the meat and veg debate

[billy]

They've not been banned, just "suspended because a current affairs programme told us it's evil". Our Agriculture Minister is meeting with the Indonesians today, I think. The problem is that there are international standards for this sort of thing, which are met and exceeded in Australian abbatoirs but Indonesia is a developing country, with limited training and resources. Still, there's really no excuse for taking several goes to kill an animal -- people have been doing that for a couple of thousand years at least, so a clean kill is a reasonable thing to expect. If live exports are banned, Australia's market will suffer badly, so it's obviously in our best interest to make sure that we're selling our live animals in countries that adhere to at least the minimum international standard and, where necessary, to spend our own money to make sure their conditions are brought up to a satisfactory level.

one of their ways to kill the animal is to bleed them. often they don't tranquillise them first which they're supposed to. a lot of Indonesian are also pretty pissed at how the animals are being treated.