Mirko has written extensively elsewhere that torturing people is sometimes ok, which to my mind rather undermines his credibility arguing that inflicting pain on animals is wrong. Such is the logical destination of utilitarian ethics.

Rhian

Your "logic" clearly reveals that you support and condone the torture of innocent species (unable to protect themselves), by endeavouring to distract posters from the issue on animal cruelty.

It is your credibility on the line, not Mirko's!

If you want to debate other issues, I suggest you call up the appropriate thread.

Cornflower, you make good points. Really, to simply say, I'm not selling to you anymore, gives you zero say in how products/animals etc are treated in that country. If you are involved in trade with someone, you have some influence on the treatment of that product at its destination.

LL, the big push in the article was about Egypt, not Saudi Arabi, and was about treatment of animals sold to individuals, not to a mass supermarket. I would assume tht high-wealth individuals dont particularly like having to kill their own meat (really, its not that pleasant an experience), so you go back to looking at the poor, in a hot country, that cant always afford to have freezers (I assume that at least a reasonable proportion have refridgeration, but in exporting from Australia we normally talk about frozen meats).

You managed to completly ignore my point about the quality of the meat for eating after its been stressed. Good butchers know the value of keeping animals as calm as possible in all parts of the process chain (tip, find a good butcher and buy from him/her instead of a supermarket - you'll find the quality infinitely better, particularly if you find one that sources their own live meat).

Country Gal - Most people in Australia do not approve of the horrendous treatment of dogs killed for their meat in Korea, yet I have heard no one advocate that we export dogs from Australia (after all, more than 200,000 are killed every year as 'unwanted' pets) in order to influence the terrible way in which Korean dogs are treated. Most rational people would recognise that this would serve only to enforce terrible cruelty on Australian dogs as well as on Korean dogs.

By supplying sheep to Egypt, Australia remains complicit in the cruelty. What clearer way to say that we support their practices than to send our animals there? In addition, the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated by the Australian and Egyptian governments and implemented in November 2006 was found to be completely ignored during a recent investigation (in late December 2006). If any shipment was to be heavily monitored to ensure compliance with the MOU it would be the first shipment since the signing, yet investigators filming the treatment of sheep from this first shipment found not one single instance of compliance with the MOU. Simply, we cannot influence centuries-old practices whilst continuing to send the contradictory message - which accompanies every single animal that goes into Egypt - that we approve of this treatment.

One animal handling workshop in one town or city in Egypt will not change the way animals are treated. There are no laws to enforce animal welfare standards: so, for what reason would slaughtermen and animal handlers comply? To please Australians? They assume that we believe their treatment to be quite acceptable - if we didn't, surely we wouldn't send our animals there to endure such treatment? That would be hypocritical, no?

Sheep are widely on-sold to individual buyers in Egypt, and during a recent investigation were found to cost around 5 Egyptian Pounds per kilo (around $5US) - with an average sheep weighing 65 - 80 kilos and therefore costing upwards of $325US, we can be assured that these animals are not being bought by the poor community in Egypt

If the Middle East can claim a lack of development - specifically a lack of fridges - as reason for the inhumane treatment of animals, then wnat excuse do the Japanese forward for their inhumane treatment of dolphins?

http://www.glumbert.com/media/dolphin

LL

The logical extension of your argument is that we should not trade with any country that offends our standards and sensibilities. For instance, should we allow countries where there are human rights violations to export (say) handmade carpets to us - when in fact we do. Should we permit tourism with those countries or allow their students visas to study here?

Returning to live sheep exports, should our farmers pay for our collective conscience or is it more reasonable that we all directly share the cost of protest?

What about doing something more lasting and positive than taking our bat and ball and going home? For example, we could take advantage of our business relationship with the importer to feed in some educational stuff especially where it shoe-horns in with what veterinarians in that country are trying to do.

Cruelty to animals (and humans) is awful, but even if we did refuse to export live sheep that protest would not register at all with the people we want to persuade and there are other countries who would immediately supply sheep.