Dominion (2018) Movie Script
1
Most people consider
themselves animal lovers.
We recognise them not as objects
but as complex beings with
whom we share the planet,
our lives,
our homes.
We take pleasure from their pleasure,
we anguish over their pain
celebrating their intelligence
and individuality
as we welcome them into our families,
or revere them in their natural element.
The thought of unnecessarily causing them
harm or suffering, is to many, unbearable.
So for those who feed,
clothe or entertain us,
we choose to follow a
narrative that minimises
or altogether eliminates
their suffering.
The picturesque family farm and
the iconic, loving farmer.
A humane and painless end, a small price
happily paid for a life well lived.
An arrangement of mutual benefit.
Hidden by this narrative,
out of sight, out of mind,
they cease to be individuals,
most known only as livestock,
faceless units of production in a
system of incomprehensible scale,
exempt from the cruelty laws that
protect our companion animals.
Their suffering
unseen and unheard.
Their value determined only by
their usefulness to humankind,
rationalised by a belief
in our own superiority
and the notion that
might equals right.
A notion that must be questioned.
In the 1960s, there were around
50,000 pig farms in Australia.
Today, there are less than 1400,
and yet the total number of pigs bred
and slaughtered for food has increased.
As of 2015, 49 farms housed 60% of
the countrys total pig population.
Most pigs bred for food begin
life in a farrowing crate,
a small pen with a central cage,
designed to allow the piglets
to feed from their mother, the sow,
while preventing her from moving around.
The frequency of stillborn
or mummified piglets
generally increases with each litter
as the sows bodies become less
capable of handling the large litter
sizes encouraged by the industry.
10-18% of piglets who are born alive
wont make it until weaning age,
succumbing to disease,
starvation or dehydration,
or being accidentally crushed
by their trapped mothers.
Included in the death toll
are the runts of the litter,
who are considered economically
unviable and killed by staff.
Those who survive the first few days
are mutilated without pain relief,
their tails and teeth cut
to reduce cannibalism
and pieces cut from their ears, or tags
punched in, as a means of identification.
They are taken from their
mothers at 3-5 weeks of age.
Most are destined for slaughter
around 5 months later.
As they age, they are moved into grower
pens, crowded together in their own waste.
Some female pigs are kept on to replace
the sows in the breeding cycle,
carefully selected for their perceived
ability to produce large litters.
Most pig farms utilise artificial
insemination rather than natural mating,
as it allows them to impregnate up to
30-40 female pigs from a single boar.
Workers collect the semen
by masturbating the boars,
then insert it into the sows via a
raised catheter known as a pork stork.
Boars are still physically used to excite
the females prior to insemination,
but are prevented from actually mating.
When confirmed pregnant, the sow is moved
into one of two types of confined housing
for the entirety of her 16 week gestation.
Sow stalls are individual cages in
which, like in the farrowing crates,
sows are only able to take one or
two steps forwards or backwards
and are unable to turn around.
While gradually being phased out by the
majority of piggeries in Australia,
sow stalls remain entirely legal with no
penalties for keeping sows confined to them
for longer than the
voluntary limit of 5 days.
This is similar to the apparent ban
on sow stalls in the European Union
which actually allows up to 4
weeks in them per pregnancy.
When given the choice, pigs
will relieve themselves
far away from where they sleep and eat.
The extreme confinement takes
a heavy psychological toll.
The alternative, group housing,
sees pregnant pigs packed
into small concrete pens.
A lack of space and stimuli can cause
the pigs to become aggressive.
Those who fall into the effluent
system through gaps in the flooring
are left to starve or drown
in the river of waste.
A week before they are due to give birth,
theyre moved into the
farrowing crate cages,
where theyll remain for
the next 4-6 weeks.
Unable to exercise, the sows
muscles will weaken to the point
where she has difficulty
standing up or lying down
To minimise muscle wastage, workers will
force her to stand up at least once daily.
Shell develop pressure sores
from the hard surfaces
Or prolapses and infections
from the physical strain
of repeated farrowing and poor conditions
which can also lead to partial paralysis,
preventing her from reaching the food
and water at the front of her cage
or can even lead to death in the cage.
Shell watch helplessly as her
piglets fall ill and die,
or get mutilated and abused by workers
until they are taken away from her.
Shell endure this cycle
four times over two years
before shes replaced
and sent to slaughter,
or killed and dumped on site.
The term bred free range simply means
that pigs are born outside in small huts,
but then spend the rest
of their lives in sheds,
facing the same overcrowding, health and
behavioural issues as at any pig farm,
whilst being knee deep in their own waste.
Capable of living 10-12 years, most
pigs are killed at just 5-6 months old,
packed onto transportation
trucks at the piggery
and driven often long distances
to the slaughterhouse
without food, water or protection
from extreme heat or cold.
At the slaughterhouse theyll wait in
small concrete or metal holding pens,
typically overnight, still without food
and with limited or no access to water.
In the morning, they are forcefully
herded to the kill floor,
often with an electric prodder.
The most common method of stunning
and killing pigs in Australia,
used at all major pig abattoirs and touted
as the most humane and efficient option,
is the carbon dioxide gas chamber.
A system of rotating cages lowers the
fully-conscious pigs two or three at a time
into the heavily
concentrated gas,
which begins to burn their eyes,
nostrils, sinuses, throat and lungs
while suffocating them.
Lower concentrations of carbon dioxide
would cause less pain and stress,
but would take much longer to
render the pigs unconscious,
making it economically unviable.
Sows are sent into the chamber
gondolas one at a time.
Because of their size, the
gas is less effective,
with some emerging partly conscious,
in which case they may also be
electrically stunned afterwards.
Tipped out the other
side of the chamber,
the pigs throats are cut
and they are bled out.
Electrical stunning, used
at smaller slaughterhouses,
has a much higher chance of failure.
Incorrect amperage, positioning of the
stunner, or length of time applied,
or failing to cut the
throat quickly enough,
can lead to the pig being merely
paralysed and unable to move
while still capable
of feeling pain,
or regaining consciousness
while bleeding out.
Blinking and rhythmic breathing are
strong indicators of consciousness.
One by one, they are picked
off in front of each other.
Captive bolt pistols are another option
used by smaller slaughterhouses.
The penetrative variety fire a rod
through the skull of the animal
to permanently damage their brain,
preventing them from
regaining consciousness,
while non-penetrative bolt pistols deliver
blunt force trauma much like a hammer.
Effective stunning requires the
gun to be angled and positioned
at the correct part of the head,
which is often difficult if
the head is not restrained.
Having witnessed their litter
mates being killed before them,
or being able to smell
the blood on the floor,
they are reluctant to
enter the knockbox.
The bolt gun is even less effective
on larger pigs, like sows.
For them, a rifle may be
used as an alternative.
In this case, accuracy
is even more difficult.
After theyve been bled out, pigs are
dropped into tanks of scalding water
in order to soften their skin
and remove bristles and hair.
Those who havent been stunned and
killed properly finally die by drowning.
The waste products the skins,
bones, hoofs, guts and fat
are trucked to the rendering
plant to be turned into lard
for use in food, soaps,
lubricants and biofuel,
or into other products like gelatine.
Wild pigs were introduced to
Australia with the First Fleet,
and now occupy around 40
percent of the country,
mainly in Queensland and New South Wales.
The practice of pig dogging involves
hunters releasing aggressively trained dogs
to track, chase and maul live pigs,
keeping them pinned down
until the hunters are able to catch
up and finish them off with a knife.
Despite wild pigs being
declared a pest animal,
its not uncommon for hunters to release
young piglets into national parks
so that they can return later to hunt them.
For egg-laying hens, life
begins at the hatchery.
Eggs collected from the parent birds are
stored, incubated and hatched over 31 days.
The male and female chicks are
sorted onto separate conveyor belts.
Here at Australias largest hatchery,
theyve been genetically modified
to make the males a different colour than
the females, allowing for quick sorting.
Unable to ever produce eggs themselves
and a completely different breed
to the chickens used for meat,
the male chicks are
considered waste products,
as are any females perceived
to be deformed or weak.
They are sorted onto a separate
conveyor belt from the healthy females
in their first day of life, and sent into
an industrial blender called a macerator.
This practice is legal and referred
to as humane by the RSPCA.
Smaller hatcheries may
use carbon dioxide gas
or simply suffocate the
chicks in plastic bags.
All commercial egg farms -
caged, barn laid, free range,
organic, RSPCA-approved -
involve the killing of male chicks,
to a total of roughly 12
million per year in Australia.
Meanwhile, the healthy females continue
on to painful debeaking machines.
Hens are debeaked to minimise the
harm they can do to each other
in the confinement of egg farms.
The chicks are then stacked in trays
and trucked to pullet rearing farms,
where theyll remain for 4 months
until they begin laying eggs.
A small number of males will
be spared the macerator
in order to serve with a selection
of hens as parent birds,
laying and fertilising the
eggs for the hatchery.
The other hens are sent out to
egg farms across the country.
Around two-thirds of the 18 million layer
hens at any given time in Australia
are housed in battery cages.
Each shed can contain up to 100,000
hens, with between 4 and 20 per cage,
each hen afforded a space smaller
than a A4 sheet of paper.
They are unable to stretch their wings
or express any natural behaviours
such as dust bathing,
perching or foraging.
Due to decades of genetic
manipulation and selective breeding,
they lay an egg almost every day
for a total of up to 330 per year,
compared to the 10-15 that
a wild hen would lay.
As they age, the poor environment and
physical stress of frequent egg-laying
takes a toll on their health, indicated by
the gradual loss of all of their feathers
and an increasingly pale
comb suggesting anaemia.
Deaths inside the cages are common,
and due to the size of the facilities can
be easily missed for long periods of time
forcing the surviving hens to live
on top of the rotting carcasses.
Newer cage systems collect the faeces
onto conveyor belts beneath the cages,
while older systems allow
it to pile up underneath.
Birds who manage to escape the cages
are left to die in these manure pits.
At 18 months of age, after living in the
cage for over a year, their egg production
will have slowed significantly
enough to be considered spent.
They are depopulated pulled from
the cages and stuffed into crates,
often resulting in bone fractures
due to rough handling.
They are either gassed to death
and then buried or rendered,
or sent to the slaughterhouse, and
replaced by new 4-month old hens.
Up until 2016,
there were no national standards on
what can be claimed as free range eggs.
Now, free range farms are capped
at a maximum outdoor density
of 10,000 hens per hectare
one per square metre
though they still spend most of their
time packed together in large sheds.
Chickens naturally form and live within a
social hierarchy called a pecking order,
but are only able to recognise
around 100 other chickens.
In sheds or paddocks with
thousands of other birds,
their inability to maintain this
pecking order results in chaos.
The weak birds are picked
on with no way to escape.
Disease spreads rapidly.
An outbreak of avian influenza at a New
South Wales free range egg farm in 2013,
believed to be contracted from wild ducks,
led to the culling of
over 400,000 farmed hens.
Many of the larger free range farms also
have cage farms on the same property,
with the eggs from both ending
up in the same packing shed.
A 2009 analysis of Egg Corporation
data indicated that as many
as one in six eggs sold as "free range"
were laid by caged or barn hens.
As with caged farms,
free range hens are sent to slaughter
from just 18 months of age,
far short of their 10
year natural lifespan.
At the slaughterhouse, the hens are
shackled upside-down on a moving line.
They are lowered into a bath of
electrified water to stun them
prior to their throats being
cut by an automated blade,
but if they lift their heads,
they can miss the stun bath,
facing the blade fully conscious
and ultimately drowning in scalding
water further down the process.
The slaughtered hens largely end up
in lower-grade chicken meat products
such as mince, or rendered into
poultry meal for use in pet food
or to be fed back to farmed animals.
