Poor cows

[chrislp]

Signed the link. After watching the 4Corners episode my heart has broken.

These creatures live for the purpose of us to eat & this is how they are thanked for it.

Its an odd way to look at it, but would you rather a 20year life followed by execution, or non-existence?

None if it ends like what is happening to the cows who were brutalised. Have you watched the full 4Corners episode? It wasn't just the death of these animals that are an issue it's the fact that some were tortured & grossly mistreated.

These creatures don't understand why pain is brought onto them. How can an unintelligent innocent animal ever understand the true depth of cruelty of a human being?

Human nature sucks

 

[Logique]

The answer is clear. We need to price protein. This will encourage the big protein emitters to change their behaviour, transitioning us to greener, more leguminous economy.

We could appoint an independent advisory body, the International Protein Counsultative Council (IPCC) to guide us through this process, which won't result in a tax at all.

Additionally, there would be a Protein Bonus Scheme, where there would be subsidies per kg, for home owners humanely to raise a cow in their yard, with a further bonus on it's resale to a humane abbattoir.

The longer we wait, the more it will cost. This has nothing to do with the political election cyle.

 

[Gringotts Bank]

I think we should be tolerant of the Indonesian Muslim culture and invite them to come and live in Australia. I for one would be proud to have anyone and everyone who wants to live here come and be my neighbor. You're all being racist. Australia is the great melting pot, free for all to ruin.

 

[NewOrder]

I think we should be tolerant of the Indonesian Muslim culture and invite them to come and live in Australia. I for one would be proud to have anyone and everyone who wants to live here come and be my neighbor. You're all being racist. Australia is the great melting pot, free for all to ruin.

I am struggling to see how this could even remotely be labelled a racist issue. You will need to clarify if you are joking and if not then how do you make a racist connection with the real issue which is the unecessay tourture of animals.

Well sorry to break it to y'all, but this is what meat is. Animals are bred purely for the purpose of eating, which often involves them living in miserable conditions, and ends with them getting viciously butchered.
And don't give me that 'it can be humane' stuff, that is just to make the butchers and the consumers feel better about the whole thing. The animal is still 'executed' for its meat in either way, it is only the time taken to perform the execution that changes.
But keep in mind two things - (1) few animals below the top of the food chain suffer 'humane' deaths. Some animals suffer deaths that are genuine horror stories (example being deaths involving paralysis and slow and drawn out consumption by a larvae), and (2) the 'feeding purpose' actually gave these animals life in the first place, they would not exist otherwise. Its an odd way to look at it, but would you rather a 20year life followed by execution, or non-existence?

The issue is the disgusting and torturous treament of the animals, we know that animals have to be killed to be eaten. In Australia (generally) animals are not

viciously butchered

People are shocked, rightly so, that the live animals exported are being brutalised.

If people choose to eat meat then they have an obligation to treat the animals in a respectful manner.

 

[pixel]

It may not be a racist issue, but certainly a cultural one.
Muslims - at least those in underprivileged countries - have been told for over a thousand years that's the way animals have to be slaughtered: Hearing the name of Allah when their throat is cut. It doesn't matter to them whether an animal has been raised in Australia, Anatolia, or Argentina. Our cattle and sheep are not in any way more or less "precious" than those raised anywhere else.
Westernised countries, with an increasingly urban population that has lost connection to most things rural, find the idea appalling. As soon as a TV team turns it into a sensational story, the collective urbane soul boils over.

As long as nobody spoke about unsavoury facts, showed what's going on inside abattoirs, talked about how chickens are mass-produced and mass-processed, etc, we all could enjoy our steaks, chicken breast, or lamb chops oblivious to the fact that all meat we eat comes from an animal that has been killed.

IMHO the present uproar says more about the alienation of our urban culture from the basics of food production, than it helps bridging the cultural gulf between Indonesian reality and Western humanitarian Utopism.

 

[LifeChoices]

Well sorry to break it to y'all, but this is what meat is. Animals are bred purely for the purpose of eating, which often involves them living in miserable conditions, and ends with them getting viciously butchered.

