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WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE RSPCA?
| GET OUT! |
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Dr
Hugh Wirth, national RSPCA President orders activists
with dying hens out of surgery.
(Photo by Micheal Chapman) |
Dr Hugh Wirth, national RSPCA
President had only two words for Animal Liberation’s
Action Animal Rescue Team when they walked into his
Balwyn clinic seeking help for sick and dying battery
hens: “GET OUT!”
Channel 7 news screened his hospitality that evening
and the nation read about it in the morning papers.
The night before, the team rescued 14 hens they found
trapped and dying in a manure pit at Wallan. Nature’s
Dozen Egg Farm at Wallan, north of Melbourne, is a huge
battery egg factory notorious for allowing hens to starve
in the manure pits below cages. Several prior rescues
and inspections of these sheds revealed ongoing neglect,
which was reported to the RSPCA and the Police to no
avail.
Appeals to the RSPCA to prosecute battery hen cruelty
over the past eight years have become ‘routine’,
so the activists in frustration decided to take the
hens directly to the National President of the RSPCA,
veterinarian Hugh Wirth for help. He obviously wasn’t
interested.
Over recent years the RSPCA has been busily setting
up accreditation guidelines for animal production systems
(barn-laid eggs and free-range pork), usually in partnership
with the intensive industry. The Action Animal Rescue
Team continues to expose animal cruelty, even at RSPCA-approved
farms, yet the RSPCA consistently refuses to prosecute.
Hugh Wirth states that the team has attempted to destroy
community confidence in the new RSPCA accreditation
systems because they hold the philosophy that animal
shouldn’t be used for food. The Team does not think
that animals are merely commodities for humans to kill
and eat, but that has nothing to do with the RSPCA carrying
out its job of preventing cruelty to all animals.
| BUSINESS
PARTNERS?! |
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| "Mr
Frank Pace, World President, Egg Producers Association
with Dr Hugh Wirth Hon. RSPCA President at the launch
of RSPCA Coles Barn Laid Eggs at Coles in Malvern." |
This
photo is taken directly from the front cover of
RSPCA News, Summer 2001. The RSPCA is flaunting
its friendly relationship with the biggest egg producers
in the country. The latest RSPCA annual report lists
a sponsorship to the tune of $35,000 from Pace Farms.
This is in addition to the royalties they receive
for each barn-laid egg sold.
Dr Hugh
Wirth, National President
RSPCA
3 Burwood Highway
Burwood East VIC 3151
Fax: (03) 9224 2200
Email: rspca@vicrspca.aust.com |
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FOR ALL CREATURES...?
The RSPCA, and particularly their
national President, is very gung ho when it comes to
marketing farmed animals. From their failed pet food
venture (where the “all creature’s great and
small” pictured on the can were also in the can)
to accreditation of barn-laid eggs (Liberty and Mrs
McKechie’s in Victoria; MacQuarie in Tasmania)
and now free-range pig meat (under the Ottway Pork brand).
The RSPCA receives a royalty from the sales of these
animal products which they claim satisfy their guidelines
for humane production.
These weak guidelines are bunk anyway: how can a bird
who has her beak seared off, is crammed into a shed
with thousands of other birds, then trucked to the abattoir,
be free from pain and distress? There is also major
concern that the token barn-laid sheds being set up
by major battery battery producers (including Pace,
the largest egg producer in Australia) are happily continuing
their major animal abuse enterprises under the auspices
of the RSPCA!
GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER
The core of this issue is raised
with the advent of RSPCA-approved pork. Hugh Wirth publicly
denounces vegetarianism, always skirts the slaughterhouse
issue, and with his written word in the RSPCA newsletter,
fosters an attitude that farmed animals are not beings.
Referring to “...meat...being humanely produced,
transported and killed” is not only grammatically
incorrect but promotes an attitude that meat, milk and
eggs have nothing to do with animals. This is exactly
the kind of attitude the animal industries have promoted
to the public for years. The same industries who pay
the RSPCA to approve their products.
While Wirth nobly touts the RSPCA’s “duty...to
achieve the best possible and most humane production
systems...for the vast majority of Australians...who
eat meat and eggs and drink milk...”, the RSPCA
can never be “for all creatures great and small”.
As long as they receive money for animals in systems
where they can and are subjected to cruelty, the RSPCA
can not be about preventing cruelty to animals. Whether
or not they agree with vegetarianism, it is not the
RSPCA’s duty to help set up animal production systems,
it is their duty to prevent cruelty to animals. That
is what the community expects from them, nothing more.
The question now facing the RSPCA as it sends pigs off
to slaughter, is how does it justify contributing to
the appalling situation for farmed animals? - Reprinted from Action Magazine
Issue 64, June 2001. Written by Romeo Gadz
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