Slaughterhouse fine
August 2023
Responding to “Keep an eye on abattoirs”, yes we need all slaughterhouses covered by cameras but we need to make sure that these cameras cannot be interfered with or the footage deleted.
What we really need as well, are far more prosecutions and far stricter penalties enforced.
Most of all, we need encouragement and respect shown by our government to whistleblowers such as Chris Delforce, who are doing the job that the authorities should be undertaking. And every support needs to be given to assist in their harrowing work of collecting evidence, with this evidence used in court proceedings.
Geraldine Hannah
Keep an eye on abattoirs
August 2023
Regarding your story “Slaughter in Snowtown” (The Advertiser, 26/8), it is entirely unsatisfactory that having hidden cameras placed in a regional abattoir by animal activists – who are essentially whistleblowers – is the only way people can know about slaughter methods.
What kind of society are we?
What kind of elected government do we have that permits animals to allegedly experience terrifying, long, painful deaths due to the absence of stunning before killing? It should not be up to activists with altruistic concern for animals to venture where angels fear to tread, to bear witness and capture the vision of unconscionable acts.
It should be the responsibility of Primary Industries, not the Department of Education and Water, which the article mentions, to mandate the installation and use of CCTV in places of slaughter of farmed animals.
The community call for independent oversight of animal welfare has been responded to with the Independent Office of Animal Welfare Bill 2023 in our state’s parliament.
An Act to establish an independent office would ensure better standards than industries that use animals to monitor animal welfare laws, compliance and enforcement.
Putting productivity and economic gain ahead of ethical and humane treatment for animals needs a huge legislative turnaround.
Consumers need correct information relevant to how food produced from the bodies of animals is obtained to make their own judgments.
Simone Hunter, Hove
Abattoir survey
July 2021
A survey has been launched to help inform a plan to reopen the recently closed Strathalbyn abattoir.
Regional Development Australia (RDA) has created an online survey seeking the input of local meat industry representatives.
RDA business development manager Stephen Shotton said meat producers, butchers, meat retailers and potential investors were being asked to share their views on the impacts of the closure and what they would want if it reopened. "The early uptake in the survey has shown what we already knew - that there's a huge demand for this business. At the moment it is most likely looking like the best way to reopen and operate the meat-works will be in the form of a cooperative where there are several owners," he said.
Alice Shore
Vegan market
March 2021
I hope Thomas Foods International and chief executive Darren Thomas, currently building a massive slaughterhouse at Murray Bridge, are open to installing a vegan branch.
I hope Mr Thomas has read the article “Let vegan ‘meat’ be sold by butchers” (The Advertiser, yesterday)
Consumers know that meat, in the proportions that the West has devoured it, is unsustainable due to the pollution it causes and the excessive land and water it uses.
In order to provide a better future for young people, we need to seriously use innovation such as hydroponics and solar installations to vertically grow a huge range of vegetables . This can be done even in arid areas of our country with economic use of groundwater.
The writing is on the wall, Mr Thomas, as climate change is here.
Fay Mathews
Process this
February 2021
It is interesting that they are starting work on the Thomas Foods International processing plant.
The title is a softening of what they are really establishing, which is a slaughterhouse.
Consumers who continue to eat animal flesh should be taken on a tour of the slaughterhouse once it is operational to witness the process they are condoning.
And they should be invited to slaughter the animals themselves. After all, everyone enjoys picking strawberries from the field.
Why not see where the rest of the food comes from?
Janine Clipstone
Pigs meet cruel end
June 2020
Imagine being locked in a shed, having scalding steam pumped inside then having the heat turned up. This is the way thousands of pigs in the US were recently killed.
They were, effectively, boiled alive. Millions of chickens have, likewise, suffered monstrously cruel deaths slowly smothered when foam was pumped around their cages.
These animals were “culled” because Covid-19 shut down numerous slaughterhouses but “depopulation” can take place whenever there is a viral outbreak. Consequently, this cruelty must be regarded as part and parcel of the meat industry.