Well I'm sorry to break it to you, but some people actually care about the way animals are treated, and think that animals are much more than the commodity, you paint them to be.

Even some cattle producers are considering pulling out of live exports because of the extreme cruelty. And can you blame them? I wouldn't like to see my hard work and investments rubbished in the way that they were shown in the program.

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201106/s3233658.htm

As for it being a cultural problem, I'm not convinced about that:

Halal food requires the humane killing of livestock with proper Islamic prayers beforehand, and one quick stroke in the jugular area to guarantee the least amount of pain to the animal.

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201106/s3233519.htm

I think this quote makes a lot of sense.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated

- Mahatma Gandhi

 

[Julia]

I am struggling to see how this could even remotely be labelled a racist issue. You will need to clarify if you are joking and if not then how do you make a racist connection with the real issue which is the unecessay tourture of animals.



The issue is the disgusting and torturous treament of the animals, we know that animals have to be killed to be eaten. In Australia (generally) animals are not People are shocked, rightly so, that the live animals exported are being brutalised.

If people choose to eat meat then they have an obligation to treat the animals in a respectful manner.

Completely agree.

It may not be a racist issue, but certainly a cultural one.
Muslims - at least those in underprivileged countries - have been told for over a thousand years that's the way animals have to be slaughtered: Hearing the name of Allah when their throat is cut. It doesn't matter to them whether an animal has been raised in Australia, Anatolia, or Argentina. Our cattle and sheep are not in any way more or less "precious" than those raised anywhere else.

pixel, according to several accounts in the media in recent days, Muslim authorities have emphatically denied that the accounts of the torture of animals shown in the 4 Corners program have anything at all to do with Hal Al killing. They have unreservedly condemned the brutality.

I avoided seeing the program but have been unable to avoid hearing some of the details of the hideous cruelty meted out for absolutely no reason on these poor animals, i.e. breaking their limbs, gouging out their eyes.

Don't say this is a 'cultural issue'. It's an issue of utter brutality and cruelty by pathetic people who should never be allowed anywhere near any animal.

Westernised countries, with an increasingly urban population that has lost connection to most things rural, find the idea appalling. As soon as a TV team turns it into a sensational story, the collective urbane soul boils over.

Really? Are you seriously saying you think the massive outcry about what happens in these sickening abbattoirs is just Western over-sensitivity????

As long as nobody spoke about unsavoury facts, showed what's going on inside abattoirs, talked about how chickens are mass-produced and mass-processed, etc, we all could enjoy our steaks, chicken breast, or lamb chops oblivious to the fact that all meat we eat comes from an animal that has been killed.

Killing an animal humanely that has been bred for people to eat is one thing.
To gratuitously torture it is something else entirely.

I feel quite sick reading your opinion on this, pixel.

 

[satanoperca]

Just a question, how many people in Australia would eat meat if they had to kill, slaughter, gut and clean the animal themselves before consuming the meat.

While I can see the outrage about this practice in a foreign country, we all go to our local butchers or supermarket and purchase meat for consumption. A far distant cry from the reality of where the meat came from, it was once a living, breathing creature with emotions like the rest of us.

How many Brians have you consumed in your lifetime?

 

[NewOrder]

It may not be a racist issue, but certainly a cultural one.
Muslims - at least those in underprivileged countries - have been told for over a thousand years that's the way animals have to be slaughtered: Hearing the name of Allah when their throat is cut. It doesn't matter to them whether an animal has been raised in Australia, Anatolia, or Argentina. Our cattle and sheep are not in any way more or less "precious" than those raised anywhere else.
Westernised countries, with an increasingly urban population that has lost connection to most things rural, find the idea appalling. As soon as a TV team turns it into a sensational story, the collective urbane soul boils over.

As long as nobody spoke about unsavoury facts, showed what's going on inside abattoirs, talked about how chickens are mass-produced and mass-processed, etc, we all could enjoy our steaks, chicken breast, or lamb chops oblivious to the fact that all meat we eat comes from an animal that has been killed.

