Kangaroo cull2

It is no coincidence that the Canadian seal hunt is known to be the world’s largest marine-mammal slaughter, while in Australia we take credit for the world’s largest land-based animal cull. Both are unnecessary, disguised beneath the rhetoric of environmental protection, and undertaken with extreme, legally sanctioned cruelty.

When the public came to know about the inhumane methods of slaughter seals were subject to, they lobbied their governments to intervene. The result was the 2009 European Union (EU) ban on imported seal products, which has effectively rendered the Canadian seal industry unviable. If Australia is to protect its national icon, the kangaroo, from such needless slaughter, we must likewise turn to the EU to ban kangaroo products, forcing the spotlight onto Australia’s hidden outback cruelty – not least of which is the half a million joeys annually who are brutally bashed to death as the industry’s ‘collateral damage’.

There is a striking similarity between the methods used to kill baby kangaroos (joeys) and baby seals (pups). Both Canadian and Australian government guidelines require the young animals to be bludgeoned to death. Seal pups are clubbed on the ice with hakipiks, long sticks with a hooked blade at the end. After being beaten, the pup has the hooked rammed through their body and is dragged back to the boat to be skinned. A report produced by a panel of vets for the International Fund for Animal Welfare estimated that 40% of seals are skinned alive; that is, the blow to the head neither kills them nor renders them unconscious.

Under the Australian National Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies for Commercial Purposes, licensed hunters are required to kill the babies of any mother kangaroos they shoot for meat or skin. This is because joeys have no utility to hunters, and are regarded as mere collateral damage. For ‘pouch young’, that is those still in their mother’s pouch, one prescribed method of killing is by a blow to the back of the skull hard enough to destroy brain function. Anecdotal evidence suggests this is often carried out by hunters slamming the joeys into the ground or into the side of cars.

Hunters are supposed to kill ‘young at foot’, that is those joeys still dependent on their mothers for milk and survival skills but have left the pouch, with a single gunshot to the brain or heart. In reality, due to the difficulty of shooting such a small creature with such precision, these joeys are often released into the bush where, without their mothers, they will starve or be eaten. In other instances they are mis-shot through the neck or body, and then left to die a slow and agonising death.

If the world knew that half a million babies were being massacred in this manner every year there would be outrage. Despite whether one agrees with a commercial kangaroo industry or not, the fact is that these innocent joeys are being cruelly slaughtered as a mere by-product of the industry.

Interestingly in Canada, due to the EU ban on seal products the price of seal pelts has plummeted, resulting in an industry so decimated that any further seal deaths are gratuitous. According to the president of the Canadian Sealers’ Association, the 2009 price of a seal pelt was CAD$14, whereas four years ago each pelt fetched CAD$100 or more. The pelts are the main reason seals are killed, as seal meat is mostly seen as a by-product used for pet food.

With demand for seal products almost non-existent after the EU ban, and the industry now propped up by government, the continued killing of seals is as reckless and horrific as the deaths of half a million innocent joeys.

If we want to end the unnecessary deaths of so many kangaroos, we need to bear witness to their suffering. We must become educated about what takes place inside the industry, and we must share this knowledge with the world. If our own government supports the industry then we must implore the international community to once again stand up against such unacceptable cruelty, as they did for seals.

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Written by Voiceless

Image credit: Esther Schultz via Flickr Creative Commons