"Their “spin” on the Poultry Code appears to have overlooked the section conveniently titled “hatchery management” which allows approximately ten million “culled or surplus hatchlings” (predominately male chicks) to be disposed of by “carbon dioxide gassing or quick maceration” - as if they are trash, which technically they are in industry terms, since they are of no economic utility."
Yes it is still not possible to get eggs from male chickens. The same applies to milk from male cattle, and bobby calves suffer the same fate as male chickens. However I am sure that if Katrina and her fellow Animal Activists made the primary producers a decent offer they could buy as many unwanted chickens and calves as they desire. Win/win all-round.

Thank you for your article on welfare rights. I have been a vegan or vegetarian for a long time now, feeling ultimately sick about the way factory farm animals are treated. It is wonderful that the mainstream media is taking up this issue and it fills me with a sense of positivity that the suffering will one day end. I am constantly asked why I don't each meat or dairy and will only eat free range eggs (I have my own chickens), I always find this strange, for there are so many health, environmental, economic and animal welfare reasons not to do so, where as people only eat meat for entertainment - because they like it. I think ultimately if we eat animals and their products or not, we can all agree to minimise the suffering that occurs for them

"Katrina Sharman is the Corporate Counsel for Voiceless, a non-profit organisation for animals in Australia. Voiceless is an animal protection think-tank established by Brian Sherman AM and Ondine Sherman" The definition of "think tank" seems to be stretched to any organisation of more than 3 people operating a blog.

As expected voiceless is collection of "happy" vegans hugging farm animals with deep smiles that come from their connectedness to all life and "herbal" supplements.

If you have seen how wild dogs or any other predator kill their prey, you would realise that present day farming is far less cruel than nature. Should we remove all predators from the wild?

"becoming a vegetarian or vegan is the most direct way of stopping animal suffering" Are this shower of vegans going to stop until all meat and leather is banned

I wonder if animal liberationists might apply the same standards to human foetuses destroyed through abortion. While I support the right of women to choose, I very much doubt that the thousands of human foetuses aborted each year have anywhere near the quick, humane end afforded to animals by Australia's farmers and hunters.

Till talks about only eating eggs from her free range hens (not chickens, Till!), however she should be aware that most councils ban poultry from city areas through smell, flies and noise problems, so her 'solution' only works for the lucky few on acreage. If Till and her comrades are OK all is right in the world and beggar the need for cheap quality protein for everyone else.

It is absolute nonsense that Australian farmers are uncaring about their livestock, however it is true that farm earnings are poor and consumers buy imported foods, including meat products, produced in countries with far less regulation than Australia.

Speaking of which, what vegetarian doesn't buy cheap rice, spices, chocolate and other products produced in countries where humans including children work under slave conditions and human rights abuse is a daily reality? Yet animal liberationists and animal welfare have the gall to lecture and disrupt Australian farmers. What hypocrisy!

Kill or be killed . Thats the way of nature.
What goes on at the farm is a dam site more humane than what goes on in the wild.
You stick to your vegemite sangas, and don't worry about meat eating human beens.

We have people living the same, mass produced wage slaves housed in concrete cells. Human rights means having a TV. Maybe we get chickens a TV. Money runs the world and all life form is corralled for economic purpose. Even people on high wages find it does not buy freedom, just two Tv's.

In general, those who farm animals for food are only concerned about the welfare of the animals on a macro level - as it affects their bottom line. No one who has the slightest compassion for an individual hen as a sentient, feeling, inquisitive creature could leave it crammed in a battery cage, in a shed, standing on wire for its entire artificially shortened life.

And let's kill this ridiculous idea of humane killing of farmed animals. If an animal is suffering, humane killing may be an option if all else fails. But a (relatively) healthy farmed animal is a sentient being who wants to live. Given a choice, it will hang on to its life - it will run from danger or fight a predator. To take that life - even with minimal pain - is simply inhumane.

*And let's kill this ridiculous idea of humane killing of farmed animals. -To take that life - even with minimal pain - is simply inhumane.*

I have news for you MOS. Farm animals have sex, as humans do, because
they enjoy it and its natural for them. Now herbivores pop em out
fairly regularly. If humans did nothing, ate none, they would die
miserable and cruel deaths of starvation and overpopulation.

That is inhumane!

Come on, Yabby. Very few farmed animals have sex – even fewer get to do it because they choose to. Many, such as sows, are raped under the supervision of humans. Many are artificially inseminated – by humans. Farmed animals are born and bred to be used by humans. If humans reduce their demand, fewer animals will be produced in response. In a vegan world, very few animals currently farmed for food or fibre, will exist.

