True innovation is rare in agriculture. Most farmers are willing to improve the way they work, but these improvements are typically small adjustments to established practice, rather than fundamental changes…
AUSTRALIA IN THE ASIAN CENTURY – A series examining Australia’s role in the rapidly transforming Asian region. Delivered in partnership with the Australian government. Today, Professor Clive Phillips takes…
Have you ever felt the vibrations as an elephant stamps her foot in rage? In 2000, I was on the New South Wales Central Coast when Arna the circus elephant did just that. Arna was not happy and her distress…
More and more, the animals we kill for food are dining at the human table. Increasingly, we feed them on grain, soybeans and fish meal. Recently, Professor Mike Archer published an article on The Conversation…
New footage recently aired on ABC has again brought to our attention the plight of cattle in Indonesian abattoirs. Scenes of cattle being poked, stabbed, and slaughtered without appropriate equipment has…
Is the confinement of animals for human purposes akin to slavery? Are some animals slaves? Slavery is an evocative concept. Treating someone as a slave is one of the worst things you can do to them. Using…
Last year, revelations of cruelty to cows in Indonesian abattoirs led to outrage in Australia. The assumption was that these sorts of things could never happen here. Last week, a NSW abattoir was closed…
We have entered a new, digital, era in animal protection, yet one in which a legislative backlash against video exposes is stirring in parts of the US. Last week brought another revelation of animal cruelty…
In “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson”, Mark Twain equated keeping a cat to domestic bliss: When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there – in sunny weather…
This article was published in 2011. A follow-up article refuted its claims. The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and…
Which is the greater deprivation for an animal: to live a good-quality life abbreviated at less than its natural term by painless slaughter for meat, or to never live at all? How much of an animal’s life…
For the animal industry and the animal protection movement, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) pending case against poultry producer Steggles is set to be their very own version…
In his 2011 ASSA Cunningham Lecture this month, food policy expert Professor Tim Lang suggested that we “experiment” with alternative diets to reduce our meat and dairy consumption. Lang suggested that…
When my mother was a young girl, she - like most families in the country - kept a few chickens in the back yard. Once a day she went out and gave them household scraps, and they rushed over to greet her…
In the lead up to the 2011 Melbourne Cup I have heard numerous interviews with Australian racing legend Bart Cummings. Apparently Cummings has “won the Melbourne Cup race a record 12 times”. I had no idea…
Twenty years ago, Jared Diamond’s book “The Third Chimpanzee” highlighted a startling fact. If we adhere to the scientific rules for classifying species (taxonomy), humans should be classified as a third…
Welcome to “The most powerful companies you’ve never heard of” – an ongoing series from The Conversation that sheds light on big companies with low profiles. Today, The University of Queensland’s Clive…
I may be wrong, but recent indicators suggest animal suffering is going out of fashion. I have been tracking the ebb and flow of the animal protection movement as a first-hand observer since the late 1990s…
Professor, Management and Organizational Studies, Huron University College and Coordinator of Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership, Western University