In time for World Environment Day on 5 June, a new PETA billboard in Rockhampton, Queensland – at the heart of cattle country – is causing a stir among farmers and shoppers alike. The ad features a koala clinging to a branch that cleverly becomes a fork stabbing a piece of meat, along with the confronting tagline, “Eating meat kills koalas. Australian bushland is being destroyed to make way for the animals you eat.”
Every beef burger, steak, or minced-meat meal compounds the biodiversity crisis. Australian farmers use around 54% of land – a huge 4 million square kilometres – to graze animals for their flesh, skin, and secretions. Only 23% of land is earmarked for conservation.
Preparing land for farming animals is not as simple as it may sound – it often involves razing native forestry, which destroys the habitats of animals who live there, like koalas. A report by the World Wildlife Fund and RSPCA Queensland reveals that Australia remains the only developed nation on the list of deforestation hotspots. Queensland alone destroyed more than 400,000 hectares between 2019 and 2020 and is the state with the highest rate of land clearing in the country. Most of this deforestation is done for grazing cows and sheep.
Farm Transparency Project.
Australian farms are large operations that take a heavy toll on the environment. Gone are the days when cows and sheep were raised on pasture alone. Instead, almost two-thirds of domestic market grains – including wheat, barley, and sorghum – are commandeered by animal feed producers. Crops that are fit for human consumption or grown on land that could otherwise produce human-grade crops are sent to cattle feedlots, dairies, piggeries, and poultry producers or fed to pasture-raised animals during winter and times of drought.
In order to meet the demand for meat, cattle feedlots are becoming ever more common in Australia: 80% of beef sold in major domestic supermarkets is sourced from the feedlot sector. There, the animals are constrained to muddy, faeces-filled yards, where their restricted movement and constant access to fodder mean they put on weight quickly.
Smart, thoughtful cows languish in these bleak feedlots and often develop health conditions such as footrot, botulism, respiratory disease, and liver abscesses from unhygienic conditions. We could end all this suffering by using the same land to grow crops which could more than adequately feed us, without treating cows – and koalas – as collateral damage.
You’d be hard-pressed to find an Aussie who doesn’t want to save koalas from extinction, but the reality is that every single time we sit down to a meaty meal, we push them and countless other native species to the brink. In Queensland, land clearing is directly linked to the extinction of two plant species and has been identified as a threatening process for many of the state’s 739 threatened flora species and 210 threatened fauna species. PETA’s Rockhampton ad makes clear the link between the animals we eat and those who are collateral damage. Happily, each and every Australian can help animals and the environment – all we have to do is leave meat off our plates!
Are you ready to take the first step?
The post An Uncomfortable Truth for World Environment Day: Eating Meat Kills Koalas appeared first on PETA Australia.
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