Ethical Investor
by Cybele Stockley

In her opinion piece, Voiceless Grants Administrator and Media Liaison, Cybele Stockley, reminded investors to factor animals into the ethical equation.

The use of animals by humans, whether for food, fashion, research or entertainment, raises difficult ethical issues which are receiving an increasing amount of attention. This year saw celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver challenge the confinement of animals in ‘factory farms’ where they are denied many of their basic physical and social needs and routinely subject to mutilations without pain relief. Consumers around the world are voting with their wallets on a massive scale and buying free range or organic products.

Many of us are also concerned about selective breeding, genetic modification or cloning to increase the productivity of farm animals. In this regard, it may disturb some people to know that the time it takes for a chicken raised for meat to grow has been reduced from 64 to 35 days, through selective breeding. The implications of this speeded up growth may include legs and internal organs that are unable to withstand the weight of the body, leading to deformities and pain.

Humans are manipulating nature to create higher yield production animals to feed our growing appetite for meat and dairy, but at what cost to the animals? And if we don’t want to be cruel to animals or cause them harm (and let’s assume the vast majority of us don’t) then surely we have a moral obligation not to invest in companies who perpetuate their suffering?

Millions of animals are also regularly used in a multitude of industries including the cosmetic and chemical industries. Whilst alternatives often exist (or could be developed) animals continue to suffer and die unnecessarily so that we can wear a new shade of lipstick or have whiter bathrooms.

Voiceless is committed to facilitating the replacement of animals in experimentation and has provided funding for this purpose through its Grants Program and the annual Australian Museum Eureka Prizes. Grants have been awarded to Choose Cruelty Free (CCF), the International Network for Humane Education, the University of Queensland and Lawyers for Animals (LFA) (with the generous sponsorship of Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics) for projects addressing the use of animals in experiments. The Children’s Cancer Institute Australia has been awarded a Voiceless Eureka Prize for successfully identifying drug resistant cancer cells without animal testing.

Animal welfare must be considered as a component of any ethical investment strategy. In its ten year review of SRI trends in the United States (published 2005), the Social Investment Forum reported that one quarter of all socially screened funds, with nearly $10 billion in assets, take animal welfare into consideration as part of their screening processes. Australian funds will need to respond to the increasing concern for animal welfare within our shores. Some companies are leading the way. For example, Hunter Hall Investment Management Limited has a negative screen which restricts investment in companies that derive revenues associated with factory farming. Its Global Deep Green Trust goes further by investing only in companies that are deemed to contribute positively to environmental, humanitarian, social and sustainability issues and by not investing in countries that support commercial whaling.

The President of the Australian Law Reform Commission, David Weisbrot AM, recently described animal protection as “potentially the next great social justice movement”. It’s time to start asking, if the millions of animals in factory farms and laboratory cages could talk, where would they tell me to invest my money?

Cybele Stockley is a lawyer who has recently joined animal protection organisation Voiceless.
 

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