Australia. It's time to end the suffering of baby Joeys!

From: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1212462902126724&id=181248271914864&substory_index=0 

Thanks Chantal

 To :  

Malcolm.Turnbull.MP@aph.gov.au, josh.frydenberg.mp@aph.gov.au, office@act.greens.org.au, senator.dinatale@aph.gov.au, richard.wynne@parliament.vic.gov.au,  

Cc :      letters@smh.com.au,

 Subject:  It's time to end the suffering of baby Joeys!
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To :
The Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull,
The Federal Minister for Environment Josh Frydenber,
The Greens
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Minister, Sir, Madam:

 For the first time since the kangaroo industry began operating in Australia over 50 years ago, a damning government study has exposed inherent, widespread cruelty within the kangaroo meat and skins industry confirming fears that orphaned baby kangaroos are suffering severe mental and physical trauma at the hands of professional shooters and the kangaroo industry.

The government research report titled “Improving the humaneness of commercial kangaroo harvesting” was commissioned by the government's Rural Industries Research Development Corporation and published in 2014, 30 years after the RSPCA first discovered systemic cruelty to joeys within the commercial kangaroo industry.
This compelling report has revealed that professional shooters for the kangaroo meat and skins industry are routinely killing pouch young using practices that breach their code of practice, leading to prolonged pain and suffering for orphaned baby kangaroos.

It also revealed that 99% of at-foot joeys are abandoned by professional shooters after they shoot their mother, leaving thousands of orphans to die every year from starvation, stress and predation.

The research also confirms that dependent at-foot young who become separated from their mother, suffer severely mentally and physically as a result of losing their mother.

Throughout this government study, researchers McLeod and Sharp repeatedly observed professional shooters abandon orphaned at foot joeys after shooting their mother, leaving them to die all alone in the bush. The researchers also observed shooters swinging pouch joeys by their feet, and as they wriggled and cried out they bashed them with iron bars, against utility racks and rocks, stomped on their heads and decapitated them without stunning, without ever checking if the joey had died before throwing them in the dirt. 

These practices are all in breach of the Code of Practice and have the potential the cause prolonged pain and suffering.

However the Australian government has shelved this controversial report, have never referred to it, and appear to be deliberately keeping its findings a secret from the public, while continuing to promote the kangaroo meat and skins industry as ethical and humane, and ignoring their own scientist's recommendations in the report that “ Not telling the public about the welfare impacts of commercial kangaroo harvesting should no longer be an option” (McLeod & Sharp, 2014)

“State government data has revealed that in the past two years alone, more than a quarter of million (260,000+) female kangaroos have been slaughtered by the kangaroo meat and skins industry, leaving hundreds of thousands of joeys to die a cruel death at the hands of professional shooters and the kangaroo industry every year”.

I'm demanding an urgent and independent enquiry into the brutal treatment and neglect of hundreds of thousands of orphaned baby kangaroos now suffering at the hands of commercial and non commercial shooters every year across Australia
 
Sincerely: