‘We need to break the barrier,’ farmhand Zoe Carter wrote on Tuesday following the animal rights protests across Australia.
It was the largest coordinated animal rights protest Australia has ever seen, with traffic brought to a standstill in Melbourne, and protesters chaining themselves to machinery outside farms and abattoirs.
Nine protesters were discovered inside the Southern Meats abattoir in Goulburn around 2:30am, after trespassing onto private property.
The movement marked one year since the release of the animal rights film, Dominion, which posits that, “Industries that profit from the exploitation and abuse of animals hide behind a wall of secrecy – they know that if consumers were to see for themselves what actually occurs in the production of meat, dairy, eggs, leather, etc, they’d stop being consumers and those industries would quickly cease to exist”.
LISTEN: We discussed the animal rights protest, and the response of Australian farmers, on this week’s episode of Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues below.
And Carter, an advocate for the Australian agriculture industry, in one, small sense, agrees with the makers of Dominion.
There is a “huge gap” dividing farmers and meat consumers, she says. There isn’t enough education about what goes on in the meat and dairy industries, and that’s leading to what Carter believes are “misconceived, uneducated ideas”.
“I think what needs to happen… we need need to step up and start educating our kids, start educating people in primary school, in high school, young adults, about the truth of what actually happens,” Carter says, as cattle graze behind her.
In the accompanying caption she wrote that, originally from the city, she had no idea where her food came from.
Having now worked in sheep and cattle stations, in shearing sheds, on family farms and in abattoirs,Carter says she now knows that the claims made by some animal rights activists are “not correct”.
“Sadly the industry (like all other ones) have a small 1% that don’t do the right thing and sadly this is what the face of agriculture is,” she said.
You can watch Zoe Carter’s full video here.
But Carter wants to change that face, and believes that Aussie farmers need to step up and be more transparent about their practices.
Carter’s goal is to get into schools, and communicate with young people.
“I’ll get there eventually,” she concludes her video.
