Published in: Southerly – ‘Australian Dreams 2’, 2014, 74(3): 100-114. www.southerlyjournal.com.au

PATTY MARK

in conversation with Teja Brooks Pribac

Dreams and Beyond

Most people are likely to agree that the

treatment of the most vulnerable

subjects is a good reflection of a

society as a whole – a notion which has

been publicly expressed in various

contexts and used to substantiate

various just causes. Since leaving her

native United States in 1973 to travel

the world with her Australian husband,

but particularly over the past thirty-six

years, Patty Mark, now living in

Victoria, has been a prolific voice and

leading example, inspiring people all

over the world to help them – the most

vulnerable, the most repressed, objectified, instrumentalised, nameless, those who for the

majority of people do not count, do not even exist, cannot exist in the real sense of the word,

because if they did, our communal guilt would be exposed: animals – nonhuman animals.

The distancing and concealment in relation to current farming practices and slaughter of

animals enable us ‘to eat meat without the killers or the killing, without even … the animals

themselves’ (Pachirat, 3). Not new phenomena, concealment efforts by the trade (later

industry) and the active avoidance of witnessing by the consumers disturbed Leo Tolstoy

who wrote in 1892: ‘We cannot pretend that we don’t know … and cannot believe that if we

refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist. This is especially the case when

what we do not wish to see is what we wish to eat’. Likely aware of the power of human

denial, Tolstoy nevertheless found comfort in the realisation that, at the time, meat-free diets

and more compassionate lifestyles were spreading, publications on the issue growing more

numerous by the year, and that even hotels and restaurants based on the philosophy of non-

violence were opening in various countries, a sure sign of the moral progress of humanity

which, as Tolstoy saw it, is ‘the foundation of every other kind of progress’ (46). Meanwhile,

in England, which Tolstoy mentions as an example of such progress, a plant-based diet was

indeed on the rise, but so was the pressure to remove slaughter from public view. Deeming

slaughter a ‘morally dangerous’ activity, social reformers argued for concentrated operations

outside the city limits, which would supposedly enable easier monitoring both in terms of

cruelty to animals and food hygiene (Fitzgerald). The public, particularly people who lived in

proximity of the butchering yards, could not agree more, as a letter in the Farmers Magazine

from 1848 by a neighbour of the (in)famous Smithfield meat market in London illustrates:

SIR, – Will you interfere, with your powerful pen, to put a stop to one of the most

direful nuisances in this metropolis (…) the incessant barking of dogs, the bellowing

of the oxen and calves, the bleating of sheep, the grunting of swine, the roaring and

swearing of men, with torches, passing to and fro among the frightened animals, and

the continued sound of blows inflicted on the horns, heads, and bodies of the poor

animals, produce an impression on the beholders that no person can adequately

describe, and must be seen to be believed.

Over the following decades systemic efforts have been made to construct a system that

would protect the general public from the offensive sights, sounds and smells of nonhuman

animals’ existence and their resistance to anthropogenic violence; a system that has silenced

that little bit of voice animals had left, a system that has given rise to a rich selection of

philosophical and less philosophical excuses for presumed human rights to nonhuman

animals’ lives, proposed from the safe distance these structures of concealment engender; the

system in which we live now. Patty Mark has dedicated her life to deconstructing this

conceptual bubble. Because once you see, you cannot unsee, nor choose to look the other

way. [TBP]

Patty Mark (PM): Yes, after seeing firsthand what is happening and all the pain animals are

suffering, it’s impossible to turn away. Even when I do try to take a break it’s still there in

front of me, as it seldom leaves my mind. I hear their screams and witness their fear and

suffering in hundreds of places including slaughterhouses, industrialised farms, darkened

sheds, open paddocks, feedlots and inside transport trucks and ships on four continents. I

have, in fact, witnessed these operations worldwide; they are all the same: you’ve seen one,

you’ve seen them all. And I’m not referring exclusively to so-called factory farming: free-

range and barn-laid (when it comes to eggs) alternatives are not much different. I’ve

experienced some of the worst conditions in RSPCA-approved barn-laid facilities:

overcrowded sheds, badly debeaked hens, stressed to their physical and psychological limits,

cannibalising weaker ones who have nowhere to hide. The problem isn’t the type of farming

the animals find themselves in, but the fact they are even farmed at all. We consider animals

to be our slaves, our property to do with as we choose, and this superiority complex we hold

tight and persist with causes the largest transgression of rights and injustice on the planet.