"Very few farmed animals have sex – even fewer get to do it because they choose to"
Ever been on a beef cattle station or on a sheep station MOS. A lot of consensual sex going on there (and I don't mean in the homestead).

May I suggest a simple solution, that is that those who are deeply oppossed to the current practices simply 'pay extra' for the 'free range' or the 'organic' eggs, which in turn will mean that for every one of you, that's one less egg needed per day which means one less chicken kept in a cage. This way, you can 'do your bit' and leave the rest of the population to go on with their business of buying 'affordable foods' for their familes.

Now on the other hand, if you simply want the rest of us to pay extra for our eggs, even though we are not overly concerned with the way they are laid,(they are food after all) then may I suggest that you take a collection and subsidise the cost of 'free range' and 'organic' eggs and we will gladly change.

Now get this right and we can visit other food production areas. But I think the 'eggs' will be the best one to start with.

I like animals, some are pets and some are food, that's the way it is.

I don't want cruelty of course, no one does.

I also want to be able to eat meat whenever I want, and good meat too.

I love animal products, hams, eggs, tongue, salami, steak - these are all wonderful things.

If we stopped eating meat, we would not be carnivores any more, that would not be good, because, we are carnivores.

If we stopped eating meat, we'd need a lot more of the earth's surface to grow food. That probably wouldn't work.

Animal groups like this are quaint little hobbies.

Dear Odo,

If we stopped eating meat we would need less of the earth's surface to grow food. Much of the food we grow is consumed by the animals we raise for meat. Approximately ten kilos of grain produces one kilo of beef. In much of the earth our grazing animals are kept alive by feed that requires land to grow.

I'm a beef producer, but selling our steers (the by product of lots of sex!) to feedlots creeps me out. Cattle standing knee deep in their own manure, shot full of antibiotics pumped into them to cope with the resulting infections, while they are stuffed full of grain that could be feeding us directly - yuk. Sadly, we don't have the pasture (thanks to drought/global warming) to 'finish' the steers on farm, so cannot dictate where they will end up.

I hate the fact that as soon as animals become commercial units, whether they are chooks, sheep, cattle, horses or dogs, all bets are off when it comes to their welfare. Our neighbour was prosecuted (unsuccessfully)by the RSPCA because her much loved horse was old and frail, but racehorses suffer from stomach ulcers knowingly caused by their feeding-for-speed regime, and no-one does anything because they are money making machines.

If cost of food is used to justify cruelty, we may as well reintroduce slavery, to bring costs down as low as possible. You'd think people were undernourished in Australia....

Dear Odo,

We are not carnivores. We are omnivores which mean we can extract nourishment from either vegetable matter or meat. Carnivores such as lions, tigers and bears have short digestive tracts and need meat to survive. Vegetable matter requires much more processing, and herbivores have long digestive tracts to do it.

Omnivores have shorter digestive tracts than herbivores but long enough to digest vegetable matter. Eggs are animal products, but one need not kill an animal to get an egg. Some vegetarians eat eggs and milk. Some don't. Humans can survive without any animal products. Carnivores can't.

*Come on, Yabby. Very few farmed animals have sex – even fewer get to do it because they choose to*

MOS, you are of course free to describe tens of millions of sheep
and cattle as "very few", but all it tells me is that you frankly
don't seem to have the foggiest, about what goes on in rural
Australia.

It seems to me that your mind is perhaps all mixed up between
factory farming and extensive agriculture. As Rehctub points out,
those concerned are free to buy free range pork, chicken lamb and
beef and hopefully cough up a bit extra, to allay their concerns.

http://dieoff.org/page80.htm

Meantime, the St Matthew Island experiment makes my point for me.
Leave herbivores to their own devices, nature takes its course,
populations build to enormous numbers of unstustainability and
crash, with much suffering and starvation, hardly a pretty picture.

I produce lambs and if we did not remove the excess numbers,
they would indeed starve to death too. Hardly humane.

So your philosophy seems to be a bit wonky. Time to rethink things
perhaps?

Dear David F - thanks you for the correction, I probably should have said, yes we're omnivores - but I prefer meat.

I love meat, BBQ, baked, grilled, raw, smoked, hung, braised - any way it comes really.

I think vegetables are quite boring, I eat them on occassions, as a filler, but don't pursue them

I went to a vegetarian restaurant once, and now I understand why they aren't prolific.

You are probably right about how much of the surface is used to raise meat, but I think it is well worth it.

