OMG It's the Vegan Police

Last week I went to a meeting that Animal Liberation Queensland held where the guest speaker was a representative from the Oscar’s Law campaign in Queensland.

Whilst the talk was interesting to say the least, it did highlight for me a number of areas where the single issue campaigns tend to fall down.

By her own admission, the presenter did mention that she had only recently become aware of the plight of other non-human animals even though she had been involved with the “Oscar’s Law” campaign for some time. Though she didn’t mention whether she has now adopted a vegan lifestlye since becomming aware of this.

She also recalled a story where a by-laws officer for one of the councils had contacted her regarding the deplorable conditions that a ‘breeder’ is keeping his ‘stock’ in. This by-laws officer is powerless to do anything to remove these non-human animals from the conditions that they are kept in, and by the sounds of it, if it is in Queensland, the RSPCA is unwilling to intervene either.

To me, this should be enough to convince anyone that legislation doesn’t work. You can have whatever laws, code of practice, standards and procedures you want, if they aren’t being enforced, they they aren’t worth the paper that they are printed on. Also remembering that legislation is the only ‘item’ that is enforcable.

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As most of you would have no doubt noticed, I have been a little bit quiet on the vegan front of late.

This was done for a few reasons, part of it being so that I could take a step back and have a look at things with ‘fresh eyes’ so to speak. I can tell you this, that I was surprised by some of the things that I discovered.

There seems to be more than a few fakes and self appointed gurus out there that from the outside looking in have the potential to do more harm than good to the ‘movement’ if they haven’t started already.

The Fakes:
They are easy to spot because when they give presentations, talks or write things you will hear me, my and I a lot. They try to draw attention to all the things that they have done, and there is very little actual substance to what they are saying once you remove their continual references to themselves and their supposed accomplishments. Another thing that the fakes tend to do is promote themselves heavily on forums and the like looking for ‘volunteers’ to do a particular task for them. Now whilst there isn’t really anything wrong with this, these fakes themselves, very rarely do anything for others without expecting a premium price for their ‘services’.

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Yesterday was the last day of Brisbane’s ‘ekka “where the country comes to the city”.

Organisers of the spectacle are feeling pretty pleased with themselves because they have seen over 400,000 people pass through the gates.

As per usual, there were the parades of animals, the displays of pregnant animals giving birth, the judging of this animal or that for whatever ridiculous purpose they feel like. With the owners being able to puff their chests up and boast about their prized animal winning whatever accolade that is on offer.

Watching the news on Friday night, the reporter said that there was some disappointment that the lambs didn’t give birth as planned, and they appeared to be saving it all up for the end as there have been a large number of births in the ‘ekka’s closing days.

So they won’t feel left out through the whole exercise, Mr and Mrs Average Citizen will be able to gorge themselves on a whole variety of animal product based items. From the traditional Dagwood Dog and other junk food items, all the way through to premium beef eye fillets and Wagyu steaks.

As to be expected, there was the usual misleading propaganda displays by the farmers and animal agriculture about how well they treat this commodity of theirs and so on. Compared to some other countries, they probably are treated good, though the thing to remember is that all this warm and fuzziness about animal welfare only happens when there is a chance for the farmer to make a profit with the animal is sold to the next link in the food production chain. I didn’t attend this years ‘ekka though, if I had have, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the term “World’s Best Practice” or other similar catch phrases being thrown around.

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Last week, Thursday I think it was, saw the failure of two bills within the House of Representatives that if, passed there and by the Senate, would have seen Australia’s live export trade brought to an end.

Both bills were soundly defeated in the lower house, with the only supporters being the two MP that put forward the bills.

This was despite animal WELFARE groups urging the Australian public to contact their local member and tell them to vote in support of the bill. And that the Prime Minister should allow the MP’s to have a conscience vote and cross the floor if they want to support it.

As was to be expected, this didn’t happen.

So what lessons can we and should we learn from all of this?

Lesson 1
If you vote for a politician that is a member of a political party, don’t expect them to vote the way that the electorate want them to, if it goes against party lines.

Lesson 2
The meat/livestock industry is too powerful to defeat in parliament, they have to be defeated at the supermarket where they feel it the most.

Yesterday, Thursday 21 July 2011, yet another case of animal cruelty went before the Queensland Courts, and once again there was no conviction recorded even after the accused plead guilty in the court.

All I can say is so much for the Queensland Government’s hard stance on cases of animal cruelty.

In the most recent case, 57 yo Kenneth Williams Jenkins, put a leash and dive belt on the family’s Golden Retriever, named Gracie, before hitting her on the head with a chair leg and throwing her into their swimming pool.

The day before Gracie’s death, she had been taken to the vet because she had been hit by a car. Upon collecting Gracie from the Vet’s her owner had pressured vet staff to remove pain medication and antibiotics from the account, because he claimed it wasn’t necessary.
When the vet called this callous monster later, he claimed that Gracie had died after suffering a heart attack.

A subsequent complaint was made to the RSPCA, who made several attempt to contact this person to discuss Gracie’s death. According to Michael Alexander, Barrister for the RSPCA, Jenkins said that Gracie drowned while he was bathing her when he turned around to answer the phone.

The Magistrate, Jacqui Payne, even told Jenkins that his actions were against community standards in relation to the treatment of animals.

For some reason, she accepted that his behaviour was not sadistic, and his submission that he was trying to put Gracie out of her misery. Yet when Gracie left the vet’s she was was bright and alert and hopping around on three legs.

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For the past week and a bit I have been trying to get my next episode of the AusVegan.com podcast recorded and uploaded. I have recorded and edited about 4 different versions of it, then when it comes to listening to the final version something just doesn’t feel right about it. I don’t know whether it is that I have had enough of hearing myself say the same thing over and over again or something else. Anyway, I decided that I would re-edit the script that I was going to use and make it a blog post instead.

Since my last podcast about 2 weeks ago, quite a few things have happened in the land down under.

Live Exports
The temporary suspension of live exports to Indonesia has been lifted and nothing has really changed. A few token gestures that have been implemented are, and reading from the Australian Government website, liveexports.gov.au

Under the revised framework, before an exporter can be issued an approval to export livestock to Indonesia by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) they will need to have a supply chain assurance system that demonstrates:

• internationally agreed welfare standards
• control of the supply chain
• traceability through the system
• reporting and accountability and
• independent auditing.

From what I have been able to gather, this was what was already in place. An interesting thin to note is that the internationally agreed welfare standards don’t include stunning before slaughter. Exports are due to start as soon as 01 August with the Elders group hoping to be the first.

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