Banning battery hens once seemed unthinkable, but the idea took hold and the EU put a ban in place at the beginning of 2012.

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 cages normally housed four – would be unable to fully stretch and flap her wings. The hens could never walk around freely, or lay eggs in a nest.

Many people applauded our youthful idealism, but told us that we had no hope of ever changing a major industry. They were wrong.

On the first day of 2012, keeping hens in such cages became illegal, in all 27 countries of the European Union. Hens can still be kept in cages, but they must have more space, and the cages must have nest boxes and a scratching post. Last month, members of the British Hen Welfare Trust provided a new home for a hen they named “Liberty”. She was, they said, among the last hens in Britain still living in the type of cages we had opposed.

In the early 1970s, when the modern animal-liberation movement began, no major organisation was campaigning against the battery cage. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the mother of all animal-protection organisations, had lost its early radicalism long before. It focused on isolated cases of abuse, and failed to challenge well-established ways of mistreating animals on farms or in laboratories. It took a concerted effort by the new animal radicals of the 1970s to stir the RSPCA from its complacency towards the battery cage and other forms of intensive animal rearing.

Eventually, the new animal-rights movement managed to reach the broader public. Consumers responded by buying eggs from free-ranging hens. Some supermarket chains even ceased to carry eggs from battery hens.

In Britain and some European countries, animal welfare became politically salient, and pressure on parliamentary representatives mounted. The European Union established a scientific committee to investigate animal-welfare issues on farms, and the committee recommended banning the battery cage, along with some other forms of close confinement of pigs and calves. A ban on battery cages in the EU was eventually adopted in 1999, but, to ensure that producers would have plenty of time to phase out the equipment in which they had invested, its implementation was delayed until 1 January 2012.

To its credit, the British egg industry accepted the situation, and developed new and less cruel methods of keeping hens. Not all countries are equally ready, however, and it has been estimated that up to 80 million hens may still be in illegal battery cages. But at least 300 million hens who would have lived miserable lives in standard battery cages are now in significantly better conditions, and there is great pressure on the EU bureaucracy to enforce the ban everywhere – not least from egg producers who are already complying with it.

With the ban on battery cages, Europe confirms its place as the world leader in animal welfare, a position also reflected in its restrictions on the use of animals to test cosmetics. But why is Europe so far ahead of other countries in its concern for animals?

In the United States, there are no federal laws about how egg producers house their hens. But, when the issue was put to California voters in 2008, they overwhelmingly supported a proposition requiring that all farm animals have room to stretch their limbs fully and turn around without touching other animals or the sides of their cage. That suggests that the problem may not be with US citizens’ attitudes, but rather that, at the federal level, the US political system allows industries with large campaign chests too much power to thwart the wishes of popular majorities.

In China, which, along with the US, confines the largest number of hens in cages, an animal welfare movement is only just beginning to emerge. For the sake of the welfare of billions of farmed animals, we should wish it rapid growth and success.

In Australia battery hens are not illegal, with Australian farms required to abide by a code of practice that guides the welfare of their chickens.

The start of this year is a moment to celebrate a major advance in animal welfare, and, therefore, for Europe, a step towards becoming a more civilised and humane society – one that shows its concern for all beings capable of suffering. It is also an occasion for celebrating the effectiveness of democracy, and the power of an ethical idea.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead is reported to have said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The last part may not be true, but the first part surely is. The end of the battery cage in Europe is a less dramatic development than the Arab Spring, but, like that popular uprising, it began with a small group of thoughtful and committed people.

Peter Singer is Professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, and The Life You Can Save.

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The shot camels were domesticated stock, trained to carry supplies on environmental surveys in the desert (supplied )

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 Australian Desert Expeditions – a not for profit, registered environmental organisation that provides access to remote locations of Australia for universities and land management authorities.

The group spends anywhere from 5 days to a month in remote locations that are impossible to reach by road transport, including four wheel drive vehicles, in order to conduct botanical, bird and other environmental surveys.

To do this, they require the assistance of an animal that is at home in such locations; the camel, once trained, is perfectly suited for this work – carrying up to ten jerry cans, equivalent in weight to a 44 gallon drum’s worth of water, up and down sand dunes and across the arid landscape of remote Australia.