This is an issue for people who raise my food, not for consumers, I could care less as long as our officials tell me it's OK, I'm happy with that - I'm not going to go all tragic about it, life's too short.

Top of the food chain, and loving it!

DavisF- "Humans can survive without any animal products."
I beg to differ DavidF.
Humans actually have developed teeth for tearing meat (our canines) and have evolved to eat and digest both meat and grain products. We can 'survive' without any meat products, but we may not be very well doing so unless supplements are taken to provide vitB12, other B vitamins, and iron to the body.

People can certainly live without meat, but by the time they have done so for many years, often suffer from anaemic diseases.

Human brains were able to develop into the thinking brains we have today because of the protein derived from meat that our ancestors consumed.

Rock and hard place, want your cake and eat it, I would suggest giving the farmer \ producer a brake. Our native animals need much more attention than the selective few. All of what you speak of, can and will exist(law), but the endangered can not wait! Nice thoughts animal welfare groups, but if you want to do some real good, I can give you a few phone numbers that would be appreciated, if you are so hard on saving life other than what is already regulated at a fair level.

Try farming with your stately views and see how hard it is.

NATIVE AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS NEEDS YOUR HELP MUCH MORE THAN THE EXSEPED NORMAL UNDERSTANDING.

Your arguments are futile compared to the on going natural disasters

I quite like the Understanding of the non-humans communicated in this essay and website.

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/observe_learn.php

Both on this site and via a book titled The Green Gorilla the author points out that a vegan diet is the optimum diet for human health and well-being. And that food should essentially ones medicine too.

His conclusion were based on both his own experiments and extensive research into both the traditional and modern literature (there has been much research into diet and its effect on health in recent decades.)

Also that historically (and still in now time) there has been massive cultural resistance to the very ideal of vegetarianism.

Everybody knows that vegetarians are sandal-wearing kooks dont they--and of course vegans are even more weird!

"The Pig Code sanctions the docking of piglets’ tails, while the Poultry Code provides for layer hens to be subjected to “appropriate beak trimming”. These procedures are both permitted to be carried out without pain relief."

If we want to do something, how about starting with making pain relief available to farmers at a reasonable price. A male calf that has just been castrated wants something stronger than a panadol. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing strong enough to numb this pain that can legally accessed by anyone except a vet.

There's just one problem with the holier-than-thou mantle adopted by vegans particularly - animals still die for their meal. Or do they really think vegetable farmers don't use pesticides (and yes, organic farmers use pesticides too - they may be "natural" but they're still pesticides. Actually, as one farmer friend of mine once said, "some of the stuff organic farmers use is worse than anything I spray on my crops")?

As for chickens, let's be honest here: I keep chooks of my own, and while I am adamantly opposed to outright cruelty to any animal, they're not much more than "food goes in one end, poo and eggs come out the other". Any animal that can have its head removed and still function perfectly well clearly isn't at the top of the tree.

Lawyers are more the problem than the solution. Courts are notoriously slow in making any decisons - and then appeals can go on forever. How does any of that help a pig in a sow stall or a chook in a cage?

The solution lies with consumers. Whatever one says about one's feeling for animals, if you aren't prepared to pay about $7 for a dozen eggs, $4 a litre for milk and at least double the current price for pig products (including the insulin they provide for humans), you're not serious about animal welfare. Funny how people bitch about the price of milk but not about the price of bottled water or Coca Cola.

Farm welfare accreditation is going gangbusters in the UK. Sales of the more expensive high welfare product continued to grow rapidly even during the global financial crisis (when sales of organic product fell for the first time). The accreditation schemes range from the Little Red Tractor, which has standards better than the average but still less than most would expect, through the RSPCA Freedom Food scheme and right up to the Rolls Royce of animal welfare standards accreditation - the Humane Society's standards.By having a hierarchy of standards, farmers can improve welfare gradually and still make a living and, importantly, consumers can gradually adjust to the prices they need to pay for good animal welfare. What a pity we aren't embracing a similar system here !

"The Pig Code sanctions the docking of piglets’ tails, while the Poultry Code provides for layer hens to be subjected to “appropriate beak trimming”. These procedures are both permitted to be carried out without pain relief."

Yes, much like the way a ‘circumcision’ is carried out, or at least was.

Tell me, and be honest, can you name one boy who can remember actually being circumcised (at birth).

You lot just like to make a mountain out of a molehill.

Now as for not requiring meat in ones diet.

I think until there is an overwhelming majority who don’t eat meat, the majority rules, but, as always, feel free to not eat meat but leave me out of it thanks.