People like to think ‘free range’ animal products are good and humane but this isn’t true.

For instance, the ‘parent birds’ of all egg laying hens is an unknown industry in itself. These

hens and roosters are never ‘free range’, but locked away continually in dim windowless

sheds screaming endlessly from the constant mating and crowded conditions. And half the

chicks hatched from these appalling conditions are male and these babies are ground up alive

at one day old because they will never lay eggs. Similarly, in the dairy industry, male calves,

deemed superfluous since their bodies cannot produce milk, are equally slaughtered at a

tender age, and their mother’s milk, naturally meant for them, is sold for human consumption.

And in the end, free range or otherwise, the lives of all animals exploited in these systems

end prematurely, without the comfort of a soothing hand but with violence and brutality

inside the slaughterhouse.

TBP: Your beginnings, however, were quite different. In 1980, for example, you marched

with meatworkers at a protest against live sheep export.

PM: Yes, in the early years I was an animal welfare campaigner working to improve

conditions for animals. It didn’t cross my mind back then that the whole concept of animal

agriculture was wrong. So on May 12, 1980, almost 35 years ago now, I stood side by side

with meatworkers in Portland, Victoria. The meatworkers were gathered there to protest job

loss due to live export and the associated slaughter operations being transferred abroad. They

picketed and blocked the Al Quarain, the carrier ship. We were there to protest the cruelty to

animals involved in live export. When I say ‘we’, I’m not referring to large crowds of people

concerned with animal cruelty. The movement (as well as awareness) was in its infancy.

Christine Townend drove down from Sydney with her two young sons (Chris and I had

recently started animal liberation groups in our respective states), I brought my son who was

almost four with me, and another sixteen-year-old girl came along. We were holding signs

with some sixty meatworkers. One of our signs read: ‘Pain for Animals, Profit for People’.

There were mounted police and scores of other police trying to break our joint blockade. A

photograph of me being roughly yanked off the front of a sheep transport truck by the police

was later featured in the Portland papers. That day over a hundred police escorted several

trucks of sheep to the docks. After twelve hours, mounted police and officers on foot

dispersed the blockade. Some police got very rough and one assaulted one of the

meatworkers; I witnessed this and was asked to attend the court hearing. One thing I’ll never

forget – this was early days of campaigning – was a very tall and fit policeman who was

involved with many others to move us off the road: as he took me by the arm he whispered

into my ear ‘Good on you’.

TBP: Your experience with the police has since been varied. You’ve met aggressive officers,

but you’ve also met compassionate ones who upon witnessing the conditions of the animals

on the farms rushed to your help…

PM: Yes, they are just humans, some are hardened and afraid of seeing with their hearts,

others are brave and compassionate individuals, concerned with the suffering of others, like

the sergeant who helped us transport fifty-two sick and dying broiler [i.e. raised for meat]

chicks to the vet one night. Once he saw the hundreds of dead chicks we had found and lined

up and the dire conditions of those fighting for their lives there was no question of him

arresting us, only of how to get these tiny birds to a vet as soon as possible.

TBP: Chickens that you’ve rescued, cared for and got to know as individuals… For over two

decades your work has focused on direct rescue of animals, bearing witness to their suffering

and educating the public, aiming at opening people’s eyes to the massive violence against

sentient individuals which people are (perhaps inadvertently) participating in. Following your

protest against live export in 1980, concerns for animal welfare were raised in the Australian

Parliament for the first time in the history of the live export business. Simultaneously, as

evident from an article in The Age (13 May 1980), which appeared the day after the protest,

there was pressure to keep animal welfare issues separated so as to not ‘cloud the economic

arguments about the trade’.1 Do you feel that we’re still in the same boat, so to speak, as far

as welfarism goes, i.e. that the tension between true animal wellbeing and the economic profit

that underpins the existence of these systems of animal exploitation can never be resolved to

the benefit of animals?