Chickens bred for meat, known as broilers,
are a larger breed than egg layers,
designed through human intervention
to grow rapidly to massive sizes.
Their short life begins
at a broiler hatchery.
While both the males and females
are used by this industry,
these hatcheries also use macerators
or gas chambers,
for weak or deformed birds who arent
expected to make it to slaughter weight.
The surviving day-old chicks are
trucked to broiler grow-out farms.
As of 2016, there were 530
broiler farms in Australia,
together housing at any given time a total
population of around 90 million birds.
Each shed holds forty-to-sixty thousand.
Within their first week of life, a
mortality rate of 4-6% is normal,
equating to 1600 to 3600 dead chicks
per shed, roughly 200-500 daily.
The majority of these will have
been found dead by workers,
others who seem weak or injured
will be killed or tossed out alive.
As they grow, they quickly fill out
the available space in the shed,
living amongst a buildup
of their own faeces.
The mortality rate slows, but deaths
are still a regular occurrence.
Not far from the sheds, the bodies
are piled up and composted.
Selective breeding, lack of
exercise due to overcrowding,
artificial lighting and the heavy use of
antibiotics which enhance feed absorption,
have resulted in modern broiler chickens
reaching a slaughter-ready weight
of 3 kilograms in just 35 days,
a dramatic increase from a
natural peak of 2kg in 96 days.
Their bodies have great difficulty
handling this extreme physical pressure,
making skeletal, cardiac and
metabolic disorders common.
Of those who make it to the slaughterhouse,
90% have a detectable abnormal gait.
The sheds are not cleaned for
the entire 5 to 7 week cycle,
causing a high concentration of ammonia
which can irritate and burn their skin
and impede their respiratory system.
Chickens sold under the
RSPCA approved label
are given a single perch running
down the middle of the shed,
but otherwise the conditions
and process are identical.
Depopulation occurs in low light
conditions in the middle of the night,
when the birds are calmest and
unable to see whats happening.
They are typically caught
by hand by contract teams
and jammed into plastic crates,
the crates then forklifted onto trucks
for transport to the slaughterhouse.
Like layer hens, they are hung roughly by
their legs onto the automated shackle line
then dipped into the electric stun bath,
with any birds who lift their
heads proceeding fully conscious
before having their throats
cut open by a rotating blade.
A worker stands by with a knife for
any birds who miss the first blade.
Farmed turkeys have
been selectively bred
to grow so large that they
cannot naturally mate,
so the turkey industry relies
on artificial insemination,
shown here at a free range farm in Victoria
though considered standard practice
at the small number of
Australian turkey hatcheries.
Highly inquisitive birds, they are
raised in much the same way as broilers,
with 10-14000 per shed equating
to six turkeys per square metre.
Genetic alterations and artificial
lighting to maximise feeding,
contribute to a growth rate double
that of their wild counterparts.
They rapidly reach a weight
their legs cannot support.
Living in their own waste, wounds
can quickly become infected.
The frequency of deaths
increases with age
to an average rate of 3-5% for females
near the end of their 12
week lifespan in the sheds,
and 10-12% for males near the
end of their 16 week lifespan.
The dead birds are collected
and dumped like rubbish.
The rest are trucked to the slaughterhouse,
where they are punched, kicked and beaten
while being shackled upside-down
onto the slaughter line.
Smaller slaughterhouses may
use individual killing cones.
4 to 5 million are killed
every year in Australia,
most of which is purchased and
consumed around Christmas.
For the rest of the year, or even for
years at a time, they are frozen.
As with broiler chickens, macerators
are still used in duck hatcheries
for the weak or deformed ducklings who
arent expected to survive the grow-out.
Duck farming shares many similarities
with broiler and turkey farming.
Trucked from the hatchery
on their first day of life,
the ducklings are grown at an
accelerated rate over just 7 weeks,
housed with thousands of others
in rarely-cleaned sheds where
disease and fatalities are common.
Ducks are aquatic animals, so they
naturally have weak leg and thigh joints
as they dont normally need to hold their
body weight for extended periods of time.
Where surface water is available,
ducks will float for long periods,
reducing pressure on their
muscular and skeletal system.
However, when surface water is denied,
as in most Australian farms including
those labelled as free range,
ducks must hold their entire body
weight on their legs for up to 7 weeks
often much longer for
ducks kept for breeding
resulting in lameness, dislocated
joints and broken bones.
Selective breeding aimed at
growing ducks faster and heavier,
coupled with the
insufficient bone formation
of their juvenile skeletal system,
adds even more pressure on their
already weak leg and thigh joints.
Without water for even dipping their heads,
ducks are unable to keep their
eyes, nostrils and feathers clean,
worsening the risk of disease or blindness.
Living in their own waste and the
resulting high levels of ammonia
can cause painful burns on their feet
and exacerbate wounds and injuries.
These poor environmental
conditions and overcrowding
commonly lead to neurological disease where
incoordination, and head and neck tremors,
are followed by paralysis,
convulsions, coma and death.
When sick or injured ducks
are found by workers,
they are killed by having
their necks broken.
After 49 days, theyre
collected into crates
and forklifted onto trucks to
be sent to the slaughterhouse.
Many dont survive the trip.
Just like chickens and turkeys,
ducks are hung by their feet
onto the slaughter line.
The typical electric stun bath, once
again, is not always effective,
with many birds having their
throats cut open while conscious
and eventually dying from blood loss
or by drowning in the scalding tank.
As of 2018, three
states in Australia
have banned the recreational shooting
of wild ducks on cruelty grounds,
but in Victoria, South
Australia and Tasmania,
the practice remains legal
during an open season each year.
The population of waterbirds in
Victoria has been steadily declining,
in 2017 hitting the lowest
numbers in 34 years,
yet the hunt continues under
justification of increased business
in the rural communities
surrounding the wetlands,
and the general enjoyment and
satisfaction felt by the hunters.
Computer simulation estimates and the
observations of rescuers on the wetlands
indicate that duck shooters leave at least
as many birds wounded and uncaptured
as they kill and capture, amounting
to many thousands of ducks
left to suffer or die
from untreated injuries.
Additionally, the bodies of
many legally protected species
such as the rare and
endangered Freckled Duck
have been retrieved from the
wetlands during hunting season,
with shooters either failing to
identify the species before firing,
or just firing anyway.
Around 80% of the worlds
down and feathers
used for items like jackets, sleeping
bags and bedding come from China,
where the live plucking of ducks and
geese remains a common practice.
This involves painfully ripping the
feathers out of the birds skin,
leaving open and bloody wounds,
a process repeated multiple times
before they are finally slaughtered.
Even suppliers claiming certification
under the Responsible Down Standard
have been found engaging in live plucking.
Ultimately, it isnt possible to know
whether particular down products
in Australia or elsewhere
come from these farms.
Like humans, cows are
strongly maternal beings
who form close bonds with their young,
and must give birth in
order to produce milk.
On dairy farms, they are
forcefully impregnated
every year to keep this milk flowing,
usually by artificial insemination
rather than natural mating,
which requires workers to insert
their arm into the cows anus
to hold her cervix in place while injecting
her with semen collected from a bull.
Their calves are taken away
mere hours after being born
so that the milk intended for them can be
collected and sold for human consumption.
Over the days following separation,
the mothers bellow day and night,
searching for their calves.
Theyre known to grieve
for days or even weeks.
The male calves, called bobby calves,
are considered useless
to the dairy industry
because theyll never be
able to produce milk.
They are kept isolated for five days
before being herded onto a truck,
and sent to the slaughterhouse.
They can be withheld food for the
last 30 hours of their lives.
Starved, confused and
desperate for affection,
they cry for their mothers from the
holding pens of the slaughterhouse
where theyll be killed
the following morning.
Those who avoid the stunner
or who are improperly stunned
are killed while conscious.
Around 700,000 male calves are slaughtered
as waste products of the dairy industry
every year in Australia alone.
A small number of male calves are
grown out for longer, up to 20 weeks,
to be slaughtered for veal.
The female calves are
also kept isolated,
fed on powdered milk replacer,
eventually to join the cycle after
being impregnated themselves.
2-3 times per day, the lactating cows
are herded into the milking shed
and hooked up to industrial
milking machines.
In natural conditions, they
can live up to 20 years.
On dairy farms they last only 4 to 8 years,
some known as downers
succumbing to the pressure
of continuous impregnation and
producing up to 10 times more milk
than they naturally would,
the rest sent to slaughter when their
milk production begins to slow down
or they become too injured to continue.
Artificial insemination is preferred to
natural mating in the beef industry also.
Calves raised for beef are subjected to a
variety of painful surgical procedures
without anaesthesia, including
disbudding or dehorning
ear tagging
castration, either with a blade,
or by a practice called ringing,
where an elastic band is tightly clamped
around the base of the testicles,
restricting blood blow until
eventually they rot and fall off.
and branding with a hot iron.
Those who get sick typically lack
veterinary care and deteriorate quickly.
Drugs including antibiotics, growth
hormones, vitamins and supplements,
and progesterone for maintaining
pregnancy are injected
or inserted vaginally
or orally.
These and other regular routines like
sorting or checking for pregnancy
see the cattle forcefully
herded through the yard system
into a restraint box called a
crush for individual attention.
Around 40% of Australias total beef supply
and 80% of beef sold in
major domestic supermarkets
comes from cattle who have spent
the last 10-15% of their lives
packed into barren feedlots,
where they are fattened up with grain
before slaughter at 18 months of age.
Theyre forced into the knockbox, from
which they will desperately try to escape.
The captive bolt gun is the most
common method of stunning cows,
but the smaller guns especially are often
ineffective against such large animals,
causing only pain and limited
mobility, but not unconsciousness.
A rifle is a less common alternative.
In addition to witnessing the
animals before them being stunned,
killed, and sometimes even the processing,
in most cases they are also forced to
hear their fate from the next room.
For cows slaughtered while pregnant,
the blood from their unborn calves,
known as fetal calf serum
or fetal bovine serum,
is of great value to the
pharmaceutical industry,
fetching around $600 per litre.
The hides of cows and bobby calves are sent
to tanneries to be turned into leather,
the majority of which is
then exported overseas.
There is a common misconception
that leather is a by-product of the
meat industry intended to reduce waste.
It is far more accurate to
say that it is a co-product,
sometimes more economically
valuable than meat
to the point where more and more animals
are being killed for their skin
rather than for their flesh.
Cheap leather for use in shoes,
handbags and other accessories
is also imported to Australia,
the United States and Europe
from developing countries
like India and Bangladesh.
As cows are considered sacred
by the Hindu religion,
their slaughter is illegal
in 24 of Indias 29 states.
To be legally slaughtered for leather,
they must first be transported
hundreds or thousands of kilometres
to one of the five exempt states or
across the border to Bangladesh.
Depending on the route and
the number of animals
sometimes in the thousands much
of this transport can occur on foot.
In preparation, many have
shoes nailed into their feet
and ropes threaded tightly
through their noses.
Exhausted, starving and thirsty,
many collapse along the way,
compelled to stand by having their nose
ropes pulled or their tails broken
being beaten with sticks, or having
chilli pepper rubbed into their eyes.
For the rest of the journey, they
are crowded into and out of trucks,
their horns piercing and gouging each
other and their bones often breaking.
Those who make it to the slaughterhouse
are killed in front of each other
without prior stunning,
some even skinned alive.
The hides are soaked in toxic chemicals
known to cause cancer or
chronic skin diseases,
often by children.
The fundamental concept of rodeos
is the physical control and domination
of weaker, more vulnerable beings.
