| Issues for Students |
|
|
|
There are many animals that need your voice and help. When planning your school activities, consider these high priority animal protection issues.
Factory farming arguably causes the most suffering to the largest number of animals. 'Factory' animals in Australia and around the world are denied nearly every basic need… click here to read more about the lives that pigs, meat chickens and dairy cows lead. Many people have now seen pictures of the live export trade on TV. Sadly, it is still continuing even though many Australians think it is cruel and unnecessary. Every year, tens of thousand of animals die while being shipped overseas. Although the animals are young and healthy when they start out, the terrible journey crammed on ships often leads to starvation, suffocation, disease and stress.1 The animals are packed so tightly that many cannot lie down, some are trampled to death and others can’t reach the feed troughs. Excessive heat and ocean spray leads to blindness in many animals. Sick animals are frequently tossed overboard alive.2 Many of us think of our national Aussie icon, the Kangaroo as a ‘pest’. Even so, kangaroos suffer greatly in the ‘culling’ industry. Every year, after their mothers have been shot, hundreds of thousands of joeys are left to starve or die from hypothermia in their dead mothers’ pouches. Others are clubbed to death. ‘Young at foot’ kangaroos that are old enough to be out of the pouch but still depend on their mother for their survival, are orphaned with no ability to survive alone.3
Many Aussies hate introduced species such as foxes, wild dogs, cats, goats, rabbits, pigs and other animals. Even dingoes (who were here thousands of years ago) are not liked. Despite the fact that they are not native and may cause some environmental harm, we often forget that these animals can suffer pain just like your pet dog and cat. 1080 poison is a common way of killing native and non-native species and is also one of the most cruel and inhumane ways in which an animal can die. The policy of RSPCA Australia in 2005 is that the effect of 1080 on animals is not humane and the RSPCA is opposed to the use of 1080 for the control of animals.4 Poisoned animals may take up to 48 hours to die and can travel several kilometres, confused and convulsing, before they collapse. Infant joeys starve inside their mothers' pouches. In order to clear native forests in Tasmania for woodchipping, 1080 is used to kill hundreds of thousands of native animals.5
Did you know that dogs and cats are victims of experimentation? Many animals, including cats, dogs, primates, rabbits, sheep, cattle, pigs, mice and rats are used to test new products, to study human disease and in the development of new drugs. Animals are used in substance testing (draize eye and skin tests and toxicity tests), biomedical research, education research, and war-related experiments.6 In substance testing, chemicals are applied to animals’ eyes and skin, or injected into their stomach, causing horrible suffering and eventual death in many cases. They are injured, mutilated, or deliberately infected with disease.7 Many alternatives to animal experimentation are now available. In particular, alternatives to the harmful use of animals in education are plentiful, and the Humane Society International runs a free Humane Education Loan Program to provide students and educators with up to date alternatives to classroom animal dissection and animal experimentation.8 Animals in entertainment - zoos, circuses, racing and rodeos Animals do not exist to entertain us - they have their own lives to live. Animals used for entertainment in circuses, rodeos, zoos, and other entertainment venues suffer because they are not able to carry out their natural behaviours. Animals killed for fashion – fur Did you know that it takes up to 40 animals to make just one fur coat? Every year, millions of animals are trapped, drowned, or beaten to death in the wild and strangled, gassed, or electrocuted on fur farms.11 Trappers use painful steel-jaw leghold traps to catch wild animals so that they can be turned into clothing. Dogs, cats, birds, and other animals are often caught in the traps, and many actually chew off their own legs to get free.12 These animals then die a horrible death later from gangrene, blood loss or being eaten by predators.13 Animals which are farmed for their fur are kept in dirty, cramped cages which are open to all sorts of weather conditions, including the blazing hot sun, pounding rain, and snow.14 Companion animals – abandoned and discarded Most Aussie homes are the ‘guardian’ to at least one companion animal. So if everyone loves their pets so much, there’s no problem right? Wrong! About 130,000 dogs and 60,000 cats are killed in Australian pounds every year because they can’t find a loving home.15 Animals that are not surrendered to a pound are often abandoned in areas where their likely fate is death by accident, starvation, disease or from predators. At the same time, cute and glamorous looking dogs are bred for the pet shop market in ‘puppy mills’ in often terrible conditions.16
Add to:          |
