What a hypocritical Country!

[David]

Never have and never will go to Bali.

If you can remotely compare a dog... commonly known as 'Mans best friend' being baited, tortured and submitted to what can only be described as a barbaric death. To the farming of a chicken, you are more deluded than i have ever imagined.

Cows, sheep, pigs etc. are all highly intelligent animals yet we see them as being completely different to dogs because they're livestock, not pets. Rats are perhaps even more highly intelligent but they're seen as vermin so we feel fine doing scientific testing on them, drowning them and poisoning them. You have to realise that not all cultures share our love affair with dogs; to them they're just another potential food source. Relative to other animals, I have no problem with dogs being killed for food as long as it's done humanely.

[think positive]

^ factory farming is an area which should be reformed in my opinion, to bring it further within an overall system and culture which acknowledges the need to treat animals humanely. yes totally agree, we need to fix this here, and also stop live exports to protect animals born under our name. then we can start blocking produce from the cruel countries that remain

It's hardly equivalent to a system that does not, and I'd suggest your reflex desire to attack your own society and mitigate any other, is leading to a false equivalence.

For all that, the first reason not to go to Bali is that Indonesia treats people -especially West Papuans and Timorese - inhumanely. If you can get past that, dogs are another good reason. i also agree with this, been once to Bali, have no interest in going again, or any other asian country

David, yes we have had the discussion. and i guess i get your point, although i just cant imagine eating my dogs ever for any reason. but there is a difference. id hope in this country we do not participate in any way whatsoever with barbaric practices like boiling animals alive, or skinning them alive to heighten the adrenalin in the meat.
why i have no interest in travelling to China http://www.animalsaustralia.org/feature ... -begin.php
and have you seen the doped animals that are skinned alive, just leaving the skin/fur on their heads? or maybe the awful footage from zoos of doped/staved/tortured animals?

i would hope any case of such cruelty here would be dealt with to the full force of the law. and yes, i have seen how our pigs are slaughtered, and i no longer eat bacon, pork, ham etc. and god i miss bacon. i dont eat lamb either. or halal knowingly. id hope our government are actively inforcing the stun rules for cows. i dont know, and i cant face finding out right now.

we farm kangaroos for food, i hope they are killed humanely. those dogs in Bali are not. but then i saw dogs in the street in Bali in terrible condition, with obvious injuries. i also saw young children, dirty, too thin, no shoes, 6 on a bike. its third world and until tourists stop taking advantage of the situation, it will continue. life just seems to have no value there, greed is good, no matter the cost. the gentle people i met in Bali, it breaks your heart that they are so badly done by.

and yes Ronrat, there are good people everywhere, and i have donated to causes and groups that are trying to end the cruelty, to dogs everywhere from china to vietnam, and also to the moon bears, and elephants.

i dont get it, i never will. and although i know in Alaska bears etc are hunted for meat to survive, i still felt uneasy with the pelts on the wall, but then i love my leather shoes.

[think positive]

Never have and never will go to Bali.

If you can remotely compare a dog... commonly known as 'Mans best friend' being baited, tortured and submitted to what can only be described as a barbaric death. To the farming of a chicken, you are more deluded than i have ever imagined.

Cows, sheep, pigs etc. are all highly intelligent animals yet we see them as being completely different to dogs because they're livestock, not pets. Rats are perhaps even more highly intelligent but they're seen as vermin so we feel fine doing scientific testing on them, drowning them and poisoning them. You have to realise that not all cultures share our love affair with dogs; to them they're just another potential food source. Relative to other animals, I have no problem with dogs being killed for food as long as it's done humanely.

fair enough logic.

finally, animal testing is being phased out in large sectors of the world, slowly, too slowly, baby steps

man is such a bloody awful being~! what was the lord/lords/science experiment, thinking!!

[Culprit]

I have a suggestion, as we don't like 3rd world practices of places like Bali. How about we invest money (Foreign Aid) to help them learn the western ways. Hypocrisy is a massive two way street.

[Tannin]

I have a suggestion, as we don't like 3rd world practices of places like Bali. How about we invest money (Foreign Aid) to help them learn the western ways. Hypocrisy is a massive two way street.

Possibly because the fascist Javanese scum who run the place would pocket the lot?

[Mugwump]

I have a suggestion, as we don't like 3rd world practices of places like Bali. How about we invest money (Foreign Aid) to help them learn the western ways. Hypocrisy is a massive two way street.

Possibly because the fascist Javanese scum who run the place would pocket the lot?

Don't be harsh. They need the money more than Australian taxpayers do.

It's a strange industry, foreign aid - the taxpayer pays private businessmen to send stuff to foreign governments to underpin jobs in Australia that do not have a real economic rationale.

As a starting point, I'd suggest it should all be scrapped and reserved to support genuine disaster relief when it is necessary.

Meanwhile, the definition of "hypocrisy" is being stretched to breaking point in this thread. It used to mean professing opposition to something while actually doing that very thing. I'm not sure what it means here.

[stui magpie]

we farm kangaroos for food, i hope they are killed humanely.

Kangaroos aren't farmed. All Roo meat is harvested from wild animals in a controlled cull.

Basically, they're shot.

Professional roo shooters take them down, one minute Skip is bouncing along, the next, dead on the ground. In most cases wouldn't know what hit him or feel it, the static shock from the bullet would take care of that.

Cows and Sheep are able to be herded into pens, loaded on trucks and taken to abattoirs, good luck trying to do that with Roos.