It was two of these such camels that were shot and killed, in the dead of night in early January, while they slept 80 kilometres from the road in their pack at Moorna Station, 40 kilometres west of Wentworth in south west NSW.

“There was no mistaking that they were domesticated, they certainly weren’t wild camels,” says Mr Harper, who thinks the shooting was deliberate.

“The two camels that were shot last week aren’t the sort of camel that you can sort of buy off the shelf”, he says.

“As people who work with animals would appreciate, a good stock horse or a good working dog, a good sheep dog – it takes a long time to fine tune their abilities, and camels are no different.”

NSW police are appealing for information about the shooting, which the region’s crime manager Matt McCarthy has labelled ‘senseless’.

In the meantime, Mr Harper will continue his work, which is opening up parts of Australia that have for the most part been left alone.

“And that’s quite an amazing thing to think about really in Australia, you know; there’s so many of us here, but we’re all crowded around the outside of the continent.”

“To think that you can still walk in areas of the country where not many whitefellas have been, is quite an amazing thing.”

Since 2007 the organisation, which employs around 18 people, has been working in the area of megafauna, with fossils from extinct animals that lived tens of thousands of years ago in the Simpson desert, as well as cataloguing Aboriginal rock art in the Northern Territory, some of which has only recently been revealed to archeaologists.

“It’s very hard to get to these places and we find that walking’s the best way to do it,” says Mr Harper.

“To be able to learn and discover what’s happening out at these remote parts of Australia, that by and large have been almost forgotten about,” he says, is rewarding.

“The value of walking and using the pack camels is that you see everything,” says Mr Harper, “the desert will reveal its entire story to you.”

Police in Broken Hill are awaiting results on the forensic analysis of the spent rifle casings, but say they believe the calibre of the rifle to be 6.5×55 rounds, and are urging the public to come forward with any information they have about the attack.

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By Emma Younger, Australian Network News

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The inaugural Southbound festival began in 2005 and 7 years later, it’s still WA’s only music, camping and arts festival. 2012 marks Southbound’s 8th (yes, 8th!) year and boy, are we excited to bring you an amazing array of talent and good times to be had.

Located in the beautiful South West town of Busselton, just a two and a half hour-ish drive south of Perth, Southbound has seen the likes of acts such as the Klaxons, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Public Enemy, The Hives, Kings of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, John Butler Trio, Basement Jaxx, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Moby, Angus and Julia Stone, The Temper Trap, Birds of Tokyo, Dandy Warhols, The Shins and Bliss n Eso to name but a few!

The festival continues to bring sizzling talent from overseas along with the most talented home-grown Australian artists to you in the form of one superb and sustainable festival. Punters are offered and urged to take in the whole experience by getting in touch with nature and camping at the festival site over the weekend, so as to not miss out on one second of the good times on offer.

Southbound features leisure in the form of music and comedy acts, food and market stalls as well as various activities to keep you entertained over the weekend. The festival supports environmental sustainability, having won two “A Greener Festival” awards through programs such as sustainment carbon offset fees, a ‘green team’ for rubbish collection, “Tree for Tickets” programs, recycling stations and eco stalls.

In 2012, Southbound will be held on the first full weekend of the year, Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th January.

http://www.southboundfestival.com.au/

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson pictured with the group's multihull pursuit ship, the Brigitte Bardot, which has been damaged by a giant wave. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

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 of the Brigitte Bardot.

It is expected to take twenty hours to reach the damaged vessel which is 2414 kilometres southwest of Fremantle, Western Australia

Brigitte Bardot Captain Jonathan Miles Renecle of South Africa was pursuing the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru in six metre swells when the wave slammed into the port side of the vessel cracking the hull. The crack has been getting wider as the seas continue to pound the vessel.

“This is disappointing but these are hostile seas and we have always been prepared for situations like this,” Said Captain Watson.
“Right now the safety of my crew on the Brigitte Bardot is our priority and we intend to reach the crew and then do what we can to save our ship.”

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 to animals they eat.

“Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. Our studies show that this motivates people to deny minds to animals,” Dr Bastian said.

