Group Urges Australians to Have Their Say in Government Inquiry
Melbourne – As the 12 January deadline for public submissions to Victoria’s pig welfare inquiry looms, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has urged Australians to have their say by sharing its own recommended guidelines for submissions and encouraging supporters to urge state leaders to move away from meat.
In its own submission, PETA likens farrowing crates (which house pregnant pigs) to trapping a pregnant human in a phone booth and ear-notching – a disfiguring mutilation routinely performed on pigs without pain relief – to the branding of human trafficking victims at the hands of their captors.
“What pigs endure in the Australian pork industry is an abomination. From their miserable birth in cramped crates – where their mother cannot even reach them to properly form the emotional bonds so vital to pigs’ well-being – they suffer from intense confinement, mutilation, and abuse,” writes PETA. “Pigs endure long, arduous journeys aboard trucks bound for the abattoir, during which they are denied food or water, even in Australia’s scorching summer, and on arrival they are forced to smell the fear and hear the screams of other pigs being slaughtered. They panic and suffocate inside gas chambers before their throats are slit.”
While the Victorian government is only seeking public comment on pig welfare standards, PETA has urged members of the public to pressure the government to lead the nation in the swift abolition of pork production and a nationwide transition to plant-based farming. PETA suggests that if dogs were being caged, bludgeoned, and gassed, the industry would have already been shut down. Meanwhile, PETA is calling for more space and enrichment for pigs, a ban on sow stalls and farrowing crates, and an end to routine mutilations and carbon dioxide gassing.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au and follow the group Facebook and Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli; Media@peta.org.au
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The post ‘Like Trapping a Pregnant Human in a Phone Booth’: PETA Slams ‘Disgraceful’ Victorian Pig Welfare Standards appeared first on PETA Australia.