Calves, steers and bulls
are physically provoked
for the entertainment of spectators
in some 240 rodeo events held
across Australia every year.
Normally quite docile animals,
they endure tail twisting,
electric prodding
and other physical abuse behind the scenes,
as well as the use of metal spurs and
straps tightened around their abdomens,
to make them buck and appear wild.
With intensity and risk integral
factors for an entertaining show,
injuries are inevitable.
Calf and steer roping involves the
lassoing of terrified animals
as they try to run away, violently
jerking them to a halt,
and commonly resulting in bruising,
broken limbs, horns and even necks,
ligament tearing, internal haemorrhaging
and subcutaneous tissue damage.
Winter lambing is the
practice of impregnating sheep
so that they give birth in winter months,
meaning their lambs are weaned in
spring when pastures are most fertile.
While this allows the lambs
to grow more quickly,
it results in 10-15 million newborn
lambs roughly one in every four
dying within 48 hours of birth
from exposure to the harsh cold.
For sheep farmers, this is still
preferable to the higher feed costs
of lambing in warmer months.
The Merino breed, accounting for around
80% of the wool produced in Australia,
have been selectively bred
to have wrinkled skin
resulting in excessive amounts of wool
while making them much
more prone to flystrike.
To reduce soiling and the risk of flystrike
for the lambs who make it to summer,
their tails are docked or cut off entirely,
and they are often mulesed
at the same time,
which involves cutting off the
skin around their buttocks
and the base of their
tail with metal shears.
If the lambs are younger than 6 months,
it is legal to do this
without any pain relief.
Sheep shearers are paid by the number
of sheep shorn, not by the hour,
so speed is prioritised over precision,
and there is no requirement for
formal training or accreditation.
After a few years, when they can
no longer produce enough wool
to be considered profitable, the sheep are
sent to slaughter and sold as mutton,
while lambs raised for meat are killed
between 4 and 12 months of age,
far short of a natural
lifespan of 12-14 years.
19 million of the 32 million sheep
killed each year in Australia
go through saleyards,
an intermediary between farms and
slaughterhouses or private buyers,
where animals also including cattle,
calves, horses, poultry and pigs,
are auctioned off.
Heat stress, dehydration, exhaustion,
or pre-existing conditions
are common causes of deaths at saleyards.
Most of the sheep are bought by
slaughterhouses for their meat.
No animal at a slaughterhouse
walks willingly to their death.
Again electrical stunning
proves regularly ineffective,
causing only pain and terrifying
the animals even further
in their final moments.
Bolt gun stunning is no better.
Regardless of how effective
stunning may appear,
its impossible to know with
certainty whether an animal
has been rendered completely
unconscious and insensible to pain,
or is merely paralysed and unable to
move, while still feeling everything.
In their fear and desperation,
some manage to briefly escape,
directly confronted with the
bodies of those before them,
before being forced back into the
race, knowing that theyll be next.
Goats are farmed for dairy in
much the same way as cows,
repeatedly impregnated to ensure
a continuous supply of milk.
A niche industry in Australia
with only around 65 farms,
goats milk is marketed as a more
easily digestible alternative
suitable for people with
allergies to cows milk.
Worldwide, more people drink the
milk of goats than any other animal.
The male kids, unable
to ever produce milk,
are generally considered waste products
and killed on farm shortly after birth
while the female kids are grown to
become milk producers themselves,
though some farms will raise and
sell their excess goats for meat.
The lactating mothers
are milked twice daily
for up to ten years before slaughter,
at their peak producing 4 litres
of milk per day to be sold fresh
or turned into cheese, butter,
ice-cream, yoghurt and soap.
Australia is the largest exporter
of goat meat in the world,
the majority of it going
to the United States.
Only 10% comes from goats bred and farmed
for meat, the rest from rangeland goats,
a wild breed originating
from escaped domestic goats
brought to Australia by European settlers.
These free-roaming goats are
captured and transported
to feedlots known as goat depots, where
they are fattened prior to slaughter.
Pregnant animals being sent
to slaughter is not uncommon,
and inevitably, some will give birth on the
transport trucks or in the holding pens
shortly before they are
herded to the kill floor,
their babies left behind to die
from starvation or exposure,
calling out for their dead mothers.
Salmon is the most popularly
eaten fish in Australia,
with almost 40,000 tonnes
consumed every year.
They are farmed offshore
in underwater cages,
primarily in bays on the south
and west coasts of Tasmania
due to the cooler waters.
Each cage can hold
up to 60,000 fish,
transferred from the inland
hatchery at 12-18 months of age.
As they grow, their space
within the cages decreases
until they are packed tightly together.
A 2017 study on farmed salmon in Australia,
Norway, Chile, Scotland and Canada
found that about half of the
fish in these farms are deaf
as a result of accelerated growth rates
deforming their sound receptors.
The world-heritage Macquarie
Harbour on Tasmanias west coast
is home to the largest concentration
of fish farms in the country,
with the salmon industrys three key
players Tassal, Huon and Petuna
all owning several farms
comprising up to 2 dozen cages.
In the one year period to September 2016,
over 21,000 tonnes of uneaten fish food
and untold amounts of excrement
ended up in the harbour.
Such high levels of pollution lead
to dangerously low levels of oxygen
in the water and greater risks of disease,
contributing to large numbers
of deaths within the farms.
Numerous mass mortality
incidents from 2015 to 2018
have been attributed to a mixture
of suffocation from low oxygen,
human error, and disease.
The largest of the three companies, Tassal,
boasts an accepted survival rate
of 83% across all their farms.
After 15-18 months in these ocean cages,
when theyve reached about 7kg each,
the salmon are sucked
up through a bore tube
into the harvest vessel where they
are either immediately killed
or transported alive in tanks to
the onshore processing facility.
Barramundi are farmed in all states
of Australia except Tasmania.
In the colder southern states,
they are raised with thousands
of others in small indoor tanks.
While in the northern states,
theyre raised either in offshore
sea cages similar to salmon farms
or in outdoor pond systems,
used also for trout.
The supposed humane method of
harvesting and killing farmed fish
is to suck them into icy water
to freeze them to death.
Far from humane, it is a
slow and painful death,
sometimes taking half
an hour to kill.
Fish killed for sashimi, a Japanese
delicacy favouring freshness,
are stabbed in the head before
having their jugular vein cut open
and then are put back into
the ice slurry to bleed out.
Stores and restaurants displaying live fish
allow customers intent on freshness
to choose which individuals
they would like killed.
Three quarters of the seafood consumed in
Australia is imported from other countries,
of which the most significant species
are prawns, salmon and tuna.
Commercial fishing trawlers drag large
nets through the water behind them,
indiscriminately capturing
all species in their wake.
Around 85% of the worlds fish stocks
are now being fished to full
capacity or are overfished.
At the current rate,
it is anticipated that our oceans
will be void of fish by 2048.
The rabbit farming industry in
Australia is a struggling one.
Highly contagious diseases introduced
to eradicate wild rabbits,
carried by insects, can quickly
wipe out entire farms,
while others struggle to compete
with the cheaper price of wild rabbits
trapped and killed by hunters.
Farmed meat rabbits spend
their entire lives
in wire cages suspended above the floor,
unable to exhibit any natural behaviours
like digging, hiding or jumping.
A build-up of faeces on
the floor beneath them
creates high levels of ammonia.
Female rabbits kept for breeding can
be forced to live in these conditions
for up to 56 weeks while
they produce 7 litters.
Most of the rabbits, capable of living for
8-12 years, are killed at 12 weeks old.
3 to 4 thousand rabbits are used for
scientific research and testing
each year in Australia,
many of them coming from
this facility in Victoria.
Most fur products sold in Australia
are imported from overseas,
much of that harvested
from rabbits.
In 2015, clothing brand Akubra shut
down their Australian operations
and began importing
rabbit fur from Europe.
Australia also imports fur from China,
the worlds largest fur exporter.
Of ten rabbit fur farms visited
by an undercover investigator,
half engaged in the practice of
plucking the fur from live rabbits,
a process repeated every 3 months,
between which the rabbits
live in wire cages.
Plucking results in longer,
more profitable hair
compared to shearing
or clipping.
As rabbits age,
they grow less fur,
and ultimately are hung up and
skinned for a final harvesting,
sometimes while still alive.
12 rabbits are killed to make the
felt for just one Akubra hat.
Worldwide, over one billion rabbits
are killed for their fur every year.
Minks are a common source
of fur for clothing,
accessories and even eyelash extensions.
As there are no mink farms in Australia,
their fur is imported from overseas.
In the wild, they would individually occupy
up to 2500 acres of wetland habitat.
Despite generations of
being bred for fur,
these naturally inquisitive
and solitary animals
have been found to suffer
greatly in captivity,
cramped in small wire cages where
chronic boredom and stress
lead to frantic pacing and self-mutilation.
Minks used for breeding are kept in
these cages for four to five years,
giving birth to a litter each
year of 3 or 4 surviving kittens,
who are slaughtered and
skinned at 6 months old.
Gas chambers or enclosed boxes
filled with engine exhaust
are common ways of
killing the minks,
but are not always lethal, resulting
in some waking up while being skinned.
Anal electrocution or
simply breaking their necks
are common alternatives.
After minks, foxes are the second
most commonly farmed animal for fur,
facing many of the same problems.
Chinese fur farmers claim that
their margins are so slim,
they cant afford to kill foxes with
anything but the most brutally
efficient of methods,
with many foxes being skinned
alive to save time and effort.
Introduced to Australia by British settlers
for their traditional sport of fox hunting
and later to control the
spread of introduced rabbits,
foxes are now classified as
pests across the country,
with numbers estimated at over 7 million.
The hunting and shooting of foxes
on personally-owned land
is legal in all states.
Often consumed accidentally
by native wildlife
or companion animals like dogs,
the most common method of reducing
numbers is the use of 1080 poison baits.
1080 is colourless,
odourless and tasteless,
causing slow, agonising
deaths to all its victims.
While Australia, the EU and the US
have banned the import
of dog and cat fur,
investigations show that
Chinese dog and cat fur
is frequently mislabelled
as fox, rabbit or mink.
Each year in China, around
2 million dogs and cats
are bred, stolen from homes,
or taken from the street,
squeezed into wire cages
and sometimes transported for
days without food or water,
to be hanged, bled, beaten
or strangled to death
or even skinned alive.
Around 450,000 puppies are
sold in Australia each year.
Around 85% come from
unregistered breeders,
but with minimal oversight in place,
even the registered breeders
may operate puppy factories,
churning out both pure
and mixed-breed puppies
for sale in pet stores or online.
In these factories it can be entirely legal
to keep a mother dog confined
to a barren concrete cell
in a shed for 23 hours a day,
continually reimpregnated.
They are denied love and companionship,
treated instead as breeding machines.
These cute puppies, sold
for thousands of dollars,
often suffer from diseases
or other health conditions,
or behavioural difficulties,
as a result of the conditions
they were exposed to in the farm
and generations of selective breeding.
"Hi, how are you"
"Yeah, good. Will you be getting
more of the golden retrievers in?"
"Ah, yes, golden retrievers if I'm not
mistaken will be this coming Saturday"
"This coming Saturday? Ah okay"
"And... where do they come from?
Are they from a..."
"We have our own breeder"
"Are they a puppy farm?"
"Obviously no."
"Oh they're so beautiful!"
"And it's a good breeder?"
"Yeah, definitely, they're registered"
"So it's not like... I've been hearing
bad things about puppy farms...
It's not a puppy farm?"
"Obviously no."
"Puppy farms you will get
puppies really sick"
"Sick puppies."
Meanwhile, an estimated 200-250,000
surrendered or stray dogs and cats
are euthanised each year in shelters
and pounds across the country,
the vast majority of them
healthy but unwanted.
