Tag: Australia

Australian Model Sarah Jane Does PETA Anti-KFC Ad

Australian model Sarah Jane is appearing in an ad on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals urging consumers to boycott KFC.

The ad is targeted at Hong Kong, where PETA plans to distribute 20,000 flyers featuring the ad.

Jane told newspapers,

I hope that, no matter how you feel about eating meat, you will agree with me that animals raised for food should not be grossly mistreated. Chickens raised for meat are commonly crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy warehouses with no access to fresh air or sunlight. . . .I will feel satisfied if this campaign can shock, confront and awaken people globally and make known the suffering of chickens at the hands of KFC. I urge everyone not to set foot in another KFC restaurants until the company ends its chickens.

Interesting how PETA is so effective at attracting people whose main talent seems to be their ability to disrobe.

Source:

Animal welfare group enlists star for anti-KFC campaign. Agence-France Presse, August 3, 2005.

Sarah Jane out of her shell. Herald Sun, August 4, 2005.

Aussie chick to nearly reveal all in KFC protest. Dennis Chong, The Standard (China), August 4, 2005.

Most downloaded woman urges KFC to clean up its low-down, dirty ways. Press release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Undated.

Animal Rights Group Protests at Sausage Sale

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned the controversy over a pig and cow raised at Daylesfor Secondary College in Australia to give students there exposure to traditional farming methods — i.e., the animals were raised to be slaughtered for sausage.

Members of Ballarat Organization for Animal Rights showed up at the Glenlyon Food and Wine Fayre in late July to protest the sale of the sausages made from the animals.

BOAR spokesman Trevor Wilson told The Courier,

They [the students] have all suffered. . . . We would hope to get the message through so that it never happens again. . . .When you desensitize people [to violence], who knows what they can turn into.

Wilson added that his groups thinks Australia’s Education Minister should ban schools from raising animals for slaughter,

We feel that Lynne Kosky should make a requirement that animals are not used this way in education.

Liam Thoryncraft, who helped organize the school’s participation in the young gourmet contest at the food fair, said that the sausages sold well. He added that if the project is repeated there would be some changes,

We understand [the controversy raised by keeping the animals on school grounds] and we did make the mistake of putting the pig in the school grounds for people to get attached to it. We would do it all again, but would change some things.

Source:

Protest at sale of sausages. The Courier (Australia), July 31, 2005.

Researchers Develop Test Tube Plan to Save Grey Nurse Shark

Reuters recently reported on a long-term effort by Australian scientists to use artificial insemination and growing fetuses in test tubes to save the endangered grey nurse shark.

The grey nurse shark is apparently a docile marine creature that used to be plentiful off the eastern coast of Australia. Today, however, there are only an estimated 500 grey nurse sharks left there.

According to Reuters, the grey nurse shark was inaccurately blamed for a number of shark attacks and ruthlessly hunted until the 1960s. Unfortunately the species has never recovered.

Part of the problem is the species’ reproductive system which has evolved to include intrauterine cannibalism. According to Reuters,

. . . grey nurse embryo pups develop a jaw and razor-sharp teeth very early in their development and cannibalize siblings in the womb.

The sharks have two wombs in which a dominant pup will consume its siblings, leaving only two surviving pups every two years when the shark breeds.

In order to increase the odds of the grey nurse shark surviving off the coast of Australia, researchers there are working on methods to artificially inseminate the grey nurse sharks in captivity. In July the Melbourne Aquarium began an experiment artificially inseminating a seven-gill shark. if that experiment is successful, the same technique could be applied to the grey nurse shark.

But that doesn’t solve the problem of the intrauterine cannibalism. According to Reuters, another group of Australian researchers has come up with an even more radical plan — inseminate and grow grey nurse shark embryos in test tubes.

Reuters quoted New South Whales state fisheries biologist Nick Otway as saying,

Once the embryos have developed to a certain size (10 cm) they actually have a fully functional set of jaws and teeth, then they swim around and cannibalize their siblings. We have to bypass this cannibalistic phase. Once the animal gets through that stage it fends for itself. It just swims around the womb eating, we just have to feed it.

All these techniques pioneered with animal research being turned around and used to help save endangered species.

Source:

Scientists to breed test-tube sharks. Reuters, July 28, 2005.

Australian RSPCA Angered by Mock Killing of Pig on Reality Show

The Australian Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals publicly objected in July to the mock killing of a pig in which no pig was actually shown.

During an airing of the Australian reality TV show “Australian Idol,” contestant Shaye Biancha demonstrates how she would kill a pig by pretending to stab judge Kyle Sandilands.

This was enough to outrage the RSPCA. According to Australian Associated Press, the RSPCA’s Michael Beatty said,

Let’s make this easy for you Australian idol. Animal cruelty is not hilarious. It is not funny. The links between animal cruelty and other forms of abuse are quite clear and very frightening. . . . In one episode of Australian Idol you’ve broadcast a message that not only condones animal cruelty, but supports it.

Australian Idol responded to these charges by saying that what was depicted was not animal cruelty at all. A spokesperson for the show told the Australian Associated Press,

Shaye Biancha’s hobby of bush hunting is considered a legitimate activity in Far North Queensland, where feral pigs are declared pests under Queensland legislation. Shaye’s mock re-enactment of hunting a pig with Kyle Sandilands was not done in a serious manner.

