"From Dusk 'til Dawn' extract: Live Animal Exports - A Truly English Objection
Over a period of six weeks during the winter of 1994, three significant
events rocked the movement, uniting its various elements into a single
powerful force. The first was this ground-breaking judicial backlash at
the Old Bailey, followed two weeks later by a huge uprising against the
live animal export trade. Flaring up from a small spark at the southern
port of Shoreham in Sussex, an evening of determined protest led to the
most remarkable ripple of events across the country, involving
thousands of people, many of whom had never even protested before. And
then there was another violent killing. Again the so-called extremists
were on the receiving end.
Live animal exports were
traditionally the domain of the RSPCA and Compassion in World Framing
(CIWF) and fronted by the likes of Joanna Lumley and Celia Hammond; not
an animal liberation issue but a welfare one. What was once considered
a secondary issue regarding the perceived benefits of animal killing in
UK slaughterhouses over death elsewhere had become a raging battle for
the entire movement. Naturally, I take issue with the ‘niceness’ of UK
slaughtering, as does anyone who has experienced our way of killing
animals for food. I have no aspiration to see any animal killed here
first and then be shipped out dead for human consumption to spare them
the horror elsewhere as the welfarist demands. This strikes me as a
logical stance, believing as I do that slaughterhouses by definition
are cruel places where no animal should ever be taken under any
circumstances.
To have ‘welfarists’ on the one hand publicly and
tearfully objecting to the export of live animals for slaughter, whilst
on the other, taking money from Slaughterers and Co. for advertising
animal products smacks of hypocrisy and double standards and will never
bring an end to animal exploitation. One media babe - who describes
herself as an “animal lover” and courts the label - advertises dairy
yoghurts with added gelatine, while in the ranks, RSPCA inspectors were
caught on camera munching on animal body parts while tracking the
horrific journeys of UK ‘farm stock’ across Europe for slaughter
elsewhere. With representatives such as this, what chance do the
animals stand?
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