics of using animals in research.
The BUAV is not a neutral bystander in the debate about animal testing, but it was prepared to commission independent academic research on this topic.
OCAE was founded in 2006 to pioneer ethical perspectives on animals. The centre is independent, and is not under the aegis, control or sanction of the University of Oxford.
Amid so much bad news about so many species of wildlife in danger of extinction, it is encouraging that there are finally some good stories about endangered wild animals.
There has been good news regarding rhinoceros conservation in India. The Indian state of Assam’s environmental ministry recently revealed that the population of Indian one-horned rhinoceros in the state had grown by 27% since 2006, hitting a high of 2544 animals. The Indian government has a goal of 3000 rhinos by 2020. There were only about 200 Indian rhinos in the early 1990s.
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