Despite numerous widely publicised
scandals in recent years,
greyhound racing continues
to be a large and powerful
gambling and entertainment industry
in Australia and around the world.
The rapid acceleration and extreme speed
at which these large dogs
chase the lure around a track
inevitably results in
collisions, falls and injuries,
the most frequent being muscle tears,
ligament ruptures and tarsal fractures.
Each week on Australian tracks up
to 200 dogs are reported injured
with an estimated 6 to 10
greyhounds either dying on track
or being put down afterwards.
Greyhounds have a natural
lifespan of 12-14 years.
Racing greyhounds begin their
careers at around 18 months of age,
and finish by the time they
are 4 and a half years old.
In New South Wales they have a career
that lasts, on average, for only 363 days.
Between 13,000 and 17,000 young greyhounds
are killed annually in Australia.
Of the 97000 greyhounds
bred in New South Wales
in the 12 year period to 2016,
50-70% or more were killed because
they were considered too slow
or unsuitable for racing.
There is a growing body of evidence
showing greyhounds are frequently
killed in inhumane ways,
with trainers preferring the cheaper
option of gunshot or bludgeoning
over paying for a vet to euthanise.
The dogs bodies may then be dumped
in pits on private properties
or scattered in bushland.
The use of live animals as bait when
training greyhounds to chase the lure,
though illegal, has been
found to be widespread,
with a 2015 New South Wales Inquiry
being told that 85 to
90 percent of trainers
engage in the practice.
Untold numbers of terrified piglets,
rabbits, possums, chickens and kittens
have been torn apart for
the sake of teaching
otherwise gentle, sleepy
animals to run around a track.
Horses are not skeletally mature
until around 5 years of age,
but commonly their racing careers
begin when theyre only 2
due to the lure of higher prize money
and a quicker return on investment.
This drastically increases
the risk of injuries,
with up to 80% suffering
from shin soreness,
or dorsal metacarpal disease.
Post-race examinations have
found a high prevalence
of blood in the horses'
windpipes and lungs,
along with an increasing frequency
and severity of stomach ulcers
as training and racing progressed.
On the track, they are painfully
whipped to encourage greater speeds.
Race rules limit whipping in the
earlier stages of the race,
but in the last hundred metres
when the horses are fatigued
and less able to respond,
there are no limits
and they are often whipped
relentlessly until the finish line.
Jumps racing is statistically 19 times
more dangerous than flat racing,
with violent falls a regular occurrence.
Roughly half of the horses
involved in jumps races
each year in Australia disappear,
quietly exiting the industry
in unknown circumstances,
never to race or be heard from again,
or killed on track,
with green screens erected to
obscure the view of racegoers.
Nationally, 11-12,000 racing horses
are newly registered each year,
while roughly the same
number leave the industry,
largely as a result of poor performance,
unsuitable temperaments or injuries.
Many of these end up at knackeries,
where they are killed for pet food
or to feed racing greyhounds.
Others end up at one of two
licensed horse abattoirs
that export horsemeat
for human consumption.
Horses are also used in rodeos.
Camels were brought to Australia in
the 1800s to be used for transport,
then released into the wild following
the advent of automobiles.
By 2008, their population was
estimated at around 600,000,
leading the government to
establish a culling project
that effectively halved their numbers,
primarily by shooting them from helicopters
but also by rounding them up and
trucking them to slaughterhouses
for export to the United
States and Middle East,
a practice which continues today.
Having spent their entire lives
roaming freely without human contact,
the sudden confinement
and forceful handling
is completely foreign to them.
An increasing number of
camels caught in the wild
are being diverted to camel
dairies, an expanding industry
that promotes itself as a healthier
alternative to cow milk products
and a less wasteful alternative
to aerial culling.
Between 6 and 10 million animals
are used for research and testing
purposes in Australia every year,
including 1-2 million mice.
Many of these experiments involve live
surgical procedures without pain relief,
or exposure to toxins or diseases.
Ultimately, all mice subjected to
research or testing will be killed,
as they cannot legally be
released from the lab.
Carbon dioxide gassing, or overdosing
with the anaesthetic isoflurane
through gas or injection, are
two common ways of killing mice
when they have served their purpose.
These days, scientific
exploration and discovery
deals with nuances of human physiology,
of which animals are not
appropriate models.
A 2015 study by The National Institutes
of Health in the United States
found that a staggering 95% of all drugs
that are shown to be safe and
effective in animal testing
go on to fail in human trials.
Uncritical reliance on the
results of animal tests
in disregard of potentially
more accurate alternatives
utilising human tissue and cells,
cadavers, simulators and
computational models,
may have cost the health and lives
of tens of thousands of humans
and billions of animals.
Hundreds of macaques,
marmosets and baboons
are provided annually to
Australian research laboratories
by three government-funded
breeding facilities.
Hidden from public sight
behind intense security,
these laboratories carry out a
variety of biomedical experiments
on these highly intelligent
animals before discarding them.
Other primates are held
captive in circuses,
where they are released from the
extreme boredom of their cage
only to perform for spectators
or, in zoos.
Captive lions and tigers in
Australia serve the same purpose,
living a life of boredom and frustration
for the entertainment of paying visitors.
While on the surface, exhibits showcasing
these and other exotic animals
may inspire wonder and excitement,
few patrons observe long enough
to recognise the repetitiveness
of their behaviour,
signs of a psychological condition
common across all animals in captivity,
dubbed zoochosis.
In the tropical heat of Queensland,
Sea World hosts Australias
only captive polar bears.
These animals are naturally adapted
for freezing Arctic conditions
and have been found in the wild
to swim over 70km in only 24 hours
with an average travel
range of 3000km per year.
Here, they are confined to an enclosure
roughly 30 by 40 metres wide
for their entire lives.
Seal shows are a popular
attraction at zoos,
with seals taught to perform tricks for
food in front of a large audience.
"And that's a guarantee that your
seafood comes from a fishery
that helps protect fish stocks,
jobs, and the environment."
Off stage, they languish in small
pens like any other zoo animal,
swimming constantly in repetitive
circles or crying out in distress.
In the wild, dolphins are known to
travel up to 65km 40 miles a day,
and are constantly on the
move foraging for food,
playing and fighting within their pods.
They share with humans and great apes alone
the trait of self-awareness, with
evidence of intuition and empathy.
There is no captive situation
that can provide for all the behavioural
needs of these highly intelligent,
cognitively complex animals.
Around 80% of Sea World
Australias dolphins
have been bred in captivity
and can never be released,
their entire lives spent performing
daily for the reward of food.
Achieving the right level
of hunger prior to shows
is a crucial consideration
for a good performance,
in what is arguably the parks
most popular attraction.
With over $133 million in
admission fees annually,
less than 1 percent is spent on their
heavily promoted research, rescue
and rehabilitation initiatives.
Australias federal
government ruled in 1985
that no more dolphinariums
be established,
and that existing ones
should be phased out,
after receiving evidence
that cetaceans in captivity
suffer from stress, behavioural
abnormalities, breeding problems,
high mortality rates and shorter lifespans,
even though at initial glance they may
seem content with their conditions.
Today, just two facilities remain,
able to continue operating
because of a loophole
that allowed them to keep and
display animals born in captivity,
including those bred from
rescued wild dolphins
who themselves are required to
be rehabilitated and released.
This practice of rescuing,
breeding and releasing
allows these parks to
keep the gene pool strong
to ensure their shows can continue
and their gates can remain open.
While Australian dolphin parks are unable
to capture and import healthy wild
dolphins, this remains a reality
of the animal entertainment
industry elsewhere in the world,
with the coastal Japanese town of
Taiji a common point of capture.
Every year from September to March,
thousands of dolphins and
other small cetaceans
are herded into a quiet cove at Taiji
and brutally slaughtered
by local fishermen,
who see them either as a
source of income or as pests.
Dolphin trainers have been
observed assisting fishermen
in herding the dolphins,
picking out a select few to
be spared from the slaughter
and instead transported to aquariums
and dolphin parks around the world.
If the greatness of a nation
and its moral progress
can be judged by the way
its animals are treated
what does that say about Australia?
What does it say
about New Zealand?
The United States?
Canada?
Mexico?
The United Kingdom?
Israel?
Spain?
What does it say about
us, as a species?
In our entire recorded history, 619
million humans have been killed by war.
We kill the same number
of animals every 3 days,
and this isnt even including
fish and other sea creatures
whose deaths are so great they
are only measured in tonnes.
But before we kill them,
we have to breed them
Confine and exploit them,
for food...
entertainment...
clothing...
and research.
Their entire lives, from birth to death,
are controlled by industries
who care only for profit.
An empire...
of suffering...
and blood.
Paid for by consumers who are told
that their treatment was ethical.
Free range, local, organic.
That their deaths were humane,
that cruelty to animals doesnt
happen here in our country,
and if it does, our
government, our authorities,
will find it and stamp it out.
And us, as consumers, have little
reason to think otherwise,
because to eat and use animals is normal,
weve done it forever.
Because the products for
sale on supermarket shelves
are so far removed from the
individuals who once existed,
some only briefly,
some for years without reprieve.
Individuals who share with us and our
companion animals we love so dearly,
our capacity to feel love.
Happiness.
Grief and mourning.
Who share with us, our capacity to suffer.
Our desire to live,
to be free,
to be seen not as objects,
not for our utility to others,
but for who we are
as individuals.
Beings in our own right,
not units of production.
Not stock.
He, she, and they, not it.
The truth is,
there is no humane way to kill
someone who wants to live.
It is not a question of treatment,
or better ways of doing the wrong thing.
Bigger cages, smaller
stocking densities,
or less painful gas.
We tell ourselves that they
have lived good lives,
and in the end, they
dont know whats coming
and dont feel a thing.
But they do.
In their final hours, minutes and seconds,
there is always fear, there is always pain.
The smells of blood.
The screaming of other
members of their species,
with whom they have shared their lives.
Never a willingness or desire to die,
but rather, a desperation to live,
a frantic fight to their last breath.
And never are they shown mercy or kindness,
instead mocked,
laughed at,
kicked,
beaten,
tossed like ragdolls,
or sent into a mincer because
they were born the wrong sex.
We take their children.
We take their freedom.
We take their lives,
sending them healthy and
whole into a slaughterhouse
to come out as packaged
pieces on the other side,
and we tell ourselves that
somehow, along the way,
something humane and ethical happened.
And in the process, we harm ourselves.
"The World Health Organisation
publishing a report this morning
on the dangers of processed
and red meat..."
We destroy our environment,
emitting through animal agriculture more
greenhouse gases than any other industry,
tearing down our forests and
slaughtering our native animals
to make room for farms.
The worlds cattle alone
consume a quantity of food
equal to the caloric needs
of 8.7 billion humans,
and yet one in nine
humans 795 million
suffer from chronic undernourishment,
and 844 million lack clean water
while 1000 litres are used
to produce 1 litre of milk
and 15,000 litres for one kilogram of beef.
And yet we continue to
justify animal agriculture
by claiming that its normal,
necessary and natural.
That the animal kingdom, or
certain species within it,
are inferior to ourselves, because they
lack our specific type of intelligence,
because theyre weaker and
cannot defend themselves.
We believe that, in our
apparent superiority,
we have earned the right to exercise
power, authority and dominion
over those we perceive to be inferior,
for our own short-sighted ends.
It is a justification that
has been used before.
By the white man, to
enslave the black,
or to take their land and their children.
By the Nazis, to murder the Jews.
By men, to silence and oppress women.
Are we doomed to repeat
history over and over?
Does this superiority complex,
this pure selfishness,
define who we are as a species?