The research demonstrates when people are confronted with the harm that their meat-eating brings to food animals they view those animals as possessing fewer mental capacities compared to when they are not reminded.

The findings also reveal that this denial of mind to food animals is especially evident when people expect to eat meat in the near future.

Dr Bastian said it shows that denying mind to animals that are used for food makes it less troublesome for people to eat them.

“Meat is central to most people’s diets and a focus of culinary enjoyment, yet most people also like animals and are disturbed by harm done to them; therefore creating a ‘meat paradox’ – people’s concern for animal welfare conflicts with their culinary behavior.

“For this reason, people rarely enjoy thinking about where meat comes from, the processes it goes through to get to their tables, or the living qualities of the animals from which it is extracted,” he said.

Dr Bastian’s research argues that meat eaters go to great lengths to overcome these inconsistencies between their beliefs and behaviours.

“In our current research we focus on the processes by which people facilitate their practice of eating meat. People often mentally separate meat from animals so they can eat pork or beef without thinking about pigs or cows.

“Denying minds to animals reduces concern for their welfare, justifying the harm caused to them in the process of meat production,” he added.

Meat is pleasing to the palate for many, and although the vegetarian lifestyle is increasingly popular, most people continue to make meat a central component of their diet.

“In short, our work highlights the fact that although most people do not mind eating meat, they do not like thinking of animals they eat as having possessed minds,” Dr Bastian said.

From ScienceAlert.com.au

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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 of a baby who suffered brain damage after receiving the vaccination, which had not been properly tested.
The Australian’s photographer Stuart McEvoy won an award in the daily life category for his pictures of how Queensland’s devastating Cyclone Yasi affected Maria Domandi, 86, in her home south of Tully.
The 56th Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism, presented in the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre last night, and also screened on SBS television, contained 34 categories.
The Gold Walkley, the top prize in the awards administered by the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, went to the ABC’s Four Corners program. Sarah Ferguson, Michael Doyle and Anne Worthington won for their graphic report on animal cruelty in Australia’s live cattle export trade to Indonesia.
The report, “A Bloody Business”, included footage shot by the animal activist group Animals Australia showing cruel treatment of cattle.
It caused an uproar across Australia and led the federal government to ban live exports of cattle to Indonesia, causing a diplomatic incident.
The judges said: ” ‘A Bloody Business’ and its repercussions had an enormous impact on the Gillard government, which scrambled to be seen to be doing something in a bid to staunch the fierce criticism of its previous failure to act.”
The whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks won a Walkley for outstanding contribution to journalism for its release of thousands of US diplomatic cables, described by judges as a global publishing coup that achieved “justice through transparency”.
“WikiLeaks applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup,” the Walkley trustees said. “Its revelations . . . have had an undeniable impact.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange used the award to launch an attack on the Gillard government.
In a video message, Assange blasted Julia Gillard for her “craven” co-operation with the US and denounced Washington’s pursuit of his organisation.
He said it was time Australia stopped “sucking up” to the US while Washington was persecuting members of his organisation.
The late ABC journalist Paul Lockyer was posthumously awarded the Walkley for journalistic leadership, three months after he died alongside colleagues Gary Ticehurst and John Bean in a helicopter crash at Lake Eyre.
By Stephen Brook, The Australian

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RESCUE OPERATION: This male kangaroo was found by wildlife carers with wire digging into foot and back of ankle. Picture: Kim Walpole Source: PerthNow

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 back of her Chittering property when she found the kangaroo lying down, with fencing wire wrapped around its foot, chest and neck.

It wasn’t until she sedated the distressed animal that she realised the wire had also been tied to two trees.

“I thought he had a broken back and he tried to leap up,” Ms Walpole said.

“When we saw that it was actually wire, I had a scenario in the back of my mind but I didn’t want to think about people being so cruel. I felt sick.”
These images sent to PerthNow show the wire wound tightly around the animal’s feet and chest, and the marks left after wildlife carers were able to cut it free.

Ms Walpole, who has lived on the property for seven years, said she did not have any fencing to keep wildlife out and did not know how the wire ended up on her block.

