Imagine yourself as chicken, not just any chicken, but a Broiler factory chicken. You were bred for the sole purpose of becoming someone’s hot roast dinner. Your mother laid you in a cold, wire cage with a sloping wire floor with as much floor space as an A4 page. You, yourself, were crammed in a large shed with no windows, crowded with thousands of your peers for the duration of your unnaturally short life. You’ve never been outside, never seen the sun, never felt grass, never felt wind, never smelt fresh air. You were fattened up so fast that your legs cannot carry your own weight. Your leg bones snap under the burden of your own body weight. You cannot drag yourself to the feeding stations. If you survive, you are then shackled upside down, paralysed by electrified water, and then dragged over mechanical throat-cutting blades ... all while conscious. You have a good chance of missing the blades; instead you might drown in tanks of scalding water. What a life!
Many Australians were shocked and outraged after scandalous news broke, of the unethical treatment of live cattle exported to Indonesia. Debate occurred in Parliament house to cease all live cattle export to Indonesia. Why is it politicians were outraged by the immoral conditions in which the cattle were unjustly slaughtered, yet their silence has been deafening, regarding the torturous conditions millions of chickens experience on a daily basis on Australian farms and in Australian slaughter houses? Can you imagine the public outrage if they knew of the systematised cruel treatment of animals within Australian borders? Why is it that Australians believe that it is okay for food animals to suffer greatly before ending up on dinner tables all over the world, yet continue to cosset their pet animals? Can politicians, the media and citizens truly defend this ongoing arbitrary distinction between "food" and "cute & cuddly"?
For ethical reasons, a British government committee during the 1960s, established...