PM: True wellbeing and ‘welfare’ as we know it today, are two completely different things,

as I indicated earlier. Animal welfare is about regulating animal ownership, making sure

there are safeguards in place that animals have ‘good welfare’ while they are being bred,

raised and killed. There are countless animals who are enslaved, who are denied and

dominated by those who have total control over their lives. Imagine what it would be like to

be at the complete mercy of somebody else, and I mean complete: to sit in a cage – or in any

enclosure – with no means of escape; the violence of a foreign hand grabbing your body

without your permission, completely immobilising you. Some people may voice their

objections citing anthropomorphism and similar excuses to not see this as it is. It may be

easier to understand the extent of the violence and deprivation animals face within the

industry when you look at these same animals in a sanctuary setting after they’ve been

rescued. The damage becomes much more obvious when they are at last allowed autonomy;

when they are given the freedom, for example, to not be touched by a human, when you

watch them protecting and nurturing their bodies and selves like we do our own, when you

watch them slowly heal physically and psychologically – sometimes it takes years –

beginning to enjoy life and friendships with other animals, including humans. When you live

with them, get to know them as individuals with their own personalities, it is hard to find

words to describe the grief, the utter devastation at the thought that billions of other equally

sentient and equally unique individuals are enslaved right now for absolutely no reason. We

can live on plants, making totally unnecessary the unbearable lightness with which this

violence is carried out and supported by the vast majority of people. ‘To you it’s just a meal,

to them, it’s life itself,’ somebody said. And they cherish their lives – oh yes, they do – just

like we do our own.

We carried out our first hen rescue in 1993 at Alpine Poultry. The first hen I held that

night was found with many others stuck in their own faeces. She weighed only half the

normal body weight and was near death in the manure pit. She was crippled and could only

‘hop’ around using her good leg. I called her Jackie and put her on the cover of Action, a

magazine I founded and edited for over twenty years. On this cover I called Jackie ‘The Spirit

of Australia.’ After some months of a very endearing life after rescue she collapsed with egg

peritonitis. I rushed her to the vet in tears, saying to them ‘do whatever it takes to save her’.

They tried but she didn’t make it. I remember driving her body, wrapped in a towel, home

from the bird vet, a forty-five minute drive. My eyes were streaming tears most of the way

home. At a stop light I remember seeing a woman with her kids and her grocery shopping in

the car alongside mine. I could see a dead chicken in her grocery bag. She would have paid

perhaps $5 for her dead bird and I paid around $350 to try anything to save this dear tiny hen

now lying dead next to me. This sadness has never left me.

Any various ‘improvements’ of welfare laws are not doing much good to the animals;

they are, ironically, helping the industry and supporting slaughterhouses while giving

consumers the impression that something is happening and that it’s okay to keep eating

animals or drinking their secretions (e.g. milk). But enslavement and oppression are never

okay. We’re currently killing more animals than ever before: sixty-four billion each year

globally without including aquatic animals (one to three trillion yearly). Labels such as

‘certified humane’, ‘compassionate’, ‘endorsed by…’ are Advertising 101: positive

promotion to sell the products. And there is always space to further mislead the consumer; in

2006, for example, the news broke that, daily in Australia, two hundred thousand eggs from

the battery cage system were being passed off as free range eggs, swindling the consumer for

$13 million annually.