Or are we capable of something more?
Most people consider
themselves animal lovers.
We recognise them not as objects
but as complex beings with
whom we share the planet,
our lives,
our homes.
We take pleasure from their pleasure,
we anguish over their pain
celebrating their intelligence
and individuality
as we welcome them into our families,
or revere them in their natural element.
The thought of unnecessarily causing them
harm or suffering, is to many, unbearable.
So for those who feed,
clothe or entertain us,
we choose to follow a
narrative that minimises
or altogether eliminates
their suffering.
The picturesque family farm and
the iconic, loving farmer.
A humane and painless end, a small price
happily paid for a life well lived.
An arrangement of mutual benefit.
Hidden by this narrative,
out of sight, out of mind,
they cease to be individuals,
most known only as livestock,
faceless units of production in a
system of incomprehensible scale,
exempt from the cruelty laws that
protect our companion animals.
Their suffering
unseen and unheard.
Their value determined only by
their usefulness to humankind,
rationalised by a belief
in our own superiority
and the notion that
might equals right.
A notion that must be questioned.
In the 1960s, there were around
50,000 pig farms in Australia.
Today, there are less than 1400,
and yet the total number of pigs bred
and slaughtered for food has increased.
As of 2015, 49 farms housed 60% of
the countrys total pig population.
Most pigs bred for food begin
life in a farrowing crate,
a small pen with a central cage,
designed to allow the piglets
to feed from their mother, the sow,
while preventing her from moving around.
The frequency of stillborn
or mummified piglets
generally increases with each litter
as the sows bodies become less
capable of handling the large litter
sizes encouraged by the industry.
10-18% of piglets who are born alive
wont make it until weaning age,
succumbing to disease,
starvation or dehydration,
or being accidentally crushed
by their trapped mothers.
Included in the death toll
are the runts of the litter,
who are considered economically
unviable and killed by staff.
Those who survive the first few days
are mutilated without pain relief,
their tails and teeth cut
to reduce cannibalism
and pieces cut from their ears, or tags
punched in, as a means of identification.
They are taken from their
mothers at 3-5 weeks of age.
Most are destined for slaughter
around 5 months later.
As they age, they are moved into grower
pens, crowded together in their own waste.
Some female pigs are kept on to replace
the sows in the breeding cycle,
carefully selected for their perceived
ability to produce large litters.
Most pig farms utilise artificial
insemination rather than natural mating,
as it allows them to impregnate up to
30-40 female pigs from a single boar.
Workers collect the semen
by masturbating the boars,
then insert it into the sows via a
raised catheter known as a pork stork.
Boars are still physically used to excite
the females prior to insemination,
but are prevented from actually mating.
When confirmed pregnant, the sow is moved
into one of two types of confined housing
for the entirety of her 16 week gestation.
Sow stalls are individual cages in
which, like in the farrowing crates,
sows are only able to take one or
two steps forwards or backwards
and are unable to turn around.
While gradually being phased out by the
majority of piggeries in Australia,
sow stalls remain entirely legal with no
penalties for keeping sows confined to them
for longer than the
voluntary limit of 5 days.
This is similar to the apparent ban
on sow stalls in the European Union
which actually allows up to 4
weeks in them per pregnancy.
When given the choice, pigs
will relieve themselves
far away from where they sleep and eat.
The extreme confinement takes
a heavy psychological toll.
The alternative, group housing,
sees pregnant pigs packed
into small concrete pens.
A lack of space and stimuli can cause
the pigs to become aggressive.
Those who fall into the effluent
system through gaps in the flooring
are left to starve or drown
in the river of waste.
A week before they are due to give birth,
theyre moved into the
farrowing crate cages,
where theyll remain for
the next 4-6 weeks.
Unable to exercise, the sows
muscles will weaken to the point
where she has difficulty
standing up or lying down
To minimise muscle wastage, workers will
force her to stand up at least once daily.
Shell develop pressure sores
from the hard surfaces
Or prolapses and infections
from the physical strain
of repeated farrowing and poor conditions
which can also lead to partial paralysis,
preventing her from reaching the food
and water at the front of her cage
or can even lead to death in the cage.
Shell watch helplessly as her
piglets fall ill and die,
or get mutilated and abused by workers
until they are taken away from her.
Shell endure this cycle
four times over two years
before shes replaced
and sent to slaughter,
or killed and dumped on site.
The term bred free range simply means
that pigs are born outside in small huts,
but then spend the rest
of their lives in sheds,
facing the same overcrowding, health and
behavioural issues as at any pig farm,
whilst being knee deep in their own waste.
Capable of living 10-12 years, most
pigs are killed at just 5-6 months old,
packed onto transportation
trucks at the piggery
and driven often long distances
to the slaughterhouse
without food, water or protection
from extreme heat or cold.
At the slaughterhouse theyll wait in
small concrete or metal holding pens,
typically overnight, still without food
and with limited or no access to water.
In the morning, they are forcefully
herded to the kill floor,
often with an electric prodder.
The most common method of stunning
and killing pigs in Australia,
used at all major pig abattoirs and touted
as the most humane and efficient option,
is the carbon dioxide gas chamber.
A system of rotating cages lowers the
fully-conscious pigs two or three at a time
into the heavily
concentrated gas,
which begins to burn their eyes,
nostrils, sinuses, throat and lungs
while suffocating them.
Lower concentrations of carbon dioxide
would cause less pain and stress,
but would take much longer to
render the pigs unconscious,
making it economically unviable.
Sows are sent into the chamber
gondolas one at a time.
Because of their size, the
gas is less effective,
with some emerging partly conscious,
in which case they may also be
electrically stunned afterwards.
Tipped out the other
side of the chamber,
the pigs throats are cut
and they are bled out.
Electrical stunning, used
at smaller slaughterhouses,
has a much higher chance of failure.
Incorrect amperage, positioning of the
stunner, or length of time applied,
or failing to cut the
throat quickly enough,
can lead to the pig being merely
paralysed and unable to move
while still capable
of feeling pain,
or regaining consciousness
while bleeding out.
Blinking and rhythmic breathing are
strong indicators of consciousness.
One by one, they are picked
off in front of each other.
Captive bolt pistols are another option
used by smaller slaughterhouses.
The penetrative variety fire a rod
through the skull of the animal
to permanently damage their brain,
preventing them from
regaining consciousness,
while non-penetrative bolt pistols deliver
blunt force trauma much like a hammer.
Effective stunning requires the
gun to be angled and positioned
at the correct part of the head,
which is often difficult if
the head is not restrained.
Having witnessed their litter
mates being killed before them,
or being able to smell
the blood on the floor,
they are reluctant to
enter the knockbox.
The bolt gun is even less effective
on larger pigs, like sows.
For them, a rifle may be
used as an alternative.
In this case, accuracy
is even more difficult.
After theyve been bled out, pigs are
dropped into tanks of scalding water
in order to soften their skin
and remove bristles and hair.
Those who havent been stunned and
killed properly finally die by drowning.
The waste products the skins,
bones, hoofs, guts and fat
are trucked to the rendering
plant to be turned into lard
for use in food, soaps,
lubricants and biofuel,
or into other products like gelatine.
Wild pigs were introduced to
Australia with the First Fleet,
and now occupy around 40
percent of the country,
mainly in Queensland and New South Wales.
The practice of pig dogging involves
hunters releasing aggressively trained dogs
to track, chase and maul live pigs,
keeping them pinned down
until the hunters are able to catch
up and finish them off with a knife.
Despite wild pigs being
declared a pest animal,
its not uncommon for hunters to release
young piglets into national parks
so that they can return later to hunt them.
For egg-laying hens, life
begins at the hatchery.
Eggs collected from the parent birds are
stored, incubated and hatched over 31 days.
The male and female chicks are
sorted onto separate conveyor belts.
Here at Australias largest hatchery,
theyve been genetically modified
to make the males a different colour than
the females, allowing for quick sorting.
Unable to ever produce eggs themselves
and a completely different breed
to the chickens used for meat,
the male chicks are
considered waste products,
as are any females perceived
to be deformed or weak.
They are sorted onto a separate
conveyor belt from the healthy females
in their first day of life, and sent into
an industrial blender called a macerator.
This practice is legal and referred
to as humane by the RSPCA.
Smaller hatcheries may
use carbon dioxide gas
or simply suffocate the
chicks in plastic bags.
All commercial egg farms -
caged, barn laid, free range,
organic, RSPCA-approved -
involve the killing of male chicks,
to a total of roughly 12
million per year in Australia.
Meanwhile, the healthy females continue
on to painful debeaking machines.
Hens are debeaked to minimise the
harm they can do to each other
in the confinement of egg farms.
The chicks are then stacked in trays
and trucked to pullet rearing farms,
where theyll remain for 4 months
until they begin laying eggs.
A small number of males will
be spared the macerator
in order to serve with a selection
of hens as parent birds,
laying and fertilising the
eggs for the hatchery.
The other hens are sent out to
egg farms across the country.
Around two-thirds of the 18 million layer
hens at any given time in Australia
are housed in battery cages.
Each shed can contain up to 100,000
hens, with between 4 and 20 per cage,
each hen afforded a space smaller
than a A4 sheet of paper.
They are unable to stretch their wings
or express any natural behaviours
such as dust bathing,
perching or foraging.
Due to decades of genetic
manipulation and selective breeding,
they lay an egg almost every day
for a total of up to 330 per year,
compared to the 10-15 that
a wild hen would lay.
As they age, the poor environment and
physical stress of frequent egg-laying
takes a toll on their health, indicated by
the gradual loss of all of their feathers
and an increasingly pale
comb suggesting anaemia.
Deaths inside the cages are common,
and due to the size of the facilities can
be easily missed for long periods of time
forcing the surviving hens to live
on top of the rotting carcasses.
Newer cage systems collect the faeces
onto conveyor belts beneath the cages,
while older systems allow
it to pile up underneath.
Birds who manage to escape the cages
are left to die in these manure pits.
At 18 months of age, after living in the
cage for over a year, their egg production
will have slowed significantly
enough to be considered spent.
They are depopulated pulled from
the cages and stuffed into crates,
often resulting in bone fractures
due to rough handling.
They are either gassed to death
and then buried or rendered,
or sent to the slaughterhouse, and
replaced by new 4-month old hens.
Up until 2016,
there were no national standards on
what can be claimed as free range eggs.
Now, free range farms are capped
at a maximum outdoor density
of 10,000 hens per hectare
one per square metre
though they still spend most of their
time packed together in large sheds.
Chickens naturally form and live within a
social hierarchy called a pecking order,
but are only able to recognise
around 100 other chickens.
In sheds or paddocks with
thousands of other birds,
their inability to maintain this
pecking order results in chaos.
The weak birds are picked
on with no way to escape.
Disease spreads rapidly.
An outbreak of avian influenza at a New
South Wales free range egg farm in 2013,
believed to be contracted from wild ducks,
led to the culling of
over 400,000 farmed hens.
Many of the larger free range farms also
have cage farms on the same property,
with the eggs from both ending
up in the same packing shed.
A 2009 analysis of Egg Corporation
data indicated that as many
as one in six eggs sold as "free range"
were laid by caged or barn hens.
As with caged farms,
free range hens are sent to slaughter
from just 18 months of age,
far short of their 10
year natural lifespan.
At the slaughterhouse, the hens are
shackled upside-down on a moving line.
They are lowered into a bath of
electrified water to stun them
prior to their throats being
cut by an automated blade,
but if they lift their heads,
they can miss the stun bath,
facing the blade fully conscious
and ultimately drowning in scalding
water further down the process.
The slaughtered hens largely end up
in lower-grade chicken meat products
such as mince, or rendered into
poultry meal for use in pet food
or to be fed back to farmed animals.