It’s funny how the ‘minority groups’ often try to convince the ‘majority’ that they are wrong.

While the meat rich diets many of us eat is known not to be good for us, neither is a pure vegan one.

Children raised on vegan diets show slowed growth.

This negative effect was not seen in those who ate small portions of meat 2-3 times a week.

The reason meat tastes so good is because there is an inbuilt need for it, that we over indulge does not obviate this fact.

As Fred Negro once said, "meat means yum!"

I have an average suburban block (a little room for my marrows) and a few chickens.

I was discussing this issue this morning with my chief hen, Harriet (who, incidentally, considers herself a chicken as well as a hen) and we came to the conclusion that the moral issue at hand is not only about the way you meet your end - but also about the quality of each day that you live.

Candide: You put that so well.
Yabby: I read ur link with great interest. ty!

My spouse and I both have relatives who own farms. In emulating their good practices, we years ago set up a small hobby farm with pumpkin, cucumbers and tomatoes; raised goats for milk and meat; chickens and turkeys and 3 or 4 few pigs at a time. It wasn't any sort of money making enterprise nor was it meant to be.

We raised and treated all of the creatures with kindness and as much freedom as possible - well the pigs were confined but they had fenced outdoor spaces; soil and hay underfoot and clean shelter.

As someone pointed out, chickens are not very bright. I can say though that an ordinary chicken is Einstein compared to the average turkey. My favourite bird btw; they're so goofy and gentle.

Anyway all lived very pleasant lives but in due course were dispatched efficiently. Sometimes in our aim to give them the longest life possible we would leave them a little too long - the suffering of an oldish bird that's egg bound is pretty horrible. What is the outcome for a geriatric pig?

Chickens and turkeys might not be bright; but they still feel pain.
Pigs can be clever ( if surprisingly brutal) but they still feel pain.

I eat meat sparingly but I believe we need it and it's good tucker. I believe that if we were less greedy in our consumption that we could afford to pay higher prices as necessary to support good farming practice. Money is not the main issue anyway when we are speaking of ... spiritual health and the capacity to feel empathy and mercy.

The way that chickens are kept and battery eggs produced is cruelty at it's most obscene. The way that hundreds of little chicks are tumbled into grinding machines is a a nightmare.

I believe that we can and must (for our collective spiritual health) do much better.

Farming can be carried out with relative kindness and we should insist on that as a minimum.

I had resisted promoting the puerile but things are just too tempting.. like the smell of a tasty pork roast cooking away in the stove or the divine flavour of a rib-eye steaks, gently seared and served, medium-rare, with a delicate mushroom sauce….

I agree with Rehctub “You lot just like to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

but rehctub and I should remember

we, as humans, are commanded to ensure the moles "mountain" is a fashionably advanced place, full of amenities, interesting galleries and relaxing little nooks, designed to amuse moles in their search for the insects which they like to tear apart, mercilessly, with their sharp little mole teeth :-)

Pynchme “I believe that we can and must (for our collective spiritual health) do much better.”

If you want, for the sake of your “spiritual health”, to do “much better” I have no objection but I will take this opportunity to remind you

that your “ambit of authority viz-a-viz: spiritual health” extends to the end of your nose and no further.



My personal “spiritual health “ is perfectly OK, under my own auspices, thankyou

and is not something which you can claim any share of, authority over or representation for.


Now we have established that your concept of the “collective conscience” is just a cheap trick used to pretend you are more important than is true, we can get back to the more significant matter: that-

Chooks and critters are not humans, lacking the full range of cognitive skills to be even able to do a bad impersonation of a human and are thus inequal to and not worthy of the same “considerations to elevated enlightenment” as humans.

“Farming can be carried out with relative kindness and we should insist on that as a minimum.”

“kindness”, whilst I favour it as my personal style for interaction,is a quality rarely extended between the lower orders of critters, toward their fellow critters or toward humans.

So I would not be surprised if such “kindness” is reciprocated to with something less by farmyard animals.

Hi Col,

Col, I wish I knew how to inspire empathy where it doesn't exist. Certainly it's up to individuals to decide what they want to contribute and what they don't; but I believe that we are all connected and that what we do matters to the well-being of the whole.

You say, "“kindness”, whilst I favour it as my personal style for interaction"; why then is it preferable ? If it is preferable, why limit it? (It's not like we're going to use it all up).