Clearly, if we support these industries with our consumer dollars, we are endorsing this cruelty.
Jenny Moxham
We don't want tears we want action. Gulf Times
June 2020
By Ghanim al-Sulaiti The author is an expert in vegan wellbeing and health.
More than 10 million chickens are estimated to have been smothered by a foam, similar to fire-fighting foam, in slaughterhouses around the world. A similar cull is occurring for other animals, including gassing, shooting, anaesthetic overdose, or ‘blunt force trauma’ simply because the slaughterhouses (where these animals would have been ruthlessly killed for human consumption anyway) are facing their own self-made crises throughout this pandemic. In recent weeks, we’ve learned that huge numbers of meat processing plants have been infected with Covid-19 — and reports suggest this occurred because meat companies failed to protect its employees and pressured them to work even while sick. As a result, many slaughterhouses across the world have been forced to shut down.
The owners of these slaughterhouses are described as ‘devastated’ because the closures have meant that animals cannot now be killed for food, and must instead be killed simply because there are too many. Farmers are making a business decision to kill countless healthy animals — by running them through a woodchipper, bashing their heads, or suffocating them.
This week, one farmer at a prominent American slaughterhouse appeared on NBC News, in tears — and I watched with both fascination, outrage and anger. While he sobbed to the reports on how he was left with no choice but to shoot animals in the head or suffocate hens… I want to be very clear: these tears were not because of the loss of animal life in this inhumane slaughterhouse.
The outrage and so-called ‘devastation’ from farmers aren’t because they are having to kill innocent animals. No no, it’s because the animals aren’t being killed for profit. This selective outrage is something that needs to be called out. Slaughterhouses are inhumane with, or without a pandemic. Whether the animals are slaughtered for profit, or not, — they are still slaughtered, and that’s worth our outrage every day of the year.
Meat-eaters have come to terms with the inevitability of the production process: We all know where it ends.
According to researchers at the University of Missouri’s Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute, who predict this year’s per-capita meat consumption will fall for the first time since 2014 – a positive trend because meat production has got out of control. When you look at the statistics from our World in Data’ global meat production has ‘increased rapidly’ over the past 50 years and total production has more than quadrupled since 1961.
In 2018, an estimated 69 billion chickens; 656 million turkeys; 574 million sheep; 479 million goats; and 302 million cattle were killed for meat production.
If animals are now being shot, gassed, or suffocated because there is simply too much supply for a weaker demand — we must have change. The animals we slaughter for food are extremely intelligent and sensitive creatures, and the way in which we treat them, regardless of whether the meat is factory farmed, free-range or organic, is abhorrently cruel. From stealing their babies from them at birth to keeping them locked in confinement and denying them their natural behaviours, our actions cause animals immense emotional pain and suffering.
We find it so difficult to overcome traditional ideas and ways of thinking, that we very rarely stop to question the fundamental ethics and underlying morality of slaughtering animals for food. That’s why these farmers are appearing on our screens, so devastated that they are having to shoot animals with guns, without realising that if there was no pandemic – these animals would still end up dead anyway, but for a profit. We need more emphasis on just because something has been done a certain way for thousands of years, doesn’t make it automatically right.
Unjustifiable suffering
October 2019
Judith Crotty rightly draws attention to the fact that death in a slaughterhouse is never humane. A former slaughter worker described his workplace as a "vision of hell". He said one thing that struck him was the strong smell of blood and fear. "These animals know what's coming, and believe me, they fight against death with every fibre of their being."
Given that we can live healthily and happily with no animal products whatsoever in our diet – as a vegan of 40 years I can vouch for this – how can we justify inflicting this suffering on any sentient being?
Jenny Moxham
Animal activists are still a talking point after their visit to the Southern Downs.
June 2019
The article, “Carey’s protesters fined,” showed by entering the slaughterhouse the animal activists wanted the focus to be on the animals. The lawyer representing them said the police stated they were courteous and cooperative.
All human and animal rights reform only ever comes about through people being given evidence of injustice and cruelty. This is what these people were doing.