She said it was possible the kangaroo had picked up the wire from a nearby building site and got caught in the bushes.

But the fact it was wrapped around the animal’s foot 10 times “raised a lot of questions.”

“It obviously panicked and tried to get away because it had worn into the two trees and debarked the trees,” she said.

The adult roo suffered burns from the wire but is expected to make a full recovery.

By Ashlee Mullany PerthNow

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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 the industry, including the abolition of its peak advisory council, is expected from another group.
Critics within the beef and sheep industry say the current 15-year old structure is out of date and lacks transparency and accountability.
The Australian Beef Association said it had well over the 100 signatures required from MLA members to table the wind-up motion at this year’s AGM, after a similar attempt last year failed.
The association’s president, Brad Bellinger, said the MLA had failed in its duty to promote and service the industry, with cattle prices stagnant over the past 10 years while the price of beef to the consumer had risen by 50 per cent. At the same time the demand for beef had dropped 20 per cent.
MLA is funded by a $5 per head levy from beef producers, processors and exporters every time an animal changes hands, totalling $70 million in revenue a year.
It also receives $38 million annually from government sources for research and development.
“MLA is not putting any benefit back to cattle producers who fund the [company],” Mr Bellinger said. “The supermarkets are the only ones benefiting from MLA … because its assumption that if consumers paid more for their beef the producers would get more hasn’t panned out.”
Mr Bellinger said that, despite MLA spending $25 million on animal welfare programs in south-east Asia since 2005, all the company had to show for it was stunning equipment in four Indonesian abattoirs and the introduction of slaughtering boxes.
The boxes featured prominently in an ABC expose on the treatment of exported Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs earlier this year, resulting in a month-long suspension of live export in the region.
Norman Hunt, the spokesman for another alliance, the Australian Meat Producers Group, said it would use Thursday’s AGM to call for long overdue wide-ranging reforms, including the abolition of the Red Meat Advisory Council, which lobbies governments.
A proposal is expected to be tabled calling for the end of MLA’s “one stop shop” structure, divesting the company of its power by creating separate statutory funded corporations for beef producers, sheep meat producers, meat processors, lotfeeders and exporters, in much the same way the pork and egg industries now operate.
The group also wants the government-funded research and development arm of MLA transferred to a new independent and publicly accountable body.
On the ABA’s call for MLA to be wound up, an MLA spokeswoman said the ABA had continued to misrepresent MLA as a lobby group.
“[MLA's] charter is strictly limited to the provision of marketing and research and development services to the red meat industry,” she said. “It is disappointing that our members will be asked to vote again on the same resolution that was defeated last year.”
A spokeswoman for the federal Minister for Agriculture, Joe Ludwig, said questions about the beef industry’s structure were regularly raised by industry players.
“This is a good thing. It is healthy for industry to have these debates,” she said. “I am not going to speculate on any particular proposals.”
By Kelly Burke, Sydney Morning Herald

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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 protesters joined hands on the bridge and wore signs around their necks, was organised by Stop Live Exports.

They want the live animal export trade phased out and are pushing for an expansion of the chilled and frozen meat trade to fill meat demands.

This they say this will better protect Australian animals and will create thousands of jobs in regional areas.

Their campaign is being held in conjunction with the World Society for the Protection of Animals efforts to shift Federal Government policy on live animal exports.

Stop Live Exports spokeswoman Katrina Love said West Australian’s from all walks of life held strong feelings on the live animal trade.

“We’ve got everyone together here…it shows the diversity of people opposed to live export,” Ms Love said.

“We want to get across that there are people from all walks of life opposed to live animal exporting.

“We are not opposed to farmers, we are opposed to the cruelty that is inherent in live animal exports and there are a lot of us that care.”

Stop Live Exports campaign manager Sandie Rawnsley said the people of Fremantle had witnessed first-hand the suffering created by the live export trade because up to 80 per cent of Australia’s sheep exports leave the town.

World Society for the Protection of Animals spokeswoman Jodie Jankevics said she was thrilled Fremantle was continuing to represent its opposition to the live animal trade.

She said economic reports showed 5,000 new jobs in the meat processing industry could be created in Queensland and Western Australia if live exporting were phased out.

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