Source:

Idol promoting animal cruelty: RSPCA. Australian Associated Press, July 28, 2005.

Animal Liberation Victoria Claims Activists Assaulted

On July 28, Animal Liberation Victoria released an odd press release claiming that members of its group had been assaulted while attempting to steal animals from an egg farm.

According to the press release, presented here in its entirety,

Meredith, Victoria – Three Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV) activists
today conducted a daring daylight raid at Happy Hens Egg World, in
Meredith. ALV have conducted 20 rescues at the property, each time
exposing horrific cruelty to animals. After about ten rescues farm
management began increasing security, with electrified fences and
trained guard dogs patrolling the property, so that the factory farm is
now a Dachau style concentration camp for the 220,000 battery hens
caged there. The electrified fence gate is open during daylight hours
for worker access.

Prior to being assaulted, the three ALV investigators observed battery
hens suffering severe feather loss crammed into rusty old cages. A
number of birds were also observed in the manure pits, without access
to food or water. After only five minutes of documenting these
conditions, the women were set upon by seven farm employees who started
physically assaulting them and pushing them along the length of the
dirty shed covered in dust and cobwebs.

The women asked the men to please let them go as they were happy to
leave the sheds. The violence escalated when one young man
approached rescue team member Debra Tranter from behind and put his
arms around her, grabbing and squeezing her breasts. Ms
Tranter screamed and fell to the ground at which time she was grabbed
by both her ankles and dragged along the filthy floor.

Police were called and took photographs of the injuries sustained by
the rescue team members, and took their statements. The rescue
team members are pressing for charges of sexual and physical assault,
in addition to charges of cruelty to animals, to be laid against the
farm and its employees.

Debra Tranter, a trained nurse and supervisor said outside the shed:
“For eleven years I’ve been coming to these sheds to document the
suffering of these birds. I’ve never been treated so violently. I kept
pleading to these angry males to please let me go as I was quite happy
to leave the sheds. I knew the hens were overcrowded and tormented in
their tiny cages. But the aggressive treatment of me today by those in
charge of these captive hens has only made me more determined to help
them.”

Patty Mark, ALV President, added: “The bruising and roughing up we
received today, highlights the extreme peril these birds are in. Not
only are they debeaked, featherless, and dying in tiny cages, but the
only ones there for them day to day are these violent and abusive men.
We’ve been campaigning against Happy Hens for eleven years and the
sheds were worse than ever. Today the police told us that two weeks ago
70,000 birds died after a mechanical breakdown. This property requires
urgent attention by legal authorities.”

Obviously any allegations of assault should be investigated by police, and if anyone knows anything about assault its Animal Liberation Victoria — Australian Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ chief Dr. Hugh Worth has hired bodyguards to protect him after an attempted assault carried out last October by Animal Liberation Victoria activists.

During a gala ball sponsored by the RSPCA in October 2004, three Animal Liberation Victoria activists threw red paint over Dr. Wirth because of longstanding disagreements between the RSPCA and Animal Liberation Victoria.

Animal Liberation Victoria dismissed Wirth’s concern with the assault against, with its vice-president Noah Hannibal explicitly justifying the attack,

If Hugh Wirth was as concerned with the suffering of animals as much as he is with overreacting to some washable red paint on his tuxedo, we would not have to take such drastic action to highlight the fact that the RSPCA is betraying the animals it has the statutory duty to protect.

Source:

Activists Sexually and Physically Assaulted During Battery Farm Raid. Press Release, Animal Liberation Victoria, July 28, 2005.

Bash the Toxic Toads?

Cane toads are poisonous, ugly-looking large toads that are a major problem in parts of Australia. Brought in early in the 20th century in an effort to control crop-destroying can beetle populations, the population of cane toads soon exploded and became a major pest itself. According to the BBC, there are as many as 100 million cane toads in Australia today.

Since animals such as fresh water crocodiles, dingoes and kangaroos can die from eating the toxic toads, reducing and/or eradicating them is a high priority.

Nonetheless, not everyone appreciated Liberal MP David Tollner’s suggestion for dealing with the toads — people should take bats to the toads as Tollner and others did when he was a child.

Tollner said,

We hit them with cricket bats, golf clubs and the like. Things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle and we would get stuck into them with that sort of thing as well. If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia.

Australia’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s immediately condemned the suggestion and said anyone who bashed cane toads with bats would be fined and/or jailed for animal cruelty. According to The Associated Press, animal welfare groups in Australia would prefer that the toads be killed by freezing them (now there’s an efficient way to deal with 100 million cane toads).

Tollner’s solution was endorsed, however, by Environment Minister Ian Campbell who told reporters,

I would encourage anything that has a practical effect on stopping cane toad numbers. I remember as a child growing up in Brisbane I used to shoot them with my air rifle. That was relatively ineffective, I can report.

The reader must, at this point, be wondering how Tollner and Campbell avoided becoming serial killers given the animal rights can that cruelty to animals is an accurate predictor of violence against people.

Sources:

Toxic Toad Problem? Join The Club. Associated Press, April 14, 2005.

Australia MP targets toxic toads. Phil Mercer, BBC News, April 11, 2005.