Chickens bred for meat, known as broilers,
are a larger breed than egg layers,
designed through human intervention
to grow rapidly to massive sizes.
Their short life begins
at a broiler hatchery.
While both the males and females
are used by this industry,
these hatcheries also use macerators
or gas chambers,
for weak or deformed birds who arent
expected to make it to slaughter weight.
The surviving day-old chicks are
trucked to broiler grow-out farms.
As of 2016, there were 530
broiler farms in Australia,
together housing at any given time a total
population of around 90 million birds.
Each shed holds forty-to-sixty thousand.
Within their first week of life, a
mortality rate of 4-6% is normal,
equating to 1600 to 3600 dead chicks
per shed, roughly 200-500 daily.
The majority of these will have
been found dead by workers,
others who seem weak or injured
will be killed or tossed out alive.
As they grow, they quickly fill out
the available space in the shed,
living amongst a buildup
of their own faeces.
The mortality rate slows, but deaths
are still a regular occurrence.
Not far from the sheds, the bodies
are piled up and composted.
Selective breeding, lack of
exercise due to overcrowding,
artificial lighting and the heavy use of
antibiotics which enhance feed absorption,
have resulted in modern broiler chickens
reaching a slaughter-ready weight
of 3 kilograms in just 35 days,
a dramatic increase from a
natural peak of 2kg in 96 days.
Their bodies have great difficulty
handling this extreme physical pressure,
making skeletal, cardiac and
metabolic disorders common.
Of those who make it to the slaughterhouse,
90% have a detectable abnormal gait.
The sheds are not cleaned for
the entire 5 to 7 week cycle,
causing a high concentration of ammonia
which can irritate and burn their skin
and impede their respiratory system.
Chickens sold under the
RSPCA approved label
are given a single perch running
down the middle of the shed,
but otherwise the conditions
and process are identical.
Depopulation occurs in low light
conditions in the middle of the night,
when the birds are calmest and
unable to see whats happening.
They are typically caught
by hand by contract teams
and jammed into plastic crates,
the crates then forklifted onto trucks
for transport to the slaughterhouse.
Like layer hens, they are hung roughly by
their legs onto the automated shackle line
then dipped into the electric stun bath,
with any birds who lift their
heads proceeding fully conscious
before having their throats
cut open by a rotating blade.
A worker stands by with a knife for
any birds who miss the first blade.
Farmed turkeys have
been selectively bred
to grow so large that they
cannot naturally mate,
so the turkey industry relies
on artificial insemination,
shown here at a free range farm in Victoria
though considered standard practice
at the small number of
Australian turkey hatcheries.
Highly inquisitive birds, they are
raised in much the same way as broilers,
with 10-14000 per shed equating
to six turkeys per square metre.
Genetic alterations and artificial
lighting to maximise feeding,
contribute to a growth rate double
that of their wild counterparts.
They rapidly reach a weight
their legs cannot support.
Living in their own waste, wounds
can quickly become infected.
The frequency of deaths
increases with age
to an average rate of 3-5% for females
near the end of their 12
week lifespan in the sheds,
and 10-12% for males near the
end of their 16 week lifespan.
The dead birds are collected
and dumped like rubbish.
The rest are trucked to the slaughterhouse,
where they are punched, kicked and beaten
while being shackled upside-down
onto the slaughter line.
Smaller slaughterhouses may
use individual killing cones.
4 to 5 million are killed
every year in Australia,
most of which is purchased and
consumed around Christmas.
For the rest of the year, or even for
years at a time, they are frozen.
As with broiler chickens, macerators
are still used in duck hatcheries
for the weak or deformed ducklings who
arent expected to survive the grow-out.
Duck farming shares many similarities
with broiler and turkey farming.
Trucked from the hatchery
on their first day of life,
the ducklings are grown at an
accelerated rate over just 7 weeks,
housed with thousands of others
in rarely-cleaned sheds where
disease and fatalities are common.
Ducks are aquatic animals, so they
naturally have weak leg and thigh joints
as they dont normally need to hold their
body weight for extended periods of time.
Where surface water is available,
ducks will float for long periods,
reducing pressure on their
muscular and skeletal system.
However, when surface water is denied,
as in most Australian farms including
those labelled as free range,
ducks must hold their entire body
weight on their legs for up to 7 weeks
often much longer for
ducks kept for breeding
resulting in lameness, dislocated
joints and broken bones.
Selective breeding aimed at
growing ducks faster and heavier,
coupled with the
insufficient bone formation
of their juvenile skeletal system,
adds even more pressure on their
already weak leg and thigh joints.
Without water for even dipping their heads,
ducks are unable to keep their
eyes, nostrils and feathers clean,
worsening the risk of disease or blindness.
Living in their own waste and the
resulting high levels of ammonia
can cause painful burns on their feet
and exacerbate wounds and injuries.
These poor environmental
conditions and overcrowding
commonly lead to neurological disease where
incoordination, and head and neck tremors,
are followed by paralysis,
convulsions, coma and death.
When sick or injured ducks
are found by workers,
they are killed by having
their necks broken.
After 49 days, theyre
collected into crates
and forklifted onto trucks to
be sent to the slaughterhouse.
Many dont survive the trip.
Just like chickens and turkeys,
ducks are hung by their feet
onto the slaughter line.
The typical electric stun bath, once
again, is not always effective,
with many birds having their
throats cut open while conscious
and eventually dying from blood loss
or by drowning in the scalding tank.
As of 2018, three
states in Australia
have banned the recreational shooting
of wild ducks on cruelty grounds,
but in Victoria, South
Australia and Tasmania,
the practice remains legal
during an open season each year.
The population of waterbirds in
Victoria has been steadily declining,
in 2017 hitting the lowest
numbers in 34 years,
yet the hunt continues under
justification of increased business
in the rural communities
surrounding the wetlands,
and the general enjoyment and
satisfaction felt by the hunters.
Computer simulation estimates and the
observations of rescuers on the wetlands
indicate that duck shooters leave at least
as many birds wounded and uncaptured
as they kill and capture, amounting
to many thousands of ducks
left to suffer or die
from untreated injuries.
Additionally, the bodies of
many legally protected species
such as the rare and
endangered Freckled Duck
have been retrieved from the
wetlands during hunting season,
with shooters either failing to
identify the species before firing,
or just firing anyway.
Around 80% of the worlds
down and feathers
used for items like jackets, sleeping
bags and bedding come from China,
where the live plucking of ducks and
geese remains a common practice.
This involves painfully ripping the
feathers out of the birds skin,
leaving open and bloody wounds,
a process repeated multiple times
before they are finally slaughtered.
Even suppliers claiming certification
under the Responsible Down Standard
have been found engaging in live plucking.
Ultimately, it isnt possible to know
whether particular down products
in Australia or elsewhere
come from these farms.
Like humans, cows are
strongly maternal beings
who form close bonds with their young,
and must give birth in
order to produce milk.
On dairy farms, they are
forcefully impregnated
every year to keep this milk flowing,
usually by artificial insemination
rather than natural mating,
which requires workers to insert
their arm into the cows anus
to hold her cervix in place while injecting
her with semen collected from a bull.
Their calves are taken away
mere hours after being born
so that the milk intended for them can be
collected and sold for human consumption.
Over the days following separation,
the mothers bellow day and night,
searching for their calves.
Theyre known to grieve
for days or even weeks.
The male calves, called bobby calves,
are considered useless
to the dairy industry
because theyll never be
able to produce milk.
They are kept isolated for five days
before being herded onto a truck,
and sent to the slaughterhouse.
They can be withheld food for the
last 30 hours of their lives.
Starved, confused and
desperate for affection,
they cry for their mothers from the
holding pens of the slaughterhouse
where theyll be killed
the following morning.
Those who avoid the stunner
or who are improperly stunned
are killed while conscious.
Around 700,000 male calves are slaughtered
as waste products of the dairy industry
every year in Australia alone.
A small number of male calves are
grown out for longer, up to 20 weeks,
to be slaughtered for veal.
The female calves are
also kept isolated,
fed on powdered milk replacer,
eventually to join the cycle after
being impregnated themselves.
2-3 times per day, the lactating cows
are herded into the milking shed
and hooked up to industrial
milking machines.
In natural conditions, they
can live up to 20 years.
On dairy farms they last only 4 to 8 years,
some known as downers
succumbing to the pressure
of continuous impregnation and
producing up to 10 times more milk
than they naturally would,
the rest sent to slaughter when their
milk production begins to slow down
or they become too injured to continue.
Artificial insemination is preferred to
natural mating in the beef industry also.
Calves raised for beef are subjected to a
variety of painful surgical procedures
without anaesthesia, including
disbudding or dehorning
ear tagging
castration, either with a blade,
or by a practice called ringing,
where an elastic band is tightly clamped
around the base of the testicles,
restricting blood blow until
eventually they rot and fall off.
and branding with a hot iron.
Those who get sick typically lack
veterinary care and deteriorate quickly.
Drugs including antibiotics, growth
hormones, vitamins and supplements,
and progesterone for maintaining
pregnancy are injected
or inserted vaginally
or orally.
These and other regular routines like
sorting or checking for pregnancy
see the cattle forcefully
herded through the yard system
into a restraint box called a
crush for individual attention.
Around 40% of Australias total beef supply
and 80% of beef sold in
major domestic supermarkets
comes from cattle who have spent
the last 10-15% of their lives
packed into barren feedlots,
where they are fattened up with grain
before slaughter at 18 months of age.
Theyre forced into the knockbox, from
which they will desperately try to escape.
The captive bolt gun is the most
common method of stunning cows,
but the smaller guns especially are often
ineffective against such large animals,
causing only pain and limited
mobility, but not unconsciousness.
A rifle is a less common alternative.
In addition to witnessing the
animals before them being stunned,
killed, and sometimes even the processing,
in most cases they are also forced to
hear their fate from the next room.
For cows slaughtered while pregnant,
the blood from their unborn calves,
known as fetal calf serum
or fetal bovine serum,
is of great value to the
pharmaceutical industry,
fetching around $600 per litre.
The hides of cows and bobby calves are sent
to tanneries to be turned into leather,
the majority of which is
then exported overseas.
There is a common misconception
that leather is a by-product of the
meat industry intended to reduce waste.
It is far more accurate to
say that it is a co-product,
sometimes more economically
valuable than meat
to the point where more and more animals
are being killed for their skin
rather than for their flesh.
Cheap leather for use in shoes,
handbags and other accessories
is also imported to Australia,
the United States and Europe
from developing countries
like India and Bangladesh.
As cows are considered sacred
by the Hindu religion,
their slaughter is illegal
in 24 of Indias 29 states.
To be legally slaughtered for leather,
they must first be transported
hundreds or thousands of kilometres
to one of the five exempt states or
across the border to Bangladesh.
Depending on the route and
the number of animals
sometimes in the thousands much
of this transport can occur on foot.
In preparation, many have
shoes nailed into their feet
and ropes threaded tightly
through their noses.
Exhausted, starving and thirsty,
many collapse along the way,
compelled to stand by having their nose
ropes pulled or their tails broken
being beaten with sticks, or having
chilli pepper rubbed into their eyes.
For the rest of the journey, they
are crowded into and out of trucks,
their horns piercing and gouging each
other and their bones often breaking.
Those who make it to the slaughterhouse
are killed in front of each other
without prior stunning,
some even skinned alive.
The hides are soaked in toxic chemicals
known to cause cancer or
chronic skin diseases,
often by children.
The fundamental concept of rodeos
is the physical control and domination
of weaker, more vulnerable beings.
Calves, steers and bulls
are physically provoked
for the entertainment of spectators
in some 240 rodeo events held
across Australia every year.