I spent many years trying to improve the conditions in animal agriculture and lessen

animals’ pain. I thought it was the right thing to do. For me it all began in 1978. I put a

handwritten sign in a Milk Bar in St Kilda saying: ‘HELP THE HENS: come to our first

meeting Dec 7, 1978’. A journalist from the Herald Sun saw the sign and wrote it up as an

oddity. But that meant state-wide publicity and seventeen people turned up to my lounge

room. The goal was to ban battery cages, and I remember telling this meeting that we would

have to be patient as it may take us two years to do this! We wanted to ban the cage. Back

then there were hardly any ‘free range’ eggs available – it was a quota system. Our strategy

was to help get free range eggs in the marketplace. The focus generally was on moving from

factory farming to free range farming. Peter Singer and I worked closely together during most

of the eighties until it became very clear we were going in very different directions, Peter

more animal welfare and myself animal rights and the abolition of the property status of

animals. In 1981 Peter and I even flew in a tiny aircraft to King Island to visit a free range

egg farm in our efforts to promote this industry. We very mistakenly reasoned that if free

range eggs were widely available the cage system would collapse. ‘Success’!: free range eggs

are now available almost everywhere but more hens (and roosters) are being abused than

ever.

We were overjoyed when in the early 1980s the Australian government set up a Senate

Select Inquiry into animal welfare, covering all major areas of animal use and abuse. Animal

groups, including myself, spent a lot of time, energy, resources and finances doing extensive

research and writing submissions, trying to improve animal farming. Some positive

recommendations by senators were made, but that’s all they were – recommendations. And it

remains so to date. Australian animals are protected from abuse by the Prevention of Cruelty

to Animals Act (POCTAA), but animals covered by a ‘Code of Accepted Farming Practices’

(the codes themselves being only recommended, not statutory) are exempt from the

POCTAA. If this law against cruelty covered and was truly applied to all animals, we

wouldn’t have animal farms or slaughterhouses. Imagine if some races or groups of humans

were exempt from protection in human rights law – just imagine...

Besides, I think it’s perverted to give an animal a supposedly ‘good life’, which implies

that animals have needs and desires, and then take it all away, stab them, bleed them to death

and eat their bodies, or let them live a little bit longer to exploit them for their secretions and

then kill them, too. The worst suffering and torment I’ve ever witnessed was in a New South

Wales slaughterhouse when a group of free-range pigs were brought in for slaughter. Coming

from their ‘good life’ on the paddocks, to the noisy, crowded kill lines where they could hear

other pigs screaming, smell the blood; they panicked, anguished and in fear, their mouths

foamed, their eyes rolled. No words can describe it.

We must be honest and brave enough to recognise that we contribute to this suffering

directly, by supporting these practices through the choices we make. And we must always

imagine the human condition rising above violence, and work towards this goal; animal

farming is violence, and it is not only unnecessary violence towards the animals themselves,

animal agriculture is by far the most destructive industry for our environment, our planet, and

ultimately for our own and our children’s quality of life generally.

TBP: Indeed, yet despite the hard figures staring us in the face, most people, including

organisations that advertise themselves as environmental protectionists, tend to ignore the

impact of animal agriculture, though the tide seems to be changing, and the body of literature

and documentaries exposing this inconvenient truth is growing. Speaking of growing, and

opening, you started openrescue in 1993. What is openrescue?

PM: Openrescue is an act of non-violent civil disobedience. It involves breaking the unjust

law, which protects the abusers not the victims, in order to aid and rescue innocent

individuals who are enslaved and unable to help themselves, and to document their

conditions. Openrescue is about opening – a gate, a door, a cage, one’s heart, mindset,

identity. People who do openrescue have a passion for justice and non-violence, and this

passion must override fear – the fear of breaking unjust laws, and the possible consequences

of this action, to save defenceless individuals, trapped in the system of exploitation and

abuse. When we do openrescue we put our own physical freedom at risk, but there is an

unparalleled sense of freedom when you help someone who is imprisoned, tormented, sick,

dying. In fact, to the industry, a lot of the time we are just doing the dirty work of removing

animals who would soon have died if left unattended, animals who comprise the industry’s

‘accepted mortality rate’. When we enter the dark and cruel underworld of animal agriculture,

we immediately reach out for the most vulnerable individuals, the injured and sick ones, like

Jackie, mentioned before. At another place, for example, we found hens impaled on broken

rusty wires inside battery cages, hens buried up to their necks in their own piles of excrement

under the cages – some fall out and then can’t escape the wet manure, rats running

everywhere. We always take appropriate bio-security measures, and of course we document

everything.

