Binning the spin: animal welfare ‘speak’ and the law

In the meantime one of the key messages that appears to be emanating from Australian animal industry’s PR houses is that Australia is some kind of an animal welfare “leader”. This is particularly interesting given the widespread understanding among the animal law movement that Australia is lagging behind the European Union and an increasing number of US states when it comes to providing meaningful animal protections.

According to Australian Pork Limited, “Australian pig farmers are leading the way in making positive changes in the way pigs are raised.” While it is correct to say that the Pig Code has recently been reviewed, the upshot of that review, other than largely reinstating the existing system, was to defer phasing out sow stalls for a decade. If sow stalls are phased out in 2017 as scheduled, we’ll still be 14 years behind the EU which hasn’t allowed new stalls to be built since 2003. We’ll also be markedly behind eight US States including, most recently, Michigan, which is scheduled to phase out sow stalls over the next decade. No Australian jurisdiction has even meaningfully debated a ban on sow stalls.

One could also be forgiven for thinking that Australian Egg Corporation Limited has egg on its face after it responded to Jamie Oliver’s show Fowl Dinners by suggesting that the “dramatic and unnecessary demonstration of suffocating live chickens and battery cages … undermines and in no way reflects the stringent and professional animal welfare standards practiced in Australia by egg farmers.”

Their “spin” on the Poultry Code appears to have overlooked the section conveniently titled “hatchery management” which allows approximately ten million “culled or surplus hatchlings” (predominately male chicks) to be disposed of by “carbon dioxide gassing or quick maceration” - as if they are trash, which technically they are in industry terms, since they are of no economic utility. AECL’s press release also failed to mention that conventional battery cages are scheduled to be phased out across the European Union by 2012, whereas several attempts to introduce a ban in Australia have met considerable resistance.

In the end, we can hardly blame industry for spinning the law in their favour because the regulation of farm animal industries plays right into their hands. Ultimately, the onus is on legal advocates to expose the fallacy of “animal welfare speak” and take a stand against the institutionalised suffering of animals. Clearly we have a lot of work to do before we can claim to be a nation of “animal welfare” pioneers.