Normally quite docile animals,
they endure tail twisting,
electric prodding
and other physical abuse behind the scenes,
as well as the use of metal spurs and
straps tightened around their abdomens,
to make them buck and appear wild.
With intensity and risk integral
factors for an entertaining show,
injuries are inevitable.
Calf and steer roping involves the
lassoing of terrified animals
as they try to run away, violently
jerking them to a halt,
and commonly resulting in bruising,
broken limbs, horns and even necks,
ligament tearing, internal haemorrhaging
and subcutaneous tissue damage.
Winter lambing is the
practice of impregnating sheep
so that they give birth in winter months,
meaning their lambs are weaned in
spring when pastures are most fertile.
While this allows the lambs
to grow more quickly,
it results in 10-15 million newborn
lambs roughly one in every four
dying within 48 hours of birth
from exposure to the harsh cold.
For sheep farmers, this is still
preferable to the higher feed costs
of lambing in warmer months.
The Merino breed, accounting for around
80% of the wool produced in Australia,
have been selectively bred
to have wrinkled skin
resulting in excessive amounts of wool
while making them much
more prone to flystrike.
To reduce soiling and the risk of flystrike
for the lambs who make it to summer,
their tails are docked or cut off entirely,
and they are often mulesed
at the same time,
which involves cutting off the
skin around their buttocks
and the base of their
tail with metal shears.
If the lambs are younger than 6 months,
it is legal to do this
without any pain relief.
Sheep shearers are paid by the number
of sheep shorn, not by the hour,
so speed is prioritised over precision,
and there is no requirement for
formal training or accreditation.
After a few years, when they can
no longer produce enough wool
to be considered profitable, the sheep are
sent to slaughter and sold as mutton,
while lambs raised for meat are killed
between 4 and 12 months of age,
far short of a natural
lifespan of 12-14 years.
19 million of the 32 million sheep
killed each year in Australia
go through saleyards,
an intermediary between farms and
slaughterhouses or private buyers,
where animals also including cattle,
calves, horses, poultry and pigs,
are auctioned off.
Heat stress, dehydration, exhaustion,
or pre-existing conditions
are common causes of deaths at saleyards.
Most of the sheep are bought by
slaughterhouses for their meat.
No animal at a slaughterhouse
walks willingly to their death.
Again electrical stunning
proves regularly ineffective,
causing only pain and terrifying
the animals even further
in their final moments.
Bolt gun stunning is no better.
Regardless of how effective
stunning may appear,
its impossible to know with
certainty whether an animal
has been rendered completely
unconscious and insensible to pain,
or is merely paralysed and unable to
move, while still feeling everything.
In their fear and desperation,
some manage to briefly escape,
directly confronted with the
bodies of those before them,
before being forced back into the
race, knowing that theyll be next.
Goats are farmed for dairy in
much the same way as cows,
repeatedly impregnated to ensure
a continuous supply of milk.
A niche industry in Australia
with only around 65 farms,
goats milk is marketed as a more
easily digestible alternative
suitable for people with
allergies to cows milk.
Worldwide, more people drink the
milk of goats than any other animal.
The male kids, unable
to ever produce milk,
are generally considered waste products
and killed on farm shortly after birth
while the female kids are grown to
become milk producers themselves,
though some farms will raise and
sell their excess goats for meat.
The lactating mothers
are milked twice daily
for up to ten years before slaughter,
at their peak producing 4 litres
of milk per day to be sold fresh
or turned into cheese, butter,
ice-cream, yoghurt and soap.
Australia is the largest exporter
of goat meat in the world,
the majority of it going
to the United States.
Only 10% comes from goats bred and farmed
for meat, the rest from rangeland goats,
a wild breed originating
from escaped domestic goats
brought to Australia by European settlers.
These free-roaming goats are
captured and transported
to feedlots known as goat depots, where
they are fattened prior to slaughter.
Pregnant animals being sent
to slaughter is not uncommon,
and inevitably, some will give birth on the
transport trucks or in the holding pens
shortly before they are
herded to the kill floor,
their babies left behind to die
from starvation or exposure,
calling out for their dead mothers.
Salmon is the most popularly
eaten fish in Australia,
with almost 40,000 tonnes
consumed every year.
They are farmed offshore
in underwater cages,
primarily in bays on the south
and west coasts of Tasmania
due to the cooler waters.
Each cage can hold
up to 60,000 fish,
transferred from the inland
hatchery at 12-18 months of age.
As they grow, their space
within the cages decreases
until they are packed tightly together.
A 2017 study on farmed salmon in Australia,
Norway, Chile, Scotland and Canada
found that about half of the
fish in these farms are deaf
as a result of accelerated growth rates
deforming their sound receptors.
The world-heritage Macquarie
Harbour on Tasmanias west coast
is home to the largest concentration
of fish farms in the country,
with the salmon industrys three key
players Tassal, Huon and Petuna
all owning several farms
comprising up to 2 dozen cages.
In the one year period to September 2016,
over 21,000 tonnes of uneaten fish food
and untold amounts of excrement
ended up in the harbour.
Such high levels of pollution lead
to dangerously low levels of oxygen
in the water and greater risks of disease,
contributing to large numbers
of deaths within the farms.
Numerous mass mortality
incidents from 2015 to 2018
have been attributed to a mixture
of suffocation from low oxygen,
human error, and disease.
The largest of the three companies, Tassal,
boasts an accepted survival rate
of 83% across all their farms.
After 15-18 months in these ocean cages,
when theyve reached about 7kg each,
the salmon are sucked
up through a bore tube
into the harvest vessel where they
are either immediately killed
or transported alive in tanks to
the onshore processing facility.
Barramundi are farmed in all states
of Australia except Tasmania.
In the colder southern states,
they are raised with thousands
of others in small indoor tanks.
While in the northern states,
theyre raised either in offshore
sea cages similar to salmon farms
or in outdoor pond systems,
used also for trout.
The supposed humane method of
harvesting and killing farmed fish
is to suck them into icy water
to freeze them to death.
Far from humane, it is a
slow and painful death,
sometimes taking half
an hour to kill.
Fish killed for sashimi, a Japanese
delicacy favouring freshness,
are stabbed in the head before
having their jugular vein cut open
and then are put back into
the ice slurry to bleed out.
Stores and restaurants displaying live fish
allow customers intent on freshness
to choose which individuals
they would like killed.
Three quarters of the seafood consumed in
Australia is imported from other countries,
of which the most significant species
are prawns, salmon and tuna.
Commercial fishing trawlers drag large
nets through the water behind them,
indiscriminately capturing
all species in their wake.
Around 85% of the worlds fish stocks
are now being fished to full
capacity or are overfished.
At the current rate,
it is anticipated that our oceans
will be void of fish by 2048.
The rabbit farming industry in
Australia is a struggling one.
Highly contagious diseases introduced
to eradicate wild rabbits,
carried by insects, can quickly
wipe out entire farms,
while others struggle to compete
with the cheaper price of wild rabbits
trapped and killed by hunters.
Farmed meat rabbits spend
their entire lives
in wire cages suspended above the floor,
unable to exhibit any natural behaviours
like digging, hiding or jumping.
A build-up of faeces on
the floor beneath them
creates high levels of ammonia.
Female rabbits kept for breeding can
be forced to live in these conditions
for up to 56 weeks while
they produce 7 litters.
Most of the rabbits, capable of living for
8-12 years, are killed at 12 weeks old.
3 to 4 thousand rabbits are used for
scientific research and testing
each year in Australia,
many of them coming from
this facility in Victoria.
Most fur products sold in Australia
are imported from overseas,
much of that harvested
from rabbits.
In 2015, clothing brand Akubra shut
down their Australian operations
and began importing
rabbit fur from Europe.
Australia also imports fur from China,
the worlds largest fur exporter.
Of ten rabbit fur farms visited
by an undercover investigator,
half engaged in the practice of
plucking the fur from live rabbits,
a process repeated every 3 months,
between which the rabbits
live in wire cages.
Plucking results in longer,
more profitable hair
compared to shearing
or clipping.
As rabbits age,
they grow less fur,
and ultimately are hung up and
skinned for a final harvesting,
sometimes while still alive.
12 rabbits are killed to make the
felt for just one Akubra hat.
Worldwide, over one billion rabbits
are killed for their fur every year.
Minks are a common source
of fur for clothing,
accessories and even eyelash extensions.
As there are no mink farms in Australia,
their fur is imported from overseas.
In the wild, they would individually occupy
up to 2500 acres of wetland habitat.
Despite generations of
being bred for fur,
these naturally inquisitive
and solitary animals
have been found to suffer
greatly in captivity,
cramped in small wire cages where
chronic boredom and stress
lead to frantic pacing and self-mutilation.
Minks used for breeding are kept in
these cages for four to five years,
giving birth to a litter each
year of 3 or 4 surviving kittens,
who are slaughtered and
skinned at 6 months old.
Gas chambers or enclosed boxes
filled with engine exhaust
are common ways of
killing the minks,
but are not always lethal, resulting
in some waking up while being skinned.
Anal electrocution or
simply breaking their necks
are common alternatives.
After minks, foxes are the second
most commonly farmed animal for fur,
facing many of the same problems.
Chinese fur farmers claim that
their margins are so slim,
they cant afford to kill foxes with
anything but the most brutally
efficient of methods,
with many foxes being skinned
alive to save time and effort.
Introduced to Australia by British settlers
for their traditional sport of fox hunting
and later to control the
spread of introduced rabbits,
foxes are now classified as
pests across the country,
with numbers estimated at over 7 million.
The hunting and shooting of foxes
on personally-owned land
is legal in all states.
Often consumed accidentally
by native wildlife
or companion animals like dogs,
the most common method of reducing
numbers is the use of 1080 poison baits.
1080 is colourless,
odourless and tasteless,
causing slow, agonising
deaths to all its victims.
While Australia, the EU and the US
have banned the import
of dog and cat fur,
investigations show that
Chinese dog and cat fur
is frequently mislabelled
as fox, rabbit or mink.
Each year in China, around
2 million dogs and cats
are bred, stolen from homes,
or taken from the street,
squeezed into wire cages
and sometimes transported for
days without food or water,
to be hanged, bled, beaten
or strangled to death
or even skinned alive.
Around 450,000 puppies are
sold in Australia each year.
Around 85% come from
unregistered breeders,
but with minimal oversight in place,
even the registered breeders
may operate puppy factories,
churning out both pure
and mixed-breed puppies
for sale in pet stores or online.
In these factories it can be entirely legal
to keep a mother dog confined
to a barren concrete cell
in a shed for 23 hours a day,
continually reimpregnated.
They are denied love and companionship,
treated instead as breeding machines.
These cute puppies, sold
for thousands of dollars,
often suffer from diseases
or other health conditions,
or behavioural difficulties,
as a result of the conditions
they were exposed to in the farm
and generations of selective breeding.
"Hi, how are you"
"Yeah, good. Will you be getting
more of the golden retrievers in?"
"Ah, yes, golden retrievers if I'm not
mistaken will be this coming Saturday"
"This coming Saturday? Ah okay"
"And... where do they come from?
Are they from a..."
"We have our own breeder"
"Are they a puppy farm?"
"Obviously no."
"Oh they're so beautiful!"
"And it's a good breeder?"
"Yeah, definitely, they're registered"
"So it's not like... I've been hearing
bad things about puppy farms...
It's not a puppy farm?"
"Obviously no."
"Puppy farms you will get
puppies really sick"
"Sick puppies."
Meanwhile, an estimated 200-250,000
surrendered or stray dogs and cats
are euthanised each year in shelters
and pounds across the country,
the vast majority of them
healthy but unwanted.
