The ABC’S Four Corners program on the methods some abattoirs in Indonesia have been using when slaughtering cattle that have been imported from Australia has caused the Coalition and their supporters in the livestock industry to play games with the truth.
None of us would be happy with the brutal treatment of cattle in the slaughtering process shown in the ABC’s program but anyone who has visited these countries or read about their lifestyles should have been surprised by what we saw.
What should be of concern to Australians is the way that some of our national print media, Parliamentarians, and business people have tried to place the blame for lack of supervision of these activities on the present Federal Labor Government.
The fact of the matter is that much of the information we have received has contained little truth.
The business known as Meat and Livestock Australia has been the marketing arm of the cattle exporting trade, they appear to have received a fee from cattle producers to oversee and guide this trade – they should surely have been the group to have ensured that the cattle sold to Indonesian buyers was handled in as humane a manner as possible.
If the Four Corners program could move freely around filming these activities, what was stopping MLA from inspecting the abattoirs.
Last week the MLA chairman claimed that, if any representative of Australian industry has seen the sort of cruelty shown on the Four Corners program before the program was shown, the trade with the abattoir concerned would have been stopped .
Like many of the problems we are having in Australia these days, this industry has become very big business.
Where we once had family cattle grazing properties, we now have a situation where companies worth billions have taken over a number of smaller properties and, as we are seeing, they do not take kindly to having their very nice earners interrupted by a small matter of brutal slaughtering of cattle in what would be seen as a third world country.
Geoffrey Gilmour,
Stanthorpe
