Animal Welfare

The issue of animal welfare arouses strong emotions. 

The bottom line is this: eating meat means eating a dead animal that was slaughtered in order for you to eat and to stimulate your taste buds. This is an uncomfortable truth for many of us to confront. Is this ethical? Do we have the moral right to exercise dominion over animals to do this? If we do, then can we really accept the methods of modern industrial farming? Do we know what they are? Why are they so often hidden from view?

Our stories include:

• the emergence of the Animal Justice Party as a political force in Australia;
• how animals no longer need to be harmed in the making of feature films;
• The UK supermarket Tesco severed links with a pork supplier after unacceptable animal cruelty was revealed on its farm;
• the phasing out of animal testing by the EPA in the USA by 2035;
• how Chinese farmers are resorting to breeding large pigs to deal with the pork shortage in a country which is the world’s largest pork consumer;
• how the troubles of the dairy industry shows an appetite for greater compassion towards animals;
• the underground investigation into animal testing conditions at a private laboratory near Hamburg in Germany;
• the release of PETA’s Paul McCartney animated cartoon of his anti-vivisection anthem Looking For Changes;
• the banning of Foie Gras in New York;
• how virtual reality headsets are being given to cows in Russia to increase their milk production;
• the passing of the Prevention of Animal Cruelty and Torture Act 2019 in the USA making animal cruelty a federal offence;
• the Gadhimai festival in Nepal at which thousands of animals were slaughtered in the name of religion;
• a step forward in removing caged battery egg farming in Australia.