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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: rs...@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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