For many years now I have had a strong interest in animal welfare. Over that time I have watched countless undercover videos of animal cruelty filmed by activists, done school projects about animal welfare, joined countless online protest groups, written angry e-mails to people in Government etc. I would like to one day become much more involved with animal activism, attending protests and the like. When I heard yesterday that the whole country was reeling from this Four Corners investigation I just had to watch it as I generally try to stay up to date with everything happening in the world of animal welfare.
Now I must admit somewhat sadly that after all these years of watching and reading incidents of gross animal cruelty I have become quite hardened to it all. That’s not to say it still doesn’t affect me at all because it does, I still get enraged when I see any act of cruelty but after so many years of exposing myself to it so often I find that very few things shock me anymore. For this reason I felt that I would be fine watching this show, I wanted the information and the facts of what is really going on so last night I stayed up late to watch the repeat of Four Corners. The idea that I would not be shocked by this was grossly wrong, as what I experienced last night was one of the most horrific things I have ever faced.
I knew it would be bad, usually these stories don’t effect a whole country so quickly but the reaction I have been hearing all of the TV, radio and newspaper told me I was in for the worst. Throughout the 40 minutes or so of watching this story I had used up so many tissues from crying that I had to go into the bathroom and grab a toilet roll to use. I was physically shaking with anger and by the end I had what could only be described as a migraine from feeling so much rage and crying so much at the same time. Basically, watching this story really took it out of me in more ways than I can describe. The footage shown was far worse than I could have imagined in my worst nightmares. And the fact that my own countries meat industry supports it is one of the most shocking parts.
Lyn White of the foundation ‘Animals Australia’ is a woman who I admire greatly and I have been following her work for years, but last night I was reminded just how strong the human spirit can be when trying to defend those who can’t defend themselves. White and her team actually travelled around Indonesia, entering dozens of these terrible abattoirs and filming the footage for us all to see. If I thought the footage was hard enough to watch on TV I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for White and her team, standing right there amongst it all. At one stage they showed footage of them leaving one of the abattoirs desperately trying to clean all the blood of themselves before going onto the next one.
To me these people are true heroes of planet earth. What they would have had to go through to get this footage is so horrible that I can hardly imagine it, but what they did has had such a powerful and strong effect. Over the years I have been asked many times why I watch so much animal cruelty footage, how can I put myself through that? To me it’s simple, the reason most animal cruelty acts are covered up or ignored in this day and ages is because people simply don’t know about it or like to turn a blind eye. Most people live in a sort of happy bliss thinking their meat comes from happy healthy animals who felt no pain, or their eggs always come from perfectly healthy chickens out on some lovely farm. People can continue living in these ignorant little bubbles their whole lives until real life footage is thrown right in front of them, that’s the only time we see change.
Another reason I watch it is because this footage deserves to be seen. I greatly admire any animal activist who goes out of their way and into some of the most terrible places on Earth to film and photograph these horrific events. This barbaric animal slaughter and torture has been happening in Indonesia for over 18 years with millions of Australian cattle, but only now with all this raw footage provided by Lyn and her team are people finally taking action.
If anything positive has come out of this it’s the reaction that has come from this story. In just one day over 85,000 people have signed an online petition to put a total ban on live export which is a very impressive number. People have been calling up radio shows in tears about it, it’s been all over the news and the internet. This type of outrage on such a large scale proves to me that the general Australian public are not willing to tolerate such gross animal cruelty under our countries name and it shows that they care. Such compassion towards animals on a large scale like this is always a positive thing.
-Sophie
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