For Animals' Sake: March 2012

I was horrified to discover the appalling facts of the Australian live export industry- an industry that not only takes the lives of millions of animals but uses extreme cruelty to do so. Every step of the journey the exported animals make to their death is a step of terror. They are roughly handled, whipped, tied, dragged, and even forced into car trunks without any consideration of their pain. Much of their long journey takes place in crammed ships where many die from starvation and disease. The plight of the sheep and cows victim to live export only worsens when the animals reach their final destination. They are killed- murdered- in ways even slaughter experts view as terrible, ways that defy international legislation. Their eyes are gouged out, their throats are sliced again and again, and in short they consciously undergo extensive torture until death. In Indonesia, the final destination of many Australian live exports where world standards of humane slaughter are ignored, throat-slicing occurs an average of eleven times, and animals are sometimes subjected to rites of torture each night prior to their death.

These millions of animals are not just statistics, they are individual sheep and cattle whose suffering is real as incomprehensible as it seems. They struggle to escape their barbaric punishment but are given no relief and have no hope unless we voice their agony. Please join me in making the voices of live export animals heard by simply signing a letter at http://www.banliveexport.com/1/#takeAction. In the words of slaughter expert Professor Temple Grandin, the Australian live export industry "[breaches] every humane standard all around the world" and is "atrocious and unacceptable". It is an industry that we must take a stand against to preserve the basic principles of humanity.

You be the final judge- can the reality shown in this video be allowed to continue? Can it be called anything but cruelty and inhumanity?