Hi all
I'm with PALE this time around (but what on earth are halal vegetables?). Jim and Yabby, you work on the presumption that animals are born for no other reason than to be exploited by humans. I believe that they are here for their own reasons, and they have the right to be what they were born to be - free, and able to behave as they choose (see the Five Freedoms as the minimum standards). Having domesticated some animals (and done them no favours by doing so) humans are obligated not to be cruel to them.

It is unacceptable to conduct shocking experiments on them for purposes that usually bring unreliable results (think thalidomide and other drugs).

It is NEVER acceptable to kill an animal by "knocking it on the head with the back of an axe, and if indeed you make a practice of this you should be reported to the (useless) animal welfare authorities.

Possibly millions of farm animals do have enjoyable lives (until humans determine that they are to be slaughtered). By this time they may have been castrated and otherwise mutilated without pain relief (apologies, Yabby - I took on board what you said about Trisolfen - please correct my spelling). Countless more millions of farm animals live existences (mercifully short) in the most atrocious conditions, such as feedlots and intensive pig and hen and chicken farms. Other animals are brutalized in rodeos, circuses and zoos, wild animals being encaged for their whole lives so humans can look at them. Just think of the sheer massive scale of the cruelty.

You have to ask yourself who the "animals" are on this planet. On the whole, most probably would be better off never being born at all.

Nicky

Cuphandle it was me who made the reference to discounts and that it often happened on Sunday.
Not once,, not ever, in fact never, did I infer you are uninformed, why did you say that?
I truly would like to know how you found an insult that was not there.
It is my view of you ,honestly held, that you truly care about animal welfare.
In fact like many who do you care much more than most, but may I assure you you are not alone.
Most good people truly do, however not with the passion.
That meat is discounted like yabby I stock up, have always done so, and it often is the free range chicken, to go with my free range eggs.
I once shopped for 8 every week and those discounts are not a debating tool they have been the way meat is traded as it gets close to use by date for decades.
Have you an understanding of unions only having one in four workers as members?
Many would like to take part in unions but are frightened away by radical actions, it is true of most things in life.
The cruelty is not taking place because we eat meat, it is taking place, no defense but that is a separate issue.

Nicky, whatever species, we are all born for reasons of natural selection, as
proposed by Darwin. Some species adapt to their environments, other don’t.
Those that don’t, tend to go extinct. As to the meaning of why they or we were born,
no evidence yet of an Almighty who decided on that. As I doubt that you are
the Almighty herself, its not really your decision either :)

The species that have adapted to humans, have in fact thrived in numbers. Yes
millions are mistreated, but millions also lead relatively contented and happy
lives. Millions of humans suffer at times. Would they all be better off dead?

You go on about farm animals suffering. So lets take mulesing. When performed
by an accredited professional, it helps alleviate huge amounts of suffering and
benefits those animals for life. Yup, the use of Trisolfen, if made available to
farmers, would make it even better. I remind you that millions of males on
this planet have been circumcised with no anesthetics. Do they suffer life
long trauma that makes their lives unlivable? You girls better go and give those
poor guys a comforting hug :)

I think that you girls constantly overlook the fact that nature herself can be
extremely cruel and nobody cares. Death by starvation, due to overpopulation,
if herbivore species are not reduced by predators in nature, is common reality,
something on a scale you can hardly envisage. Death takes days, weeks, months,
that’s the reality of it. Animals overrun with ticks, fleas, lice, worms etc, are
also common in nature. Blind kangaroos have come hopping onto my farm,
due to eye diseases.

In contrast to that, my animals are fed when feed is short, those suffering are
put out of their misery, those with insects attacking them are treated. No
predators harass them all night, as in nature.

No wonder they thrive here, they get a far better deal then in nature! They
might also object to your opinion that they should never have had lives
at all

Hi Yabby
That depends on whether or not you subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution.