Thousands of animals suffer in factory farms and slaughterhouses with no Australian animal welfare laws to protect them. Just industry imposed “Codes of Practice” that promote production and profit.
The making of the free online DVD, Dominion, has created the opportunity for consumers to judge for themselves, a kinder way to live.
Diane Cornelius
The elephant in the room
Match 2019
Farmed animals
Since the recent massacre in New Zealand there have been a multitude of letters to the newspapers condemning violence - yet nobody seems to notice the elephant in the room. Most of us support violence on a daily basis. If we eat eggs we are supporting the massacre of male chicks on day one of their lives. If we consume dairy we are supporting the massacre of sweet baby calves in their very first week of life. If we eat meat we are obviously supporting the massacre of pigs, cows, sheep or chickens.And every dairy cow and laying hen ultimately meets a brutal and violent death
The numbers involved in these massacres add up to 56 billion each year. Isn't it time to open our eyes? Violence is violence. Non-human beings value their lives every bit as much as we do and none deserve to be massacred for something as frivolous and unnecessary as momentary taste bud pleasure.
Jenny Moxham
Slaughter is never humane
February 2019
Diane Cornelius is correct that, just because a country has a humane-slaughter law, it doesn’t mean the cows and pigs didn’t suffer, since the law is frequently violated. Besides, the law doesn’t take into consideration how much the cows and pigs suffered at the horrible factory farms before being taken to the slaughterhouse.
Furthermore, the billions of chickens slaughtered in America are not covered by the Humane Slaughter Act. The chickens have their throats slit and are dipped into scalding water, often while fully conscious.
Meat-eaters say it’s okay to eat animals if they didn’t suffer. So let me make them the following offer. If they promise to become vegans until all farm animals and fish are treated humanely, I’ll promise to stop promoting vegetarianism. Deal?
Eric Bahrt
Why are there corpses on our Christmas tables
December 2018
Christmas is known as a time of peace and goodwill. But what about the animals? It’s hardly a time of peace and goodwill for them. For turkeys and piglets Christmas has to be the cruelest and most violent time of the year because we slaughter more of them at
Christmas than at any other time of the year. Increasingly, our celebration of the birth of the “Prince of Peace” is becoming a torturous time for crustaceans too, who are mercilessly boiled to death to provide the added taste of “seafood” to our Christmas table. Does this make the slightest sense? If Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill why are we inflicting so much violence on our inoffensive fellow creatures?
Doesn’t this turn Christmas into a sham? Isn’t it time we started celebrating Christmas in the peaceful and loving manner in which it is meant to be celebrated - with no tortured corpses on our dinner table?
Jenny Moxham
Horrific sheep footage
December 2018
I’ve just watched horrific footage of sheep having their throats sawn open. Some of the terrified animals were punched and slammed to the ground and the brutal and bloody slaughter was carried out in full view of the next victims.
After opening up their throats, workers hung the sheep by a back leg, where they continued to struggle and cry out.
No, this video footage was not taken in some third world country. It was leaked CCTV footage from a slaughterhouse in Carrum - an outer Melbourne sea-side suburb. A suburb we would regard as “civilised”.
If this is the way workers treat animals when they know they are being filmed - some were decapitating the sheep and kicking their heads around like footballs - imagine what happens in abattoirs where there is none.
Clearly, the only way to avoid inflicting suffering on farmed animals is to stop eating them.
Jenny Moxham
Christmas massacre
December 2018
This week slaughterhouses will be redder than Santa’s suit as millions of peaceful animals are brutally massacred for Christmas feasts. Why do so many of us fail to recognise that celebrating the birth of the “Prince of Peace” by inflicting violence and suffering on others turns Christmas into a sham?
Jenny Moxham
On World Vegan Day, end the slaughter
October 2028
Halloween is upon us again, with corpses, clanking chains and the tormented screams of the damned. But why do we need a fake Halloween when we can witness this horror and ghoulishness any day of the year inside our slaughterhouses?
Every day millions of innocent individuals, quaking with fear, are goaded into pens and lines to wait in gut-churning horror for their turn with the chains and the blades and the saws.
