The system used to create animal welfare policy in Australia is broken. Millions of Australians care about animal welfare but their views are not getting through to our political leaders.
CALLA WAHLQUIST: Two RSPCA animal welfare experts have left the organisation to campaign for a national independent animal welfare commission, saying the current regulatory structure is “broken”. Dr Bidda Jones stepped down as chief scientific officer at RSPCA Australia in late 2021, after 25 years. Dr Jed Goodfellow stepped down as a senior policy officer in October…
They launched the Australian Alliance for Animals, co-founded with Dr Meg Good, an animal rights lawyer and senior program manager at Voiceless… and are calling for the formation of an independent national animal welfare commission, a reform which was recommended by the productivity commission in 2017 and has been long campaigned for by the RSPCA.
An independent commission could develop minimum standards without interference, in the same way that Food Standards Australia New Zealand does. That would improve both the lives of farm animals in Australia and Australia’s standing in global animal welfare rankings, Jones said…
Jones said she and Goodfellow had separately become frustrated facing the same roadblocks again and again when campaigning for welfare reform during their work at RSPCA Australia. Some campaigns they worked on, such as the push to ban battery eggs, have stalled for years after getting snarled in byzantine bureaucratic processes…
“The frustrations over time have just piled up,” Jones says. “While within the RSPCA or other groups who were just focusing on trying to get change on specific issues, we weren’t able to dedicate the time to deal with that fundamental policy framework system issue. So we just got to the point where, separately, we both kind of thought we need to do something more about this.”
The drafting of the new Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry began seven years ago. A draft was sent out for consultation last year. It is still not finalised… “Seven years to develop a document that is basically saying this is how poultry should be farmed in Australia,” Jones said. “It is absolutely ridiculous that it should take that time.”
It is not the only reform on the books: the draft guidelines and standards for abattoirs were produced 10 years ago and have not been progressed, and the minimum standards for pig welfare have not progressed past a literature review in 2018. A draft of the national minimum welfare standards for horses was completed in 2009 and has sat on the shelf…
The slow pace of reform has left Australia out of step with contemporary countries on the welfare of farm animals… “The system used to create animal welfare policy in Australia is broken,” he said. “Millions of Australians care about animal welfare but their views are not getting through to our political leaders”. SOURCE…
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