In Australia, animal cruelty is illegal. However, Australian law deliberately and actively excludes animals that are used for meat from protection against animal cruelty. Despite the proof from societies such as Animals Australia that meat animals are indeed abused, no law has been put in place to protect these animals from cruel and inhumane treatment. Many videos from secret cameras hidden in large meat industries have uncovered the terrible and extremely painful processes these animals go through before they are killed, and yet the government has done nothing about it.

Meat animals are mistreated in so many ways that the long list of excruciating things that they experience would go on forever. Some of these include cutting off pig’s tails and teeth without anaesthetic, smashing turkeys against walls and cramming as many as 5 chickens in battery hens smaller than an A4 page. That is just a tiny fraction of the pain these animals suffer, and the list still goes on. Pregnant pigs can be legally confined to rooms barely 1cm bigger than their actual length and width, making them completely unable to move. Baby male chicks have no economic value to the egg industry, and so are either gassed to death or ground alive. Chickens have been bread and genetically modified to grow 3 times faster than usual, causing joint problems and lameness. Out of the 1.7 million sheep exported from Australia in 2017, 12,000 died, many from heat exhaustion and toxic fumes from excretion. And out of the 500 million animals that are killed for food every year in Australia, nearly none of them have truly experienced true freedom or care.

If you want our animals to be treated fairly then the law needs to change. Harming these animals will not only make the government look bad when videos are released on the internet, but it also means that innocent animals are being treated extremely cruelly just because they were born into a life they didn’t get to choose. Making cruelty towards these “farmed” animals illegal would not only benefit them, but stopping their abuse might actually make the meat they produce of a better quality. Many of these animals suffer from extreme stress and neurotic type behaviour and so refuse to eat, making them skinnier. If the animals are treated well then not only will they live a good life, then the meat they produce might actually taste better, benefiting all of the meat lovers in Australia. On top of this, it would make animal protection groups happier knowing that our animals are being protected, along with the Australian population in general.

Implicating this law would be extremely feasible, as it would not cost anything to put it into place, and it is both logical and reasonable to do so. The only reason our farmed animals are being mistreated is only due to the fact that there is no law in place to protect them. If this law was put in place, the abuse would stop immediately and our animals could be better treated. If you want the animals of the future to be protected from cruel treatment and abuse, then help us fight for a better future for these amazing creatures and make farmed animal cruelty illegal.