These intelligent, sensitive individuals are well aware that a diabolical fate awaits them.
With bulging eyes and frothing at the mouth they do all in their power to escape, but to no avail.
Only we, the consumers, have the power to save them and to do so is as easy as refusing to support the animal industries with our consumer dollars. Given that November 1 is World Vegan Day, what better time to help end this Halloween hell.
Jenny Moxham
Cruel Strathalbyn slaughterhouse
October 2018
I commend Weekender Herald for including Louise Pffeifer's pieces a regular feature in your newspaper. Her recent article on factory farming and Strathalbyn abattoir is both confronting and edifying and something we all need to think about as ethical consumers.
My reaction to the animal activists who staged the rooftop protest at Strathalbyn abattoir is to thank them for publicly standing with the courage of their convictions that animals should not be terrorised and tortured to death.
Animal products in supermarkets and butchers shops disclose no insight to shoppers into the cruel reality of the lives the animals were forced to endure for human consumption and industry profit.
We need stronger laws to protect animals bred and raised for food from systemic cruelty and proper enforcement of these laws.
When more people take a personal lifestyle decision to stop consuming animal foods the cultural shift that has begun in what we are prepared as a community to accept in our treatment of animals will grow.
How well we manage animals and their welfare is a measure of our humanity. By embracing the nutritional, health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet we thereby make a contribution to respecting animals for the living, breathing, feeling, thinking beings they are.
Simone Hunter
Proud of them
September 2018
Congratulations to those fine, courageous young people who drew attention to the cruelty at the Strathalbyn abattoir last week.
The Animal Activists of SA must be proud of their action.
Alice Shore
Cruelty exposed
September 2018
Thank you to The Advertiser for reporting the cruelty at the Strath Meats Abattoir at Strathalbyn.
Full marks to Adelaide Animal Save and Aussie Farms for their courageous stand to expose atrocities at this slaughterhouse.
Christine Pierson
Strathalbyn Abattoir
Septemberm2018
Thanks to The Courier for reporting the slaughtering practices at the Strathalbyn Abatoir last week.
We can only hope that CCTV footage is introduced into all Australian abbatoirs.
But of course, the kindest action of all is to give up meat and live on plant based foods - a satisfying action.
Alice Shore
Don't Kill An Animal This Eid (Festival of Sacrifice)
August 2018
No, I am not going to sacrifice an animal this Eid-ul-Adha nor am I going to pay someone to do it for me.
I really wish we would stop using Islam as a front to justify these atrocities against God’s creatures. It’s outright cruel and inhumane.
It’s not okay to do this and you don’t need a scholar or any other human being to tell you otherwise.
If you have a heart, a conscience and an ounce of compassion, you would instinctively object to this.
Jenny Moxham
Slaughtering animals for religious reasons is wrong
August 2018
This week the Festival of Sacrifice, or the Eid-al-Adha, is highlighted in Jenny Moxham’s letter, “Slaughtering animals for religious reasons is wrong”.
She states: “Each year, in Islamic countries worldwide, around 100 million peaceful animals – including many exported Australian animals – are mercilessly massacred.” They are shipped and slaughtered to prove Muslims’ piety to their God, as Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son.
This bloody ritual has led to fertile profiteering for many livestock animal traders and live animal exporters. A religious scholar recently quoted from the Koran (22:37) to remind Muslims that “... their meat will not reach God, nor will their blood, what reaches him is piety from them”.
A kinder way would be to give the money the devout pay for the abused animals directly to the poor and show piety to God in this way.
Still helping poor people and stopping the exploitation of animals.
Diane Cornelius
Festival of Sacrifice
August 2018
I've just watched a YouTube video filmed during Eid 2017. A bull was dragged into a tiled area then his back legs and front legs were tightly bound causing him to fall heavily to the floor.
Then all four legs were tightly roped together. As men laughed and took photos on their mobile phones his throat was slowly opened up with a knife. As the terrified and suffering bull vocalized, heaved and struggled violently the men leaned on him and a river of blood surrounded them all.
