17 June 2011 Volume: 21 Issue: 11 Australia's ... - Eureka Street

Volume 21 Issue: 1117 June 2011but even a market based on unexamined, long-accepted omnivorous eating preferencesshould aim for some kind of efficiency.What is truly surprising is the failure of policy-makers, producers and consumers toaddress the very basis of the agreement to ship live animals overseas in the first place: theclaim that a primarily Muslim market cannot and will not tolerate the preparation of the meatexcept in accordance with very precise religious practices that demand particular means ofslaughtering.This temporary suspension of the trade is not, as animal activists prefer to believe, a ban,nor even, as The Age trumpeted, a triumph of people power. It is a pause, a hiatus, in theprofitable trade of vulnerable, sentient beings by ship, for the profit of third parties.Does anybody see, other than myself, the dreadful hypocrisy of demanding and obtainingreal, inconvenient and expensive interruption to the export of live cattle, and the complete lackof outrage and demand for action to ensure the humane treatment of asylum-seeking,unaccompanied children, and a ban on their being transported to work in the sex trade orenslaved pauperism in Malaysia?Such disparity in public outrage, such blindness to the sinful (for once, a proper adjective)lack of compassion for those who have no power and no voice, and such incredible hypocrisyabout the likely improvement in the attitudes and practices in both of these countries to whomwe have given the discretion to exercise our own moral responsibilities, leaves this writer alittle short of breath.Surely, the moral argument for a ban is relevant not only because of our responsibilitiesunder international human rights instruments (such as the Convention on the Rights of theChild) and international trading conventions and treaties.We cannot export our ethical duties to third parties. Our justification for the export of ourown animals, and of children seeking our care, does not hold up under the light. We can acthumanely, reliably, only within our own national boundaries.Stop. The. Bloody. Boats.©2011 EurekaStreet.com.au 26