Some will be reading this piece because they have followed a link from Twitter. I have been described by @HumanHeadline, Derryn Hinch as a "Twitter Tragic". Excuse the expression, but, guilty as charged!
Since the broadcast ot the 4 Corners programme on the 30th of May 2011, there has been, quite properly, outrage at the cruelty towards cattle in an Indonesian slaughterhouse. Quite improperly, there has been ill-informed hysteria by the usual suspects including the radical so-called animal lovers, tree-huggers and red to the core greenies. Surprisingly, uninformed and ignorant comments have come from some from whom I would have expected a higher standard of understanding and analysis.
Perhaps the easiest way to deal with the ill-informed and ignorant is to treat them with ignore, but the easy option simply leads to further ignorance. Those who are stubbornly cemented to their view can almost never be convinced to look at a situation through another set of eyes. Then there are the most annoying group. Those who take the view that makes them appear to be following the righteous trend of the day without any consideration of the consequences. These are people who are generally not directly affected by the particular set of circumstances, but maintain an opinion nonetheless. A bit like a woman having a view on male circumcision or a man having a view on women's sanitary products. Both entirely outside their own ballywick but not to be outdone, they exercise their right to have an opinion. Good for them.
Good for them perhaps, but not for others, as is the case with the current situation involving our live animal exports.
So that there is no confusion whatsoever as to my stance on animal cruelty, I will state my position as clearly as possible. I abhor unneccesary cruelty in all its forms, towards men, women, children and all living creatures. Yes, even the creepy crawly ones! If there is a way I can say it clearer, please let me know. You will note the rider, unneccesary, properly inserted so as to avoid hypocrisy. One would be a dolt not to recognise that some activities require degrees of cruelty in order to protect and maintain human life, and those are the degrees of cruelty that we accept in our day to day lives. If those have to be explained, then I would be surprised that you managed to read this far!
Lets face the facts here. Abbatoirs, slaughterhouses and knackeries are not nice places, particularly for the faint-hearted. Nothing nice happens in them. They are places of death and butchery. Whether the animal is slaughtered in a tin shed or in the foyer of a six star hotel, doesn't make it any less dead. No matter what method is used, there is some form of suffering. As a civilised society, we can only ensure that any suffering is minimised. Sadly, it can never be totally eliminated but over the years we have managed to design and construct facilities that reduce animal trauma as much as possible.
Such is not the case in less fortunate societies and communities around the world. Animals are slaughtered daily in circumstances that are devoid of any humane practices, not as a matter of simple convenience but as a matter of absolute neccesity and there are simply no alternatives. There have been suggestions that we slaughter livestock here in Australia and send it to Indonesia frozen. A worthy but totally impractical idea. Not only are there regions without refrigeration, there are regions, towns and villages where there is no electricity. By the time a box of frozen meat reached its destination, it would be unfit for anything other than a decent burial.
What has to be understood is this. When we export live cattle to Indonesia, they are transported in modern well fitted out ships, designed for the purpose and under veterinary supervision. Most are taken to feedlots for growth and fattening and from there, again, most are taken to perfectly good abbatoirs for processing, but not all islands, towns and villages are close to these facilities.
Cattle are taken to small islands and villages and are killed on a needs basis. Remember, no power and no refrigeration so when an animal is killed, it is butchered, distributed and eaten. These villages have no modern facilities and must make do as best they can and here is the crux of the matter. You have a massive beast of several hundred kilos, and make no mistake, we're not talking about Daisy the dairy cow here, we are talking about a large snorting angry beast that has to be killed and believe me, they take some killing. We can't sit in judgement of the people who kill these animals in whatever manner is required, but what we can do is train, educate and provide assistance where possible, but we can't do it all.
What our government has done with this knee-jerk reaction to banning live cattle trade with Indonesia is to have metaphorically cut the throat of a three hundred million dollar a year trade at a cost of between ten and fourteen thousand jobs! They are not going to stop the slaughter of animals in Indonesia. Livestock will simply be purchased from other suppliers who will be rubbing their hands with glee at the opportunity that this stupidity has presented.
If those hand-wringing ignoramuses who have demanded this halt to exports are fair-dinkum, then they would demand a blockade of Indonesian ports banning the entry of any livestock to the country, but no, that would never do. So here's the hypocrisy from this mob of unthinking halfwits, we know that the slaughter of brown-eyed cattle will continue but as long as they are not our brown-eyed cattle! The other alternative, let the people starve. Irony, anyone?
I have a name for argument put forward by the hand-wringing do-gooders. I call it the Swiss Cheese argument where the points are the holes. All of the points have individual merit and are held with the best of intentions until the holes start to align. Before you know it, all you are left with is a big, empty hole.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why abbatoirs and operating theatres don't have glass walls? Perhaps it's because some folks of a gentle disposition are better off not knowing what really goes on in there.
Gillard et al hoisted the white flag again for the sake of popularity and not practicality, but who are the real losers? Salt of the earth farmers and rural communities whose lifeblood is being drained out of them on the slaughterhouse floor in Labor's abbatoir.
I decided to refrain from tweeting over the past few days in order to properly gather my thoughts on this issue. Some of the comments being made on this topic were so far off-the-wall and devoid of logic, that frankly, I had difficulty in recognising some of the people who made them, given that I had previously considered their views on other topics to be valid and intelligent. Emotion is a very powerful human trait and a tool used by many from retailers to governments in order to manipulate decision making. For many, emotion and ego are two things best left at the door when entering into debate.
Go kindly
The curmudgeon's curmudgeon
BillfromBendigo