Mulesing is a cheap way out of protecting animals who have been genetically interfered with in order to get more wool (hence the extra folds of skin). Crutching twice a year has been shown to be effective but it costs, that's why mulesing happens. That's called animal husbandry, and it has to do with not having far more animals than you can properly care for (emphasis on properly).

I understand that mulesing leaves the animal more prone to skin cancer (if it is allowed to live long enough)

Had the sheep been left alone to evolve naturally flystrike wouldn't be a problem. What do you do when flies strike at folds of the skin in other parts of the body? "Mules" that too?

Do you think it's also okay to spay heifers using the techniques currently used without pain relief? That's an extraordinarily painful and invasive procedure. Is electro-immobilization okay as well? If any of your dogs is a female, was she spayed without anaesthetic?

As for males of the human variety being circumcised, that's a bit beyond my experience, I'm afraid. I know males who have and who have not and neither group appears to have been psychologically ruined for life. Having chosen early in life not to have children it was never a decision I was going to have to make, but I understand that it is practically banned these days (wonder how the kosher faith is going to deal with that?). Female circumcision, as practiced by the people to whose tender mercies you send your lambs, is entirely another matter, from what I've read.

I reckon you should get in business with PALE and its Muslim friends (as they have invited), and get slaughterhouses in WA back up, running and competing with each other again. But then what would we talk about?

Nicky

Nicky, you are of course free to deny evolution theory, despite its
overwhelming acceptance by science and its teaching at every major
university on the planet. You are not the first to have their
own little religious view of the world for your own good reasons.

You clearly have something in common with fundamentalist Xtians,
Muslims and a whole host of other religions! Never mind the facts,
lets just believe what we feel like believing. Ok thats your right,
just not your right to inflict your beliefs on the rest of us.

I have news for you about mulesing, as I in fact did an experiment
this year with some merino lambs. They were all shorn in Oct,
by December, despite the heat, they were flystruck once again.
The bottom line to this is that well meaning animal libber people,
who don't fully understand the issues, will land up causing much
suffering for millions of animals and not even be aware of it, through
pure ignorance. All very sad really IMHO.

Why should people want to spay heifers? Either they are breeders
and kept for breeding, or they are sold for meat, its one or the
other.

Circumcision without anesthetic is still common world wide. Where
is it banned and since when? All those males around you, clearly
still need your hugs and comfort :)

IMHO Gertrude lives in her own little world, I don't even try to
go there lol. Perhaps she missed today's Weekly Times, where
farmers are ploughing in veggies due to no markets. But hey,
it keeps her off the streets

Nicky, i can't imagine any farmer worth his/her salt would not be a devotee of the five freedoms. I assume these are the freedoms to which you refer: http://www.fawc.org.uk/freedoms.htm
Battery hens would be the closest to failure, but for the life of me I can't figure out why our backyard chooks have to sleep 3 cramped to a box, when there are actually more than one box available each, or why they are practically always shoulder to shoulder even outside the run. Granted you wouldn't want to be born a male chick, that would suck.

You just have to remember farming is a business where a happy animal is a productive one. Distressed animals, or those suffering malnourishment/dehydration just don't do well and won't make a decent price at market. It just doesn't make sense to have a production system contrary to their needs.

It is for these reasons feedlots have a defined amount of unused space in the pens for socialisation, and the ones with shade sails or equivalent would get a tick for each of those freedoms.
It's why sheep farmers have to hogtie the odd flyblown sheep to bring home for treatment. And why they mules the sheep so that it is only the odd one(that would come under prevention)

The 5 freedoms aren't onerous, it's the extraordinary expectations of animal libbers beyond them, that in reality can never be fully placated.

It's interesting you bring Darwin into the equation, survival of the fittest and all. In the end aren't these sheep that are subject to mulesing the most numerous and long lived of any farmed animal in Australia, their cousins being suited to meat production certainly don't live as long. In nature symbiotic relationships exist between species, this is merely another.

I wonder how much less pain there is in spaying compared to labour and birth for a young heifer. My wife never lets me forget the pain she went through. Never.