FORTY YEARS AGO, I stood with a few other students in a busy Oxford Street, London handing out leaflets protesting the use of battery cages to hold hens. Most of those who took the leaflets did not know that their eggs came from hens kept in cages so small that even one bird – the [...]

The owner of two camels shot in early January north of Mildura says they were domesticated pack animals, trained to facilitate ecological surveys in remote areas of Australia. The shooting has shed light on the group’s work, which is helping to charter inaccessible areas across the country’s interior. Andrew Harper is the managing director of [...]

Animal welfare groups are calling on the Australian Government to stop the export of greyhounds to Macau.Hundreds of Australian-bred greyhounds are sent to the Chinese special administrative region each year and are usually euthanised after about three years of competition. It is the only part of China where greyhound racing is legal. Animals Asia director [...]

ANTI-WHALING activist group Sea Shepherd has reported that its scout vessel Brigitte Bardot was struck by a wave that has cracked the hull and severely damaged one of the pontoons on the vessel.   Captain Paul Watson, onboard the Sea Shepherd flagship Steve Irwin, said that they are fighting heavy seas to reach the position [...]

  New research by Dr Brock Bastian from UQ’s School of Psychology highlights the psychological processes that people engage in to reduce their discomfort over eating meat. This paper will be published in an upcoming edition of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, where Dr Bastian and his co-authors show that people deny mental qualities [...]

THE Australian’s journalism was honoured last night at the annual Walkley Awards. Consumer editor Natasha Bita won the award for sustained coverage of an issue or event for her reports “Virus in the system”. Bita found evidence that the flu vaccine Fluvax could do more harm than good in children. She reported on the case [...]

THESE shocking photos show a kangaroo in agony, tangled in metres of wire and unable to stand up. The distressed kangaroo was discovered this morning by a Department of Environment and Conservation wildlife carer, who feared the animal had been tied up in case of animal cruelty. Kim Walpole was walking through bushland at the [...]

An alliance of beef producers and processors will call for the abolition of Meat and Livestock Australia, after the scandal surrounding live export to Indonesia this year. A motion will be put to the MLA’s annual general meeting in Longreach on Thursday to wind up the producer-owned company, while a call for wide-ranging reforms in [...]

Hundreds of WA nurses, teachers, students, lawyers, plumbers and engineers joined hands this morning in a united front against the live animal export trade. More than 350 people turned out to take part in the “human chain” protest on the Stirling Bridge in Fremantle. The peaceful protest, which made for a spectacular sight as the [...]

WA’s 200,000 cat owners will be required to sterilise, microchip and register their pets, under new laws which passed State Parliament overnight. Local government’s powers to deal with cats which are not owned and irresponsible cat owners, including hoarders, will be boosted under the legislation. Local Government minister John Castrilli said the legislation would give [...]

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has just completed a detailed review of more than 7,000 clinical studies covering links between diet and cancer. Its conclusion is rocking the health world with startling bluntness: Processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption. Consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest [...]

LIVE-ANIMAL exporters would be forced to track every beast to the point of slaughter in every export market to ensure humane treatment, if recommendations in a top-level probe are adopted by the federal government. In a dramatic shift likely to upset some major trading partners and threaten exports to the Middle East, the review by [...]

The Catalonia region of Spain bade farewell to bullfighting on Sunday with a corrida in Barcelona’s Monumental bullring featuring José Tomás, probably the country’s most popular matador. After putting to death their respective bulls in front of a sell-out crowd in the 20,000-seat arena, Mr Tomás, along with another bullfighter Serafín Marín, were carried shoulder [...]

A HILLARYS man is due to appear in court on Tuesday charged with animal cruelty after his dog was allegedly found lying in its own urine with maggot-infested sores. Stan Kelly, 59, has been accused by the RSPCA of being cruel to an animal and allowing it to suffer harm that could have been alleviated [...]

Animals rights activists are renewing calls to ban the live sheep trade, with claims that hundreds of animals have died on a ship docked at the Fremantle Port in Western Australia. Earlier today protesters held up signs labelling live exports as cruel, immoral and un-Australian. The 50,000 sheep from South Australia were loaded onto a [...]

A RENEGADE cow has tried to dodge its fate by jumping ship – literally.  The local Brahman beast escaped from the races on board a ship run by live exporters Wellard Group on Friday night, Darwin Port Corporation corporate services manager Melissa Reiter told the Sunday Territorian. It ran back down the pier toward the [...]

FRESH evidence of cruel treatment of Australian livestock in foreign markets has raised new doubt about the ability of the government and industry to ensure the welfare of animals exported for slaughter. Footage obtained by The Age shows filth-covered cattle being belted with spike-tipped poles as they are unloaded from a cramped truck in Israel. More [...]

THE head of Meat & Livestock Australia told a Senate inquiry he had never seen the sort of animal cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs as shown on the ABC Four Corners program in May. MLA managing director Scott Hansen, who was a witness to the inquiry into the live export market to Indonesia, said he had [...]

AUSTRALIA’S live export trade ranks as one of the world’s worst because of the sheer number of animals involved and the long distances they endure, a leading European animal rights lobbyist has said. Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser for Compassion in World Farming, said the government’s decision to end the month-long live export ban was [...]

  GREENPEACE is calling on consumers to boycott IGA toilet paper, saying it’s linked to the destruction of endangered tiger habitats in Indonesia. IGA is the only major supermarket chain in Australia to source paper products from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) through its Australian affiliate Solaris. It is then sold under the IGA Black [...]