In 2002 we did a road-trip to West Wyalong in NSW as part of our investigation of Pace

Farm facilities in three states. We were trying to prevent Pace Farm from constructing the

largest hen factory in the Southern Hemisphere. Pulling the hens out of their own shit in

Griffith, washing them in a motel room, I promised myself that this horrible place would

NOT be built – ‘over my dead body’ – as we had so much evidence back then about how bad

the Pace Farm company was. We were the only Australian animal group to take this battle on.

It went to the Environmental Court in NSW and we thought we had a chance until the court

ruled early that we had to post $200,000 first up, in case we lost, to cover any cost to the

other side. Of course we didn’t have any money to speak of and weren’t able to collect that

large amount.

TBP: And that factory farm is now up and running, even advertising itself as environmentally

friendly. But you managed to close down a puppy farm – ‘puppy mill’ – in 2005.

PM: Yes, we shut down Ron Wells’ puppy factory outside Ballarat in Victoria where we

found hundreds of dogs in miserable condition. Like any other industry which promotes

animals as property and commodities, the ‘pet’ industry, particularly ‘pet’ factory farming,

which is where most dogs and cats sold in pet shops come from, is a horribly cruel industry.

Cruel to the animals continually kept confined and pregnant, pumping out cute puppies or

kittens, as well as to all the healthy, rehomeable animals who end up killed at the pound

because too many people are choosing to buy purpose bred animals from pet shops instead of

adopting those who are already here and in desperate need of a loving home and a much

deserved second chance in life.

Not everyone can or would choose to do openrescue. But everyone can help end the

universal violence against animals and abolish the property status of nonhuman animals. Like

humans, other animals also need and want to be free. I see openrescue as trailblazing work,

much like the Underground Railroad that helped some 100,000 human slaves (also

considered ‘property’ at the time) reach freedom. Or consider The Diary of Anne Frank¸

which had an enormous influence on me in my formative years, where you read of people

risking their own lives and freedom to help others attain theirs. When you witness the horrors

of animal slavery close up, to help end it is not even a choice anymore, it’s an inner

imperative. We as a society, responsible for and actively supporting this torture, cannot keep

our heads buried in the sand; we have to recognise that animal agriculture is intrinsically

violent and unjust. We may not be able to end it overnight, just like we may never be able to

completely stop rape, murder, child abuse and similar horrors within the human society, yet

of course we as a society oppose these injustices and punish the abusers; the same rationale

and logic of the heart must apply when it comes to the suffering of nonhuman animal victims.

I can still remember the shock I felt upon entering Victoria’s largest egg production

facility in 1994, the second year of openrescue activities. When I opened the door into the

first shed, everything I saw was flowing with cobwebs, I could barely make out the cages, I

was paralysed with disbelief. Then there is always the heart-breaking reality of choosing who

to save and having to leave most behind. That is a huge toll on one’s psyche; there simply are

too many of them and too few of us, so we take the ones in most need of help. And then

crawl out for another scary trip across the paddocks, hitting the ground when cars drive by,

clutching hens close while running.