Sheep and Cows are raised domestically for human consumption

Roos are wild animals who's numbers need to be culled to keep numbers manageable. The side effect is that we eat the meat.

Saltwater Crocs are farmed for meat and hides. I'd love to watch the CCTV video of greenpeace or Peta trying to free the crocs.

[Tannin]

we farm kangaroos for food, i hope they are killed humanely.

Kangaroos aren't farmed. All Roo meat is harvested from wild animals in a controlled cull.

Basically, they're shot.

Professional roo shooters take them down, one minute Skip is bouncing along, the next, dead on the ground. In most cases wouldn't know what hit him or feel it, the static shock from the bullet would take care of that.

Cows and Sheep are able to be herded into pens, loaded on trucks and taken to abattoirs, good luck trying to do that with Roos.

Sheep and Cows are raised domestically for human consumption

Roos are wild animals who's numbers need to be culled to keep numbers manageable. The side effect is that we eat the meat.

Saltwater Crocs are farmed for meat and hides. I'd love to watch the CCTV video of greenpeace or Peta trying to free the crocs.

Spot on except (probably) your last para. Greenpeace is generally pretty rational and evidence-based. (Their views and yours are often far apart, and occasionally their assessment of evidence is faulty - far less often than you might think, you being a Scum reader, but it does indeed happen - but in broad they mostly get things right.)

In the case of roo harvesting, there is absolutely no scientific case against it. The three commercially harvested species are not remotely threatened, and populations of all three absolutely must be kept to no more than (and in some places much less than) about their current levels - which are in any case much higher than their 1788 levels.

Kangaroos breed fast and, if not kept in check, cause enormous damage to native flora, threatening many plant species with extinction, and (through loss of habitat) threaten or completely wipe out many, many other animal species: birds, small mammals, reptiles, and insects too.

Prior to the arrival of humans, Kangaroos were kept in check by a variety of large native predators. When humans arrived in numbers ~50,000 years ago, they wiped out these large predators (and indeed all the other large native animals other than the four big kangaroos we still have today), but humans themselves took over the population-regulation role, greatly assisted by the arrival of the Dingo around 4000 years ago.

After Europeans arrived about 200 years ago, 90% of the non-European population was wiped out (mostly by starvation and imported diseases, actual shooting and the like was relatively rare), and later removed Dingos from most of the continent. As a result, the small kangaroo population, free from predation, rapidly expanded, and much damage resulted. Europeans, however, soon began to harvest roos for meat and hides (and to protect crops, of course) and a new balance was struck.

In most parts of Australia, this balance remains today. Roos have of course been removed from densely populated parts of the country, but are nevertheless not in the slightest endangered. The main problem with roos is gross over-population in areas where, for political reasons, proper management is not permitted. (Near Canberra, for example.)

Greenpeace is smart enough to know all this (or they certainly ought to be, they get most other things right) and direct its very limited resources to things that really matter.

PETA I know little about, but if they have any sort of a clue they would direct their energy to the severe cruelty that is practiced as routine by industrial agriculture - battery hen farming, for example, is every bit as bad as what Indonesians do to dogs. (Sometimes roo shooters fail to do the right thing. Maybe PETA pick them up on this, I don't know, but in any case, we are talking a small minority of bad apples here. Most roo shooters - and I've met a few - are decent people who take pride in their "one quick bullet, one quick kill" ethos. (And they are bloody good shots.)

Your remarks comparing the free life and near-instant death of a roo to the horrible fate of a cow, a pig, or a chicken are spot on.

Finally, consider the alternative to shooting roos. Pretend that the massive environmental devastation uncontrolled roo numbers would rapidly produce does not matter. Pretend also that the economic cost is unimportant. What sort of life - and more to the point, what sort of death - would roos have? A dreadful one: a short, painful and unhealthy life, followed by a slow and agonising death from starvation (practically nothing left to eat) or thirst (roos travel huge distances to get to water: to do that they need to be fit, well-fed and healthy).

Oh, and I nearly forgot: roos are much more efficient converters of grass to protein than sheep and cattle; they do far less damage to soils and flora per kilogram of meat; and (unlike cattle) contribute bugger-all to global warming. Emus are better again, but that's a topic for another post.

(It's nice that we can agree from time to time, Stui.)

[stui magpie]

^

Cheers tannin. The last sentence about the Crocs was very much tongue in cheek, so we actually agree.

It's not the first time, it won't be the last time but there may be some clear air in between.

On the roo shooters, I agree completely. A clean kill is what they aim for and get very pissed off if they don't achieve it.

[Tannin]

Hey - since we are agreeing tonight for a change, what say we join forces and gang up on .... hmmmm .... Mugwamp? Or David? Tough choice!

[stui magpie]

David's too easy

I'm heading to bed, but you pick a target and i'll come in tomorrow morning as support.

[Mugwump]

^ it's always enjoyable smashing a fragile coalition. Go right ahead..

[David]

[luvdids]

Never have and never will go to Bali.

If you can remotely compare a dog... commonly known as 'Mans best friend' being baited, tortured and submitted to what can only be described as a barbaric death. To the farming of a chicken, you are more deluded than i have ever imagined.

I think you're missing David's point - that is, we also treat animals cruelly for food. Yes, dogs are 'man's best friend' but in India for example, cows are sacred - what would an Indian forum be saying about the way Australian's kill & eat cows??

[Culprit]

I heard someone on Radio saying they would not go to Bali as the people are exploited. The prefer to go on cruises. Someone had to remind them that many staff on cruises are Balinese as cheap labour.