IMHO the present uproar says more about the alienation of our urban culture from the basics of food production, than it helps bridging the cultural gulf between Indonesian reality and Western humanitarian Utopism.

I think you underestimate many Westerners, people do understand that the meat they eat comes from dead animals, people are not stupid. There is a huge difference between our standards of slaughter and treatment of animals compared to what was show on the TV report in question. Did you see the report?

None of the reporting I have seen singles out the cultural aspects of the Indonesians, it is about the animals, poor poor animals that are treated in such a shocking way. We have every right to protest such treatment of animals, by our cultural standards this behaviour is not acceptable.

Ultimately I hope that this issue makes more people become Vegetarians or at least Flexitarians.

 

[boofhead]

It wouldn't bother me if I had to kill, skin, slice and dice the cow. As long as the stun part was done properly I don't see an issue.

I found it a bit hypocritical of Hal Al slaughter men wouldn't use the stun gun thingy because it wasn't how they interpreted how it should be done (it isn't alive how the want it) but Hal Al is supposed to be done with a single clean cut and not hacked.

 

[pixel]

It wouldn't bother me if I had to kill, skin, slice and dice the cow. As long as the stun part was done properly I don't see an issue.

I found it a bit hypocritical of Hal Al slaughter men wouldn't use the stun gun thingy because it wasn't how they interpreted how it should be done (it isn't alive how the want it) but Hal Al is supposed to be done with a single clean cut and not hacked.

So, you think a "single clean cut" doesn't hurt the animal? Doesn't leave it gasping for breath? Doesn't leave its brain alive for the last eternity of pain, while the blood slowly drains its life away?

That's what I cannot understand - how people can somehow condone one and condemn the other, as if a gradual difference would make it right.

And no, I didn't watch the broadcast either because I foresaw what would happen: An uproar that increases tension between two cultures, whose relations are stressed enough without additional aggravation. And I use the term "culture" very loosely in both cases.

But by all means, go on and protest. It may not benefit our beef producers, but some South Americans will gladly take up the slack. They've got plenty of rainforest to turn into pampas to herd more cattle. They won't be able to feed their own people any better, but that's OK: Their kids are all good Christians, put into a life of misery, but promised compensation in Paradise afterwards.

That is the surface I would like to scratch deeper. That is the issue that really makes me sick.

 

[nulla nulla]

Just a question, how many people in Australia would eat meat if they had to kill, slaughter, gut and clean the animal themselves before consuming the meat.

While I can see the outrage about this practice in a foreign country, we all go to our local butchers or supermarket and purchase meat for consumption. A far distant cry from the reality of where the meat came from, it was once a living, breathing creature with emotions like the rest of us.

How many Brians have you consumed in your lifetime?

i don't eat brains. Don't care for the taste. I don't mind jellied tongue occaisionly though. Goes well with a cold carrot salad.

 

[LifeChoices]

So, you think a "single clean cut" doesn't hurt the animal? Doesn't leave it gasping for breath? Doesn't leave its brain alive for the last eternity of pain, while the blood slowly drains its life away?

That's what I cannot understand - how people can somehow condone one and condemn the other, as if a gradual difference would make it right.

One particularly distressing part video was where the hapless cow was tethered and lying on it's side, after being tripped, repeatedly flogged and kicked by the slaughterer. The highly distressed beast followed him with his head and eyes and with a feeble bellow seemed to be appealing to the man "Why are you doing this to me?"

It was a totally unnecessary act of cruelty, which is sickening just to remember.

I find it difficult to understand how some people on this forum can actually condone this sort of cruelty.

 

[boofhead]

So, you think a "single clean cut" doesn't hurt the animal? Doesn't leave it gasping for breath? Doesn't leave its brain alive for the last eternity of pain, while the blood slowly drains its life away?

I'm not sure how I said I supported it. I said the people involved are hypocrits. Hal Al is supposed to be a single clean cut which none seem to do. So they are not proper Hal Al traditional slaughters so their rejection of stun guns doesn't make sense.

 

[pixel]

I find it difficult to understand how some people on this forum can actually condone this sort of cruelty.