More recently we organised a rooftop protest at Somerville Egg Farm.2 We stood on the

roof defiant and determined; there were over twenty of us identified in our openrescue

uniforms. We were each dressed in a white bio suit and a black tee shirt emblazoned with

bold white letters saying: ANIMAL RESCUE. It was May 4, 2011, and Melbourne weather

played its part that day (starting at 4am) from freezing cold to warm sunshine to pelting down

rain while we huddled under umbrellas or plastic sheets. This wasn’t a stunt or knee jerk

reaction to get ourselves on TV. Yes, we did want media attention, but only so the public

could see and hear the tens of thousands of screaming caged hens locked in the shed under

our feet. And mainly to force the legal authorities to investigate for themselves and to shut

the place down. I had first investigated this animal factory back in 2000 and lodged a

documented cruelty complaint to the Department of Agriculture, however no action was

taken. Over ten years later Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV: www.alv.org.au) received

further complaints from the public about cruelty at this egg factory, so our openrescue team

once again investigated, several times, in February and March 2011, and found the conditions

were just as bad as they had been over ten years earlier.

ALV has made over a hundred complaints to the legal authorities over the past twenty

years and no action is ever taken at any of the farms, hence our decision to take it to the

rooftops. We succeeded in getting our shocking footage of the suffering hens on TV that

night...

TBP: But several protesters, including you, were arrested and charged with trespass. This

was not the first time you’ve had to face legal repercussions, you’ve even ended up in prison

a couple of times.

PM: Yes. In this case we were charged, and of course appealed our trespass convictions and

fines in the County Court. The result was not good, nor did I believe it reasonable or

just. Due to my numerous prior convictions for helping animals, I was given the harshest

sentence. The Judge ordered that I be of ‘good behaviour’ for four years and pay a $1,500

fine. He added that if I re-offended during this period or didn’t pay the fine in six months I

would have to reappear before him. As we speak, my six months are up. I have no intention

of paying a fine for what I believe is crucial work to bring help and relief to the sick and

dying. Animal agriculture is a virulent system that is clogging up every single artery of the

planet’s biosphere. We must not hesitate to help a hen, cow, or pig who is suffering and

enslaved, any more than we would hesitate helping a human in the same circumstance.

There was a thread of hope after a 1993 Court win in Hobart over Golden Egg Farm,

after Magistrate Wright’s landmark (or so we thought) decision. In his summing up he stated

that the cruelty is ‘constant, continual and without relief’. Yet twenty years later nothing has

changed. Pam Clarke, from Tasmania, and I have done numerous street actions and several

openrescues together over the years as well as putting this case together. We have both been

arrested several times and spent many hours in ‘lock-up’. One time, as we both sat in

adjoining cells, but unable to see each other, she gave me words of wisdom I’ll never

forget. Pam is a very accomplished artist/painter. She told me never to despair, always keep

stepping back and looking at the big picture: it may not look good ‘close up’ but every brush

stroke – every action – adds to the overall effect.

I ended up in prison twice for actions at Happy Hens Egg World here in Victoria. The

first time was with two others and we had three days at the old woman’s prison in Fairleigh,

circa 1997 from memory. The next time was in May 1998 and I was on my own when I

refused to sign a bail document not to return to Happy Hens. This was after some twenty-five

rescues with documented proof of suffering and cruelty, yet the RSPCA or Police failed to

act. I was locked up for ten days, five of which I spent at Geelong watchhouse and the other

five inside Deer Park Women’s Prison. When they fed me chicken at the watchhouse I went

on a hunger strike which lasted eight days. My case was later heard in court; Galbally

O’Bryan defended me and we won, I was awarded costs and after this I had little police

problems, or rather even though I have multiple convictions, fines and arrests and I’ve always

refused to pay fines on ethical grounds (for taking sick and dying animals to a vet for help),

the police basically ignore me. There have been multiple warrants out for my imprisonment

for years but they are ignored.

TBP: You may be familiar with Loren Eiseley’s ‘The Star Thrower’, in which Eiseley

describes walking on a beach and encountering a man who, unlike other beach goers, is not a

collector of shells or fish, instead, he’s looking for stranded starfish and throwing them back

into the ocean. Puzzled and dismissive initially of the seemingly futile activity of the star

thrower because ‘death is running more fleet than he, and along every seabeach in the world’,

Eiseley concludes:

Silently, I sought and picked up a still-living star, spinning it far out into the

wave. I spoke once briefly. ‘I understand,’ I said, ‘call me another thrower.’