Of course other creatures; at least the very least intelligent, would be unlikely to show kindness as we understand it. So why modify our potential for compassion to comply with a lower level? That's illogical.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein

Pynchme another attempt by you to minimise the significance of the individual (the natural "building block" and innovative component of humanity)

“Col, I wish I knew how to inspire empathy where it doesn't exist.”

“Empathy” fine, I have loads of it.

However, Empathy is useless when it is used as an excuse to overindulge in paternalistic sentimentality.

“what we do matters to the well-being of the whole.”

Ah like the “common good”… and the “betterment of all mankind” and other weasel words, most commonly used in to deny individual aspirations or liberty.

“If it is preferable, why limit it? (It's not like we're going to use it all up).”

Because if one is being confronted by a rabid or violently inclined canine, one is disinclined to rely on kindly persuasive pleadings as first line in defence, instead favouring a skull crushing axe handle.

“So why modify our potential for compassion to comply with a lower level?”

I have never denied ones right to exercise compassion. I have, as the illustration above reflects, determined we need to find a balance between “compassion” and "self-defense”

Quoting Albert Einstein

As we know, Albert was an exceptional individual who, through his self-awareness understood he was a part of an huge interactive set of independent and interactive variables but Albert would, whilst he was a part within a massive universe, never denied he was also an individual, possessing and using unique individual qualities and abilities.

Unique, individual qualities and abilities which you seem to have completely forgotten or maybe just conveniently ignored, are what make people “people”.

We are not the uniform robots depicted in movies like Metropolis or hypothesised by socialist/communist philosophers.

People are uniquely individual.

We will always serve “the whole” best when we are free to aspire to the maximum of our individual potential (like Einstien);

rather than either

spending our life “navel-gazing” and postulating our individual levels of “empathy” within a holistic cosmos

or

the slaves of a repressive, uniform, socialistic despotism (by any name)

It's always amazing that an article like this, which is about
the hypocrisy and lies of the animal industries provokes so much
discussion ... not about whether they are hypocritical liars,
but about whether we should eat meat.

However, I suspect an article about the hypocrisy
of the media's claims of unbiased reporting wouldn't provoke any
discussion of whether we should habitually consume their products.

No matter. Katrina wins her claims of hypocrisy with ease.

The other thing about the comments is that
people seem confused about what
the term omnivore means. Omnivores can survive on a
huge range of diets. In our case we can live almost
entirely on fruit (like our fructivore ancestors),
and/or vegetables and
almost entirely on meat and almost every conceivable mixture.
The word "almost" is important in
both cases. If the meat is too lean, then we may well die of
what is called "rabbit starvation" or "protein poisoning". If
we don't get enough dirt (specifically the soil bacteria who
make B12) with the fruit then we can die that way also.
Being omnivorous doesn't mean we need
a balanced diet ... we don't. It's
precisely our low nutritional requirements (we need far less
iron or protein than a chicken, for example), that has made
us a plague on the planet. We can occupy any area on
the planet and survive on local produce. The discovery
of B12 and its synthesis has freed us from any need to eat
soil bacteria or animal products and the stuff made in the
lab is better than the real thing ... it is more easily
absorbed. The US Institutes of Medicine recommends ALL adults
over 50 eat B12 supplements or fortified food for precisely
this reason. Similarly, the manufacture of antibiotics frees
us from all kinds of unpleasant ways of dealing with
infections ... typically by dying. Sometime the natural
way of doing something is dismal.

Col: <"I have never denied ones right to exercise compassion. I have, as the illustration above reflects, determined we need to find a balance between “compassion” and "self-defense”>

Why would anyone need to defend themselves against a battery chicken?

I am not even saying people shouldn't eat eggs or meat; but there is no justification for not treating creatures as kindly as possible.

Btw I don't think that wouldn't be "paternalism" - I'm a F so it would probably be maternalism.

Btw I do believe in the common good and that whatever we do makes a difference - it reverberates.

Pynchme, It's all about costs.

Raising chickens for egg production is like any other business, the less you are able to house in a shed, the higher the 'input costs' of egg production and, the higher the prices they have to charge for eggs.

While most decent people don't like the way that chickens are housed, they also battle every day simply to place three decent meals on the table and, like it or not, people generally vote with their wallet when it comes to food.

Now on the other hand, if you could find a way to 'mass produce' eggs, which doesn't involve craming chickens in a cage and, keep the prices the same, then I dare say you would find little resistance from the masses.

However, until such time may I suggest those who are oppossed to it, simply buy 'free range' eggs and pay the extra.

At least this way you will be taking a little presure off the current system and, you can continue to feel all warm and fuzzy knowing no chichen lived in hell for your benefit.