Hello everyone. Still have lots to catch up on, especially regarding the info Wendy has sent me, however will do so.

Excellent suggestions from Celivia regarding types of eggs used in products and pestering supermarkets. PERSISTENCE PAYS.

Thanks to R0bert for your support. Am still in the info gathering stage .

Yabby, while I admit I haven't read Wendy's link yet so can't comment, I still fail to understand why a graduated change away from live export to local processing of animals should result in loss of business for farmers, please explain.

I notice we are still a christian free zone. Although Boaz graced Celivia's thread with his presence and excused himself by saying that he 'tried' on the animal abuse thread, but got disheartened by Pericles - I didn't realise that BD was so easy to discourage ;-) or maybe he just doesn't care enough.

Anyway, I'm not so interested in the OLO religious mafia as I am in reaching our religious organisations, but it is worth noting the lack of interest here.

I was thinking about the alternative that the many farmer's markets that have sprung up throughout Australia, offer instead of stupor-markets.

So I went forth and googled and found this:

http://www.tradewatchoz.org/localfood/

"Farmers’ markets are a real alternative to export markets which force Australian farmers to overproduce, overuse chemical inputs and which pay them lower and lower prices. At a farmers market, farmers from a local area sell their food direct to the public. Buying your food from a farmers’ market means that it is locally produced, and the money goes straight to the person who grew it. It guarantees farmers a decent income, encourages face-to-face interaction, creates communities and avoids all the destructive effects of the global trading system".

The website provides a list in all states and some great links.

Scout, it could be done, but would have to be done quite differently
to what people are suggesting. It certainly could not be done
in small, regional meatworks.

To understand the whole thing, you need to understand the costs
of putting an animal down a meat chain. Labour, compo,
super, holiday pay, payroll tax, other govt taxes, etc. etc.
In the end you convert it all to a cost per unit. Australian
costs are so high, that whichever model you look at, the only
solution is very large, very highly mechanised and highly capitalised works, to reduce your cost per unit. Any other model
lands up meaning that farmers, who are at the bottom of the
chain and get whats left, are shafted financially.

At this very moment, sheep going down WA meat chains, which are
relatively backward in most cases, are worth little more then
fertiliser per tonne. Only one plant in WA is highly efficient,
he is cleaning up. Interestingly Kim Chance was against that,
when he was in opposition and it was built.

Given that the live trade is the only trade paying farmers a reasonable price for their sheep, it feeds their families after all,
it is overwhelmingly supported and fair enough. Thats the reality
of it.

You are correct about farmers markets, they have a huge future for
niche producers etc. In WA its not the solution, as we don't have
the population base, so depend on exports

[Deleted for urging violence. Poster banned indefinitely.]

Farmers' markets are a great idea. Certainly not every country town could economically support one, but I'm sure that there could be many more in Western Australia than there currently are. I would imagine that any growers who sold their produce through such a market would automatically be pressured by the large supermarket chains with being blacklisted as suppliers to them, so some careful consideration would need to be given by such growers.

A growers' market near where I live [outer metropolitan Perth] is owned and managed by a local potato and vegie grower. A few months ago he had a lot of his own potatoes which, under some WA State govt regulations, couldn't "legally" be sold through the system. So officially he was supposed to dump them. Instead, he tried to retail them in his own shop. He was threatened by the state govt with legal action for doing this, so he gave them away. Apparently, this was also illegal. Ordinary West Australians would have to say, "What the hell's going on?"

He got plenty of publicity through the media and a great deal of public support, so maybe the threats of prosecution have been dropped. At least we're not currently hearing anything about it. But just recently, the local council had a go at him for allegedly selling items which were not covered by his license. But just about every retail outlet sells things which really have nothing to do with their main business, so again we have to say just what the hell is going on?

Or, in other words, who [behind the scenes] is putting pressure on whom?

I will just add that Yabby is basically telling it how it currently is in WA. If we want to change things, then we need to be pragmatic. And the place to start is by acknowledging realities, whether we agree with them or not.

Wow, that link is great, Scout, many thanks for that- really fantastic, I have already emailed the farmer in my area for some more info about their produce. I will tell everybody about it too!I'll ask the farmers if they have any flyers and I'll put them in peoples' mailboxes if they'd like that.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebyeeeee Vetman, I read your post before it got deleted and was disgusted by so much racism so I'm glad to see you go.

Yabby, yes that’s a problem that certain area’s in WA can’t get any workers, not only the meatworks but also other areas. A lot of people are attracted by mining (got the info from a documentary but don't know if it's the case all over regional WA), rather than working at say, Macdonanlds or other lower paid jobs.

Perhaps it can be gradually done, still, especially when other states are setting it off and will be successful. (I'm quite ignorant about the conditions in WA and farming generally though so perhaps I'm being too optimistic.)
But my gran always said: "When there is a will, there is a way." The solution is always there, but we need to find it, which is not always easy, but not a reason to stop trying.