THEY’RE ONLY SHEEP

A lot of news around today and a lot of it involving animals. Especially the staggering news that there are close to a million dogs in Victoria and they generate around 90 tonnes of dog shit a day.

But another animal issue takes me back more than twenty years.

In an earlier life radio station 3AW in Melbourne I took a trip to Canberra. To see the Minister for Primary Industry, Peter Nixon, who coincidentally went on to become chairman of the company that owns 3AW.

I took with me a petition signed by more than 30,000 people. I’d collected them from 3AW listeners in a few days.

The petition called for the end of the export of live sheep to the Middle East and the export of live horses to Japan.

Great campaign. Nothing happened.

It was prompted by a disaster in 1980 when more than 40,000 sheep perished in a shipboard fire aboard the Farid Fares off the coast of Western Australia from memory.

The following year more than 8000 sheep died after a ventilation breakdown aboard the Persia.

And in 1996 more than 67,000 sheep died when fire broke out aboard the Uniceb. No rescue attempt was made for more than a week.

Now dying and threatened sheep are in the news again because of the 50,000 unwanted sheep being hawked around the Persian Gulf. And because of animal rights protests at Portland.

I know from experience that sheep have been mistreated ON ships and mistreated even before they were herded on to ships at Portland. And it has been going on for more than twenty years.

There is no reason why sheep being sold for external consumption cannot be killed and dressed in Australia. Can be killed to kosher and halal instructions in this country. The way they have been killed and sold in New Zealand for several decades.

What is happening now, what is happening again, is a disgrace.

And it has been going on for decades. As somebody said to me yesterday: Nobody cares. They’re only sheep.

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002