Despite numerous widely publicised
scandals in recent years,
greyhound racing continues
to be a large and powerful
gambling and entertainment industry
in Australia and around the world.
The rapid acceleration and extreme speed
at which these large dogs
chase the lure around a track
inevitably results in
collisions, falls and injuries,
the most frequent being muscle tears,
ligament ruptures and tarsal fractures.
Each week on Australian tracks up
to 200 dogs are reported injured
with an estimated 6 to 10
greyhounds either dying on track
or being put down afterwards.
Greyhounds have a natural
lifespan of 12-14 years.
Racing greyhounds begin their
careers at around 18 months of age,
and finish by the time they
are 4 and a half years old.
In New South Wales they have a career
that lasts, on average, for only 363 days.
Between 13,000 and 17,000 young greyhounds
are killed annually in Australia.
Of the 97000 greyhounds
bred in New South Wales
in the 12 year period to 2016,
50-70% or more were killed because
they were considered too slow
or unsuitable for racing.
There is a growing body of evidence
showing greyhounds are frequently
killed in inhumane ways,
with trainers preferring the cheaper
option of gunshot or bludgeoning
over paying for a vet to euthanise.
The dogs bodies may then be dumped
in pits on private properties
or scattered in bushland.
The use of live animals as bait when
training greyhounds to chase the lure,
though illegal, has been
found to be widespread,
with a 2015 New South Wales Inquiry
being told that 85 to
90 percent of trainers
engage in the practice.
Untold numbers of terrified piglets,
rabbits, possums, chickens and kittens
have been torn apart for
the sake of teaching
otherwise gentle, sleepy
animals to run around a track.
Horses are not skeletally mature
until around 5 years of age,
but commonly their racing careers
begin when theyre only 2
due to the lure of higher prize money
and a quicker return on investment.
This drastically increases
the risk of injuries,
with up to 80% suffering
from shin soreness,
or dorsal metacarpal disease.
Post-race examinations have
found a high prevalence
of blood in the horses'
windpipes and lungs,
along with an increasing frequency
and severity of stomach ulcers
as training and racing progressed.
On the track, they are painfully
whipped to encourage greater speeds.
Race rules limit whipping in the
earlier stages of the race,
but in the last hundred metres
when the horses are fatigued
and less able to respond,
there are no limits
and they are often whipped
relentlessly until the finish line.
Jumps racing is statistically 19 times
more dangerous than flat racing,
with violent falls a regular occurrence.
Roughly half of the horses
involved in jumps races
each year in Australia disappear,
quietly exiting the industry
in unknown circumstances,
never to race or be heard from again,
or killed on track,
with green screens erected to
obscure the view of racegoers.
Nationally, 11-12,000 racing horses
are newly registered each year,
while roughly the same
number leave the industry,
largely as a result of poor performance,
unsuitable temperaments or injuries.
Many of these end up at knackeries,
where they are killed for pet food
or to feed racing greyhounds.
Others end up at one of two
licensed horse abattoirs
that export horsemeat
for human consumption.
Horses are also used in rodeos.
Camels were brought to Australia in
the 1800s to be used for transport,
then released into the wild following
the advent of automobiles.
By 2008, their population was
estimated at around 600,000,
leading the government to
establish a culling project
that effectively halved their numbers,
primarily by shooting them from helicopters
but also by rounding them up and
trucking them to slaughterhouses
for export to the United
States and Middle East,
a practice which continues today.
Having spent their entire lives
roaming freely without human contact,
the sudden confinement
and forceful handling
is completely foreign to them.
An increasing number of
camels caught in the wild
are being diverted to camel
dairies, an expanding industry
that promotes itself as a healthier
alternative to cow milk products
and a less wasteful alternative
to aerial culling.
Between 6 and 10 million animals
are used for research and testing
purposes in Australia every year,
including 1-2 million mice.
Many of these experiments involve live
surgical procedures without pain relief,
or exposure to toxins or diseases.
Ultimately, all mice subjected to
research or testing will be killed,
as they cannot legally be
released from the lab.
Carbon dioxide gassing, or overdosing
with the anaesthetic isoflurane
through gas or injection, are
two common ways of killing mice
when they have served their purpose.
These days, scientific
exploration and discovery
deals with nuances of human physiology,
of which animals are not
appropriate models.
A 2015 study by The National Institutes
of Health in the United States
found that a staggering 95% of all drugs
that are shown to be safe and
effective in animal testing
go on to fail in human trials.
Uncritical reliance on the
results of animal tests
in disregard of potentially
more accurate alternatives
utilising human tissue and cells,
cadavers, simulators and
computational models,
may have cost the health and lives
of tens of thousands of humans
and billions of animals.
Hundreds of macaques,
marmosets and baboons
are provided annually to
Australian research laboratories
by three government-funded
breeding facilities.
Hidden from public sight
behind intense security,
these laboratories carry out a
variety of biomedical experiments
on these highly intelligent
animals before discarding them.
Other primates are held
captive in circuses,
where they are released from the
extreme boredom of their cage
only to perform for spectators
or, in zoos.
Captive lions and tigers in
Australia serve the same purpose,
living a life of boredom and frustration
for the entertainment of paying visitors.
While on the surface, exhibits showcasing
these and other exotic animals
may inspire wonder and excitement,
few patrons observe long enough
to recognise the repetitiveness
of their behaviour,
signs of a psychological condition
common across all animals in captivity,
dubbed zoochosis.
In the tropical heat of Queensland,
Sea World hosts Australias
only captive polar bears.
These animals are naturally adapted
for freezing Arctic conditions
and have been found in the wild
to swim over 70km in only 24 hours
with an average travel
range of 3000km per year.
Here, they are confined to an enclosure
roughly 30 by 40 metres wide
for their entire lives.
Seal shows are a popular
attraction at zoos,
with seals taught to perform tricks for
food in front of a large audience.
"And that's a guarantee that your
seafood comes from a fishery
that helps protect fish stocks,
jobs, and the environment."
Off stage, they languish in small
pens like any other zoo animal,
swimming constantly in repetitive
circles or crying out in distress.
In the wild, dolphins are known to
travel up to 65km 40 miles a day,
and are constantly on the
move foraging for food,
playing and fighting within their pods.
They share with humans and great apes alone
the trait of self-awareness, with
evidence of intuition and empathy.
There is no captive situation
that can provide for all the behavioural
needs of these highly intelligent,
cognitively complex animals.
Around 80% of Sea World
Australias dolphins
have been bred in captivity
and can never be released,
their entire lives spent performing
daily for the reward of food.
Achieving the right level
of hunger prior to shows
is a crucial consideration
for a good performance,
in what is arguably the parks
most popular attraction.
With over $133 million in
admission fees annually,
less than 1 percent is spent on their
heavily promoted research, rescue
and rehabilitation initiatives.
Australias federal
government ruled in 1985
that no more dolphinariums
be established,
and that existing ones
should be phased out,
after receiving evidence
that cetaceans in captivity
suffer from stress, behavioural
abnormalities, breeding problems,
high mortality rates and shorter lifespans,
even though at initial glance they may
seem content with their conditions.
Today, just two facilities remain,
able to continue operating
because of a loophole
that allowed them to keep and
display animals born in captivity,
including those bred from
rescued wild dolphins
who themselves are required to
be rehabilitated and released.
This practice of rescuing,
breeding and releasing
allows these parks to
keep the gene pool strong
to ensure their shows can continue
and their gates can remain open.
While Australian dolphin parks are unable
to capture and import healthy wild
dolphins, this remains a reality
of the animal entertainment
industry elsewhere in the world,
with the coastal Japanese town of
Taiji a common point of capture.
Every year from September to March,
thousands of dolphins and
other small cetaceans
are herded into a quiet cove at Taiji
and brutally slaughtered
by local fishermen,
who see them either as a
source of income or as pests.
Dolphin trainers have been
observed assisting fishermen
in herding the dolphins,
picking out a select few to
be spared from the slaughter
and instead transported to aquariums
and dolphin parks around the world.
If the greatness of a nation
and its moral progress
can be judged by the way
its animals are treated
what does that say about Australia?
What does it say
about New Zealand?
The United States?
Canada?
Mexico?
The United Kingdom?
Israel?
Spain?
What does it say about
us, as a species?
In our entire recorded history, 619
million humans have been killed by war.
We kill the same number
of animals every 3 days,
and this isnt even including
fish and other sea creatures
whose deaths are so great they
are only measured in tonnes.
But before we kill them,
we have to breed them
Confine and exploit them,
for food...
entertainment...
clothing...
and research.
Their entire lives, from birth to death,
are controlled by industries
who care only for profit.
An empire...
of suffering...
and blood.
Paid for by consumers who are told
that their treatment was ethical.
Free range, local, organic.
That their deaths were humane,
that cruelty to animals doesnt
happen here in our country,
and if it does, our
government, our authorities,
will find it and stamp it out.
And us, as consumers, have little
reason to think otherwise,
because to eat and use animals is normal,
weve done it forever.
Because the products for
sale on supermarket shelves
are so far removed from the
individuals who once existed,
some only briefly,
some for years without reprieve.
Individuals who share with us and our
companion animals we love so dearly,
our capacity to feel love.
Happiness.
Grief and mourning.
Who share with us, our capacity to suffer.
Our desire to live,
to be free,
to be seen not as objects,
not for our utility to others,
but for who we are
as individuals.
Beings in our own right,
not units of production.
Not stock.
He, she, and they, not it.
The truth is,
there is no humane way to kill
someone who wants to live.
It is not a question of treatment,
or better ways of doing the wrong thing.
Bigger cages, smaller
stocking densities,
or less painful gas.
We tell ourselves that they
have lived good lives,
and in the end, they
dont know whats coming
and dont feel a thing.
But they do.
In their final hours, minutes and seconds,
there is always fear, there is always pain.
The smells of blood.
The screaming of other
members of their species,
with whom they have shared their lives.
Never a willingness or desire to die,
but rather, a desperation to live,
a frantic fight to their last breath.
And never are they shown mercy or kindness,
instead mocked,
laughed at,
kicked,
beaten,
tossed like ragdolls,
or sent into a mincer because
they were born the wrong sex.
We take their children.
We take their freedom.
We take their lives,
sending them healthy and
whole into a slaughterhouse
to come out as packaged
pieces on the other side,
and we tell ourselves that
somehow, along the way,
something humane and ethical happened.
And in the process, we harm ourselves.
"The World Health Organisation
publishing a report this morning
on the dangers of processed
and red meat..."
We destroy our environment,
emitting through animal agriculture more
greenhouse gases than any other industry,
tearing down our forests and
slaughtering our native animals
to make room for farms.
The worlds cattle alone
consume a quantity of food
equal to the caloric needs
of 8.7 billion humans,
and yet one in nine
humans 795 million
suffer from chronic undernourishment,
and 844 million lack clean water
while 1000 litres are used
to produce 1 litre of milk
and 15,000 litres for one kilogram of beef.
And yet we continue to
justify animal agriculture
by claiming that its normal,
necessary and natural.
That the animal kingdom, or
certain species within it,
are inferior to ourselves, because they
lack our specific type of intelligence,
because theyre weaker and
cannot defend themselves.
We believe that, in our
apparent superiority,
we have earned the right to exercise
power, authority and dominion
over those we perceive to be inferior,
for our own short-sighted ends.
It is a justification that
has been used before.
By the white man, to
enslave the black,
or to take their land and their children.
By the Nazis, to murder the Jews.
By men, to silence and oppress women.
Are we doomed to repeat
history over and over?
Does this superiority complex,
this pure selfishness,
define who we are as a species?
Or are we capable of something more?