(2) Unlike yourself, Yabby (and the other stakeholders peddling in live exports,) I have no pecuniary interest in this issue

There you go Pale. I have placed brackets in the above sentence, though that statement was poorly worded. The pecuniary interest you hold, I believe, is in the establishment of your Halal abattoirs.

Hilarious. Any minute now Nurse Ratchett will be along with some medication.

It is in Labors Manifesto or Platform to ban the exportation of live animals such as sheep and cattle to be slaughterd elsewhere. We have to make sure that the right wing Labor leadership abides to party policy.

Well there we have it folks! Dickie preaching her little
line in the sand of morality or religion, with much the
same intolerance as Osama or the Catholic Church.

Ignorance is bliss for all three!

Dickie, just remember to switch off those David Attenborough
documentaries, reality goes away when you push the off switch
on your tv :)

Please, could those who want to sue people do it elsewhere? This was not the objective here. Like Dickie, I'm not prepared to debate profit margins - some things are simply indefensible. PALE, I'm not sure where you're coming from now - what Halal abattoirs? Where?

For the benefit of those quoting figures - 2.5 million animals are kniown to have died on live export SHIPS. Causes of death are starvation, salmonellosis, pneumonia and trauma. Euthanasia at sea? Yabby, you need to get a grip. Euthanasia at sea is a) being thrown over the side for the sharks, possibly alive b) thrown down a macerator, possibly alive and c) throat cut by some third world crew member with varying degrees of brutality. A floating feedlot supervised by a qualified vet? ONE vet, for 100,000 animals, as some of the larger ships take? BTW, if you lose that many sheep in paddocks you mustn't be very good at what you do.

Personally, I think that there is a large section of the farming community who probably should be in gaol; those whom you describe, in particular, and a special place in hell is reserved for the live export agents who, Yabby, rip you off blind, along with the importers in these countries who, it seems, are on-selling the animals to other countries (those who are still alive, that is - news reports at www.liveexportshame.com will tell you that). You are in fact getting peanuts of what you claim to be riches beyond your dreams.

The Federal government has subsidised this appalling cruelty in taxpayers' dollars in the tens of millions, according to the AMIEU - and the figure is 40,000 lost jobs and at least 150 meat processing plants closed down. Not to mention down stream processing - the Arabs all get that now.

Now that we understand who is ripping off whom, we are ... back to the moral argument. And Yabby, please do not include me in any meat producing activities in which you may be involved. I get paid far more than $20 an hour or $40K, too.

Hi all
Things have livened up since I was last here. We have the charismatic Yabby (look it up, mate) back, and welcome to Bronco Lane. If it were only that simple, Bronco Lane. Dickie, pay no attention to Yabby. To Yabby, and to a lesser degree to PALE, other animal welfare/advocacy groups do not get involved in "improving welfare standards in importing countries" because they quite rightly feel that this is a brutal trade in animal suffering and misery and they want it stopped. Nor is it up to them to come up with alternatives. Other businesses have to survive in their environments within certain ethical parameters and government policy, why not farmers? What will they all do when government policy DOES change? Blow their brains out, or find something to do that they need not be so ashamed of.

Dickie, your argument is along Peter Singer's lines of speciesism, and what Penny said is absolutely right. Yabby, do you hog tie your dog? Do you cut its throat while it conscious to kill it? Why is it then okay to do it to a sheep? The fact is, you people are not in prison because you haven't been caught because the RSPCA is good at cats and dogs and hopeless at farm animals. Cruelty is cruelty and it does not discriminate between species.

Penny, you are also correct in the figures you have quoted here.

Penny,I think what PALE (correct me if I'm wrong) is arguing for is that the animals be slaughtered in Australia through some sort of partnership deal with Muslims - I think that was the involvement to which Dickie alluded. To what extent there is a pecuniary interest I don't know, and I don't know how PALE is funded or what its relationship is with its slaughterhouse operations if indeed those operations exist yet. That would be the problem animal advocates have with it, I suspect.

Cheers for now
Nicky