It was not a quick death. Similar videos have surfaced from this years festival. In one, a child is dragging on a goats legs to hold him down while his throat is being cut. There was also a brutal camel slaughter video showing the pitiful animal tottering on three legs -his fourth one bound up -having a knife thrust into his neck .
Eventually the suffering animal collapsed to the ground. Not only is there no condemnation of these atrocities that take place every year during the Islamic Festival Sacrifice, they don't even get a mention in our newspapers. Why?
Jenny Moxham
Millions massacred for a ‘joyful’ celebration
Imagine picking up the morning newspaper and reading the headline, “One hundred million massacred”.
August 2018
I imagine you’d be horrified. But this is no fictitious scenario. This massacre actually occurred on Tuesday 21st. But, don’t look for headlines. There won’t be any. There never are, because the victims of Tuesday’s massacre were camels, goats, sheep and cattle.
The annual Islamic Festival of Sacrifice – or Eid – is portrayed by Muslims as a “joyful” celebration, but it is actually a festival of monstrous cruelty. I have just looked at a video, taken in 2017, showing a bull being “sacrificed”. After being dragged into a tiled area, his back legs and front legs were tightly bound together causing him to fall heavily to the floor.
Then all four legs were tightly bound together. Men laughed and took photos on their mobile phones as his throat was slowly cut open.
As the terrified and suffering bull vocalised, heaved and struggled the men leaned on him and a river of blood surrounded him. It was not a quick death.
Animal sacrifice was formerly a big part of the Hindu Gadhimai festival, but in 2014 the compassionate decision was made to end animal sacrifice. It’s high time Muslims did the same and relegated this brutal and archaic ritual – that inflicts so much suffering on innocent animals – to the Dark Ages.
Jenny Moxham
Relegate sacrifice to dark ages
August 2018
August 21st will be murder for animals - literally - because it is the start of the brutal and bloody Festival of Sacrifice.
It is estimated about 100million peaceful animals, including many exported Australian animals, are killed.
Trussed and tied, they can be shoved into car boots in 40C heat before their deaths in front of a cheering mob.
Muslims who have migrated also partake by sending money to their homeland to pay for a sacrifice.
Torturing these innocent animals in the name of religion is despicable.
Until recently the Nepalese people similarly sacrificed animals during their Gadhimai Festival, but they in 2015 they made the compassionate decision to end this cruel ritual.
It is high time Muslims followed suit and relegated this cruel and archaic practice to the dark ages where it belongs.
Jenny Moxham
The Muslim way of slaughtering animals
June 2018
A Moroccan fellow from Chumphon said in his June 25 letter the Muslim way of slaughtering animals is the most “humane” in the world. Whilst halal slaughter may seem less cruel if carried out in the prescribed manner, undercover footage shot in a halal abattoir in the UK shows workers hacking and sawing at the animals’ throats with blunt knives. Animals could see others being killed and were strung up by a leg while fully conscious. There’s no such thing as “humane” slaughter in any slaughterhouse, anywhere.
Jenny Moxham
Thousands of people support the campaign to be kinder to animals
June 2018
Justice, for animals! That’s what thousands of people were calling for as they marched through the capital cities of Australia on Saturday. But it wasn’t only in Australia.
The “March to Close all Slaughterhouses” has become a worldwide event with people from many countries taking part. Increasingly, thinking and caring people are recognising the injustice of needlessly killing animals for food. They are also becoming aware of the enormous suffering that is being inflicted on these animals inside our farms and slaughterhouses and they are refusing to be a part of it.
They are calling for an end to animal slavery and an end to the animal holocaust. Eric Bahrt, like these activists, is selflessly committed to helping end this unjustifiable cruelty and he should be commended for it.
Jenny Moxham
Treatment of animals is immoral
June 2018
Jenny Moxham’s powerful letter, June 14, highlighting the worldwide “March Against Animal Slaughter” and how no one believes it is morally acceptable to treat intelligent, sentient animals so appallingly, just because consumers like the taste.