Only then I allowed myself to think. He is not alone any longer. After us there

will be others. We were part of the rainbow – like the drawing of a circle in

men’s minds, the circle of perfection.

Star Throwers like yourself and many other compassionate and courageous people who

refuse to turn a blind eye to the immense suffering of nonhuman animals, also represent a

threat to the financial powers, and as such there’s increasing pressure from the industry and

its lobbyists on governments (including in Australia) to implement so called ag-gag laws.

These laws, in essence, would criminalise any act of documenting and spreading evidence of

corporate animal abuse among the public, effectively and purposely ensuring that the general

public (the consumer) is kept forever in the dark. In the United States, for example, peaceful

activities aiming at protecting the environment and animal wellbeing are considered the

number one domestic terrorism threat and labelled as ‘eco-terrorism’.3 Would you agree that

this is a result of people generally waking up to both the suffering we completely

unnecessarily inflict upon our animal kin and to the fast rate at which we’re currently

destroying our (only) planet, leaving complete devastation for the generations to come – with

animal agriculture being the biggest offender, contributing to such destruction more than all

the world’s traffic combined? A kind of desperate attempt by the money and power driven

lobbies to keep business going as usual to the detriment of everyone’s wellbeing and

ultimately freedom?

PM: The integrity, empathy and dedication to justice that people I’ve worked with over the

years possess are traits that should be fostered not criminalised. Animal activists have their

foot in the door now and the animal industries know it, so they are coming down heavy on

those of us doing openrescue or undercover work. So yes, I believe the current endeavours to

introduce ag-gag legislation are definitely a desperate move by governments and big business

to put huge and heavy boulders before the closed doors of animal agriculture. If this type of

legislation is passed it may put some people off, but only temporarily, as so much else is

happening simultaneously that is forcing humans to take note, including the unfathomable

force of Mother Nature, who is on our side.

An equally dangerous threat by Industry is their current public relation campaigns to

normalise the large scale mass production of animals as ‘products’ in the public’s mind.

Some of these monster animal facilities are opening their doors themselves – keeping it all

under their own control – showing the ‘best practice’ standard ‘care’. Some with hundreds of

mother cows with bulging udders (but no babies) standing on circular rotating milking

machines; some with endless walls of cages several tiers high filled with laying hens; others

with pigs in so-called eco-shelters (filmed only after they make sure it’s filled with fresh hay

instead of a quagmire of faeces and urine from 200 pigs), adding a friendly and pleasing

voice-over stating how well the animals are looked after and protected from the elements and

predators and so on... It can work, considering it’s aimed at a harried and voluminous

population bulging at the seams and mostly crowded into cities with scant memory of and no

interaction with the majority of nonhuman animals.

My dream is that the animal welfare movement takes the leap of faith so urgently needed

to root out the main cause of animal abuse and suffering – speciesism. That animal activists

stand strong for what the animals really need – their freedom and autonomy, not regulations

to make their slavery slightly more bearable. That animal activists speak honestly, openly and

positively, that veganism is the moral baseline for animal justice. I ache that it took me so

many years to realise these basic tenets. My biggest dream is that now, with all the resources

of modern day communication, it shouldn’t take anyone ‘years’ to grasp these strong tools –

these truths – and that soon, all of us pulling together, the tipping point will be here and

animals will have their lives back!

NOTES

1 “The live sheep row goes on”, The Age, Tuesday 13 May 1980. Available at: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19800513&id=DfdUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AJMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4161,6058891

2 “Activists storm Somerville Egg Farm to protest treatment of chickens,” News.com.au, 4 May 2011. Available at: http://www.news.com.au/activists-storm-somerville-egg-farm-to-protest-treatment-of-chickens/story-fn8g495p-1226049754230

3 www.greenisthenewred.com

WORKS CITED

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Fitzgerald, A.J. ‘A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary

Implication.’ Human Ecology Review 17.1(2010): 58-69.

Pachirat, T. Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven:

Yale UP, 2011.

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