TRTL

"I also dislike that when these attacks are made on farmers, very rarely are efforts made to state it's only a minority who engage in cruelty."

I also dislike it when you constantly accuse others of attacking all farmers. I happen to have the utmost respect for free range farmers. These are farmers who have regard for the animals under their stewardship and have not succumbed to reaping obscene profits from intensive farming.

Unfortunately, TRTL, you refuse to acknowledge the facts. These are the facts I have placed on this thread and other threads which you have also refused to acknowledge.

Those facts relate to the surgical procedures I have advised on, which are standard procedures in Australia and are institutionalised and legal.

I reiterate, debeaking, castrations, ovarectomies, branding, tail docking, teeth filing, mulesing etc, without anaesthesia or analgesics are legal.

These facts can be confirmed by accessing any relevant government agency website and I object to your insidious undertones that they are a figment of my imagination.

Therefore, your claim that "very rarely are efforts made to state it's only a minority who engage in cruelty" is fallacious.

All intensively farmed livestock owners or their "skilled operators" perform these procedures (without the aid of a veterinarian) so please make an effort to explain how "it's only a minority who engage in cruelty."

And I see that several livestock barons hit the rich list for 2008. Business is flourishing for these people but the hard-working grain growers, endeavouring to "get blood from a stone," failed to get a mention.

Nicky: "Let's agree to disagree about meat eating, morality, and who has the best horror stories, and see what ideas can be found to address the real cruelty issues to farm animals."

Fair enough, Nicky. I've asked those who oppose intensive farming to make some suggestions toward that end and not much has come out of it. Remember that whatever suggestions are made must be economically competitive and they must not reduce the total amount of meat available to the Australian public. How do we maintain the price and availability without the intensive farming methods used and how do we maintain healthy livestock without the stock management practises that are in place for that farming? Let's not forget that no farmer is choosing to do things to animals for the fun of it, but that any of the practises you mention are a response to a known problem that occurs if steps are not taken to prevent it. If you want to change the practise, you must come up with an equally cost-effective way to address the underlying problem that it is a response to.

I'd like to think you and others can do just that, but it's not an easy task, simply because generations of farmers, acting with enlightened self-interest and the support of such organisations as CSIRO, have come up with methods that they consider best practise. Changing best practise means either being political and getting laws changed or coming up with something better. That's the challenge.

I should have known better than to engage with Dickie, given that he is an extremist, with no ability to take on board anything said by anyone who slightly disagrees with him.

Ok, a lion might have been a poor choice given its a neck-breaker, but I bet Dickie still would object to animals being slaughtered for human consumption by having their throat slit and neck broken, even though its the same as it would happen in nature. How about wild dogs attacking sheep (or native Australian animals) - they will rip out entrails and leave the poor animal to die slowly. What about blowflies, from which maggots will eat an animal from the inside out?

Do you also object to children being given vaccinations? They are painful, sometimes extremely so for days afterwards, and carry a risk of reaction and death. We've eradicated most of the really nasty childhood diseases now, so perhaps we should stop vaccinating our kids because of the pain and risk. I really cant see the difference between this and preventative precautions taken with livestock. Go back to the profit motive if you like. Farmers (apart from a few blithering idiots) are not going to stress their stock to the point where production falters. With wool production (seeing as mulesing is a hot topic), if you stress a sheep, it will die. It cannot then be sold for profit, or have its wool harvested. If you stress a wool sheep lightly its fleece will be affected with a tender spot, reducing the value of the clip significantly. Stress it while it is young and follicles still developing and you will have sub-standard production for its life.

Animals cannot survive the pollution and confinement of intensive farming without routine doses of antibiotics and other drugs. These animals are in a constant state of dying so it has become an accepted practice to just accept the costs of antibiotics and other medications as routine production expenses, rather than prevent disease in the first place. Of course it is impossible to prevent disease under intensive conditions as it is also impossible for the animals to reach their full potential without the interventions of hormones and growth promotants. How can an animal that cannot exercise naturally possibly build muscle?

Why do we confine them? Its just so much easier isnt it. It enables them to churn out carcasses as if it were an assembly line. The really stupid part about it, as is the case in the pork industry, they then go and market themselves as the 'cheap meat'. Sort of defeats the purpose if their reasons for that production system are to make them economically competitive.

I believe intensive farming is more about making life easier for the producer, note I say producer because what they do is not farming.

Factory farms or family farms? Its not even all about animal welfare. We eat this stuff.

Nicky - Burke seems loath to even touch the whole truth in labelling issue and prefers to leave it up to 'industry'.

Being aware of some the moves by industry currently under way, I am not filled with confidence that we will see any more truth in labelling at all. In fact, the opposite could happen. Industry have been given a licence to market themselves however they see fit. Lets see how they choose to define free range.

I doubt that HSI is about to give up on this issue either. http://www.humanechoice.com.au/news.html

Greetings to you too dickie. The waters seem a little calmer these days and the risk of ambush seemed a lot lower for some reason :)

PF, I'd much prefer to see family farms. Apart from a few morons (and these can be found in any sector of society) family farms are mostly tipped towards sustainability in the long-term. Treatment of animals tends to rank perhaps a little lower than general treatment of the environment, but still forms a part of overall custodianship and long-term profits.

My comments before about intensive farming still stand though. The main attraction for farmers is a much greater level of control of their operation, consistency of output and quality (though I would take a grass-fed steak over a feedlot steak any day of the week - much tastier). Given that so many factors in farming are traditionally uncontrollable, having a greater degree of control must be very attractive, particularly with constant public whining about farmers needing public assistance when adversely affected by factors outside their control. Its a hard industry to be in - people are dependant on you for their survival, but want to bitch and bicker about every move you make, without being prepared to make any changes or sacrifices themselves.