I find it difficult to understand how some people construe a different opinion as condoning cruelty.

I don't condone cruelty, neither to animals nor to humans. I find the Hal Al method just as appalling: It's a barbarous relic from a far-away time and place when/where tribal life was governed by much harsher battles for survival. Urbanised society has advanced some. But vast regions of the world are still held back - mainly by religious leaders (of all "Religions of the Book") - and the peoples remain condemned to lives in squalor.

But I can't condone the splashing of blood and guts across TV screens either. By all means, send a copy to the Indonesian department that's in charge of abattoirs and to their clerics. If the imams are just as appalled as their colleagues are now that the stink is in the open, they will take swift action.

That won't lift TV ratings. But it won't deepen the rift between two neighbouring "cultures" either.

PS: boofhead, no offence intended; I didn't mean you personally; "you" was addressing the participants in this debate in general.

 

[Wysiwyg]

One particularly distressing part video was where the hapless cow was tethered and lying on it's side, after being tripped, repeatedly flogged and kicked by the slaughterer. The highly distressed beast followed him with his head and eyes and with a feeble bellow seemed to be appealing to the man "Why are you doing this to me?"

No doubt you recorded this event and have watched it over and over many times. Maybe you could organise a rally, send a letter to the Prime Minister or at least go over there to the abbatoir and deal with them a-hole Indo's directly.

 

[Gringotts Bank]

I actually think they enjoy the cruelty, in the same way they enjoy stoning women to death buried up to their necks in the ground. They use the perverted interpretations of their religion to explain it all away. It makes them feel powerful. They are all terrified of their God. Shows how powerful belief is.

And yes, my first post was in jest. I thought the comment "Australia... free for all to ruin" would have given it away.

 

[Greg]

There has to be a more humane way of addressing this issue. If we accept that some animals are bred for consumption, we can separate it from the "how they die in the wild is much more cruel" debate.
We also seem to be accpeting of the fact that if Australia fails to meet this demand, it will go to other countries like South America and we would lose out economically, not to mention lost jobs in the farming industry; so we need to find a way to fill this demand whilst ensuring that the animlas are slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
I have trouble processing how any religious or cultural factors can condone cruelty to animlas and if that's what the Halal method dictates, then that is very sad. Surely there's a way to prepare the meat suitably, free from these torturous acts?
Maybe we should only export our excellent Australian livestock to countries who can show that their slaughtering processes are humane; countries that are prepared to meet our requirements.
That way we can all be satisfied that Australia's cultural, economic and humanitarian prefrences are all being addressed.

 

[boofhead]

I prefer not exporting of live animals. If you want it done by our standards, standards that you may be able to influence by public opinion and/or science then it needs to be done here. As soon as it happens outside Australia's legal juristiction you lose control. The same can be applied to many other industries.

For the record I do not condone Hal Al or other methods of slaughter where the animal feels more than an instant of pain.

Maybe export protocols need a better review because industry has a conflict of interest. It wants the sales.

 

[NewOrder]

I find it difficult to understand how some people construe a different opinion as condoning cruelty.

I don't condone cruelty, neither to animals nor to humans. I find the Hal Al method just as appalling: It's a barbarous relic from a far-away time and place when/where tribal life was governed by much harsher battles for survival. Urbanised society has advanced some. But vast regions of the world are still held back - mainly by religious leaders (of all "Religions of the Book") - and the peoples remain condemned to lives in squalor.

But I can't condone the splashing of blood and guts across TV screens either. By all means, send a copy to the Indonesian department that's in charge of abattoirs and to their clerics. If the imams are just as appalled as their colleagues are now that the stink is in the open, they will take swift action.

That won't lift TV ratings. But it won't deepen the rift between two neighbouring "cultures" either.

PS: boofhead, no offence intended; I didn't mean you personally; "you" was addressing the participants in this debate in general.

I get the gist of your posts but the bolded point I don't agree with. It is the exposing of this torture and cruelty and the splashing of blood across the TV that helps to create change, that is a good thing surely?