Voiceless, the animal protection institute, launched the Voiceless Media Prize today. The $5,000 prize will recognise the most valuable contribution toward debate on the treatment of animals.

The judging panel will include J M Coetzee, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, the Honourable Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales, and Emeritus Professor David Weisbrot AM, President of the Australian Law Reform Commission.

Brian Sherman AM, Managing Director and co-founder of Voiceless said today, “Ordinary Australians are becoming increasingly aware of the institutionalised suffering of animals in factory farms as well as the legalised cruelty associated with the mass slaughter of kangaroos.”

“Animal protection is becoming the next great social justice movement in Australia,” Ondine Sherman, co-founder of Voiceless, said in announcing the award.

The prize is open to all journalists for a story published between 1 November 2008 and 1 November 2009, in newspapers, magazines, television, radio or online.

The work would need to:

1.         address at least one of the following subjects: factory farming; live exports; kangaroo culling; animal hunting and poisoning; animal experimentation; animals in entertainment (zoos, circuses and rodeos) and animals killed for fur and skin; or

2.         examine the ethical relationship between human and animals; or

3.         examine the sentience of animals.

Eligibility criteria and entry details can be obtained on the Voiceless website.

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