Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 28


     
     1        our country as the problem you are having here."  That was
     2        actually at the time the BSE was particularly prominent,
     3        the BSE crisis.
     4
     5        Just a useful summing up of the animal husbandry.  Current
     6        farming methods, sorry.  He said on page 11, line 23: "The
     7        animal husbandry practised today is only concerned with
     8        economics.  The comfort and welfare of the animal is only
     9        important if there is the chance that the animal will fail
    10        to achieve marketability.  I participated in this
    11        transition.  For many years I believed the end justified
    12        the means.  Today I regard the methods used in most animal
    13        production as barbaric and inhumane."
    14
    15        Coming from a former cattle rancher, you may think that he
    16        knows what he is talking about.  Certainly that would echo
    17        our sentiments.
    18
    19        He went on to give examples of the methods which he
    20        considered to be barbaric and inhumane, talking about
    21        cutting the horns off without antiseptic, castrating them
    22        with no regard to the pain, branding them, putting them in
    23        confined spaces, putting them on a diet that was totally
    24        different to things that they were used to on the range and
    25        so on.
    26
    27        We heard - I cannot remember where it all was, because I
    28        have not had time to read all of Dr. Gonzales' evidence -
    29        but there was reference to McDonald's beef in the States
    30        coming from feedlot cattle, and one of the things being
    31        done to the feedlot cattle was de-horning.  And Mr. Lyman
    32        said on page 13, line 23, when you put the cattle in a
    33        feedlot aggressive animals with horns become a real danger
    34        to other animals.  You must cut the horns off.  And he
    35        said, so it is not something that has to be done out on the
    36        range.  Usually it is not done.  It is almost always done
    37        in the feedlot.  So obviously that is a barbaric practice
    38        which is basically only taking place so that the animals
    39        can be crammed in to feedlots and be fattened up quicker at
    40        less cost in order to make more profits for the meat
    41        industry.
    42
    43        He referred to the very great distances that animals were
    44        transported.  He said that he personally had seen animals
    45        transported from Florida to California without stopping,
    46        and that he was there when they unloaded them and the
    47        animals were in a terrible state of health.  They were
    48        dragged off the truck and left in piles.  He said that in
    49        Montana, because it had no slaughter facilities within the
    50        State it took between 24 and 30 hours to load up the 
    51        animals and get them to a slaughter facility.  Obviously we 
    52        have heard quite a lot of evidence about the suffering that 
    53        animals endure while they are being transported.
    54
    55        He referred on page 14 to the fact that there are four, he
    56        said, the top three to four slaughter corporations control
    57        80 to 90 percent of the fed cattle that are slaughtered in
    58        the US today, and he explained how the fact that they were
    59        being made into such big operations meant that the smaller
    60        slaughter houses were -- it was harder to compete and

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