He says: "Their only response to this is to say that we fail to understand their country ways, are divorced from nature and are overly sentimental, and then to boldly state that they in fact care for animals more than we."

Yep. Mr Crook has got it in one. He also shows the reason why with this sentimal puffery.

He then says: "Since then we have declared war on many other animals. Imported animals which are legally killed in numerous ways include horses, pigs, cats, dogs, rabbits, buffalo, camels and toads. The chance that this slaughter will ever stop is minimal as the Australian population continues to believe it is necessary and that without it we would be overrun by these animals."

I see. Lets take 'cats' for instance.

I honestly believe in the importance of preserving native fauna.

Mr Crook doesn't, or is unwilling to make the necessary hard choices to do this. He'd rather hold on to some moral high ground that makes him feel better about the situation, while native fauna populations are destroyed.
It's precisely the kind of attitude that makes country folk scorn urban dwellers as "overly sentimental."

Perhaps next time a feral cat is chowing down on a bilby, Mr Crook can kindly ask it not to and pass the message along.

Look - I've no truck with animal cruelty and I'm well aware it's man's fault these pests exist and we've got to take some responsibility for that.

That responsibility, comes in the hard choice, of putting pest animals down humanely, be it the feral cats, wild dogs, or the other animals, which DO harm native wildlife and ecosystems.

The fact is, we would be overrurn. Yes, our animal control systems have many problems, but the 'sentimental' attitude Mr Crook displays isn't a constructive answer at all.

This article started out reasonably, but rapidly became silly - for the reasons pointed out by TRTL above.

Unfortunately, it ended up in Animal Liberation cloud cuckoo land, and is therefore unlikely to attract any rational support - which is probably a good thing.

Hi dickie, I am in complete agreement with you on the subject of cloven hooves and the effects enmasse this has on the land.

I know I keep pushing this barrow but one of our biggest problems is that of a sustainable population, an issue that is all but ignored by governments as in the too hard basket. While our food production increases so will our land degradation. Many farmers are now seeing the wisdom of diversifying and moving away from intense monoculture and including in the land mix, natural vegetation or the planting of trees.

Man has the ingenuity to come up with solutions but sometimes it takes nature to have the final say and get things moving. We should be come less reactive and more proactive.

Pelican
I would like to repond to some of your comments along with others regarding animal welfare.

You say if people feel strongly they can but organic.

They can buy free range.

First of all there is much misunderstandning not to mention problems with labelling regarding Organic.

As for buying free range try walking into Coles or Woolworths and asking for eg for free range pork.

If we are to help improve animal welfare we all have to at least appear to be reasonable.

You have to actually put the intensive farmer out of business by
producing a health cruelty free product to compete promote.

As the writer pointed out 3% of people are non meat eaters.

For the other 97% of the animals surley it would be better for us to actually start these free range farms ourselves to put the cruel intensive industry out of business.


You complain of cloven hooves and the effects enmasse this has on the land.
The difficulty I have with that is then we can hardly argue against feedlots can we or intensive farming of any type..

If your stock in not out inn the ranges you have no protection what so ever from bush fires or creeks clogging up the water holes with feeds.

Hi PALEIF

Did you read the part about a sustainable population which is essential to minimise our impact on our environment (including open grazing). While recognising the impact of open grazing I am not advocating feedlots or intensive farming and if you read my entire post you would see that what I am saying is that all parts of a solution cannot happen in isolation, with a sustainable population the impact of open grazing will be minimised – less people = less impact. We can’t just ignore the impact on the environment because it does not suit our argument.

I did not mean to suggest there would be a sudden change overnight or that there is quick fix and unless we encourage cruelty free practices through our purchasing power, where consumers can influence (to some extent) the demand on these products. It will take a period of time for the agricultural sector to catch up, but the number of organic producers has grown because of demand both domestically and for exports to countries like Japan where demand for organic and non-GM food for example are high.

You can’t force people to make the choices you make but only through education – my family eats two vegetarian meals per week and we have cut down on red meat and I know many have done the same in that whole - think globally act locally type philosophy. Unlike the UK, Australia does not have a large vegetarian population and it can be difficult to find goods that might fit with this lifestyle especially in smaller cities. I am not a vegetarian but where we live there are two organic butchers, access to legitimate free range eggs (if you don’t have your own happy free range chooks) and markets with organic produce stalls. Even Coles and Woolworths stock organic meat on occasions but it is not always a reliable supply and I agree with you that there are problems with labelling

Pelican,
Hello everybody

We have not come into this thread to argue that others should assist to reopen abattoirs here in Australia to phase out live exports.
You were correct when you say you can’t 'force' people to do anything and of course that was never our intention.

Our intention was always to give the 3% of the people who do not eat meat at least the opportunity to see what the alternative put up by the Muslim leaders of Australia working with RSPCA QLD and pale were.

P>
Even Coles and Woolworths stock organic
Pale
Try buying fee range pork at Christmas or any other time for hat matter. They will tell you they have never heard of it.

They actually ask you"whats that” manager after manager store by store.
Coles and Woolworths along with many others have a duty to provide cruelty free meat.

They sell petrol grog and have many business investments.

IMOP the whole Animal Welfare issue needs to be presented with the right people backing it and the right legal team to the UN.

That entire aside now is a perfect time considering the efforts going into aboriginal areas plight of crop farmers for opening of fast food veggie stores to compete with McDonalds etc.

It is in fact this we would like to discus with you. Given PETAs contacts and the Humane Society just to mention a few with high profile people it would be good if somebody put such as proposal to them as a united effort to improve what is over all a most concerning situation we find ourselves in.

I am ‘sure the crop farmers would welcome the direct business as the country is now even more to be flooded with cheap imports.
You might find the Regional and Rural report an interesting read.


If you wraped each veggie burger in a bad with a = thank you for have helped us to stop this and that= Slowly people would start to fel they were making a real difference.
Just an Thought.
I will try to post the report.