As Jenny said, “Thankfully, more and more compassionate and fair minded people around the globe are recognising this and refusing to be a part of it.”
CEOs of huge companies like Nestle and America’s three largest producers of animal products are now making plant-based food, as they know consumers are wanting kinder, sustainable food.
Our next generation will look upon the present treatment of billions of animals as criminal injustice against our fellow co-inhabitants of the Earth.
Crops can be fed directly to hungry people and our ecosystems will recover and wildlife will again flourish as they have every right to do.
Diane Cornelius
Thousands of people support the campaign to be kinder to animals
June 2018
Justice, for animals! That’s what thousands of people were calling for as they marched through the capital cities of Australia on Saturday. But it wasn’t only in Australia.
The “March to Close all Slaughterhouses” has become a worldwide event with people from many countries taking part. Increasingly, thinking and caring people are recognising the injustice of needlessly killing animals for food. They are also becoming aware of the enormous suffering that is being inflicted on these animals inside our farms and slaughterhouses and they are refusing to be a part of it.
They are calling for an end to animal slavery and an end to the animal holocaust. Eric Bahrt, like these activists, is selflessly committed to helping end this unjustifiable cruelty and he should be commended for it.
Jenny Moxham
Marching for an end to animal slaughter
June 2018
Justice for animals. That’s what thousands of people will be calling for when they march in cities around the globe next weekend.
They’ll be calling for an end to the animal holocaust and the closure of slaughterhouses.
Each year a staggering 65 billion land animals are brutally and violently killed for nothing but the taste of their flesh, eggs and milk.
A former slaughterhouse worker described his workplace as a “vision of hell”. He said one thing that struck him was the strong smell of blood and fear.
“These animals know what’s coming, and believe me, they fight against death with every fibre of their being.”
Another slaughter worker revealed how, at the hide puller station, he witnessed a steer still kicking, shaking his head and bellowing despite the fact that two of his legs, his tail, and his genitals had already been removed at previous stations.
Killing animals for food is not “set in concrete”. We don’t need to do it and we shouldn’t. Thankfully, more and more compassionate and fairminded people around the globe are recognising this and refusing to be a part of it.
Jenny Moxham
Live ‘kinder and healthier’
June 2018
I agree with Jenny Moxham who is calling for ‘Time to close down slaughterhouses.’ Scientific evidence proves we can live healthily without causing animals to suffer in industrial factory farms and slaughterhouses.
Any mammal, including humans, has to give birth in order to produce milk. In the cruel dairy industry, calves are taken from their mothers at birth so humans can steal their baby milk. Male calves considered ‘wastage’ are slaughtered.
The same treatment is inflicted with millions of day-old male chicks in the egg industry.
Surely we must stop treating animals so cruelly, as commodities, like bread and soft drinks.
Vegan food choices are becoming mainstream as consumers want no part in the industrialised cruelty. As a long time vegan I know we can live kinder and healthier without killing animals.
Diane Cornelius
Murray Bridge abattoir inferno
March 2018
I'm sure I speak for every South Australian relieved that the Murray Bridge abattoir inferno did not cause any human deaths. Thomas Foods, Murray Bridge facility alone processed 52,500 sheep and lambs and 5,000 cattle every week, was the biggest "multi-species" slaughterhouse in the world, which was due for a multi million dollar upgrade. It is one of three other TF slaughterhouses in Australia.
Now Tyson Foods, America's largest producer of animal products is diversifying into a huge plant food arm of it's business, as they adapt to people wanting alternatives. Billionaires Richard Branson and Bill.Gates are investing in "Beyond Meat" stating plant based protein alternatives are going mainstream, and are cheaper than equivalent animal products.The National Dietary Guidelines from more and more countries now clearly state that a vegan diet is healthy and suitable for all stages of life.
Thomas Foods and farmers would do well to take advantage of their situation and diversify as well, producing kinder, more wholesome and sustainable foods. If animals were not purpose bred for slaughter there would be no need for any slaughterhouses or the pollution they create.
Diane Cornelius