Media stories of the strikes in the dairy industry mostly discuss possible shortages in shops and the likelihood that perishable milk will be wasted. There are mentions of the exploitation of the drivers and factory workers, but what of the main victims - the cows and calves?
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One farmer has reported tipping 14,000 litres of milk down the drain. That represents the milk produced by about 700 cows in a day, not for greedy corporations but for their calves, who are instead taken from them and killed, or forced into the same cycle of endless artificial insemination until worn out.
This is a brutal industry. "Bobby calves", are shot, hit on the head with hammers, or trucked for up to 30 hours to slaughterhouses at five days old, hungry and terrified. The mothers, often suffering chronic mastitis, can be heard frantically crying out for days after their babies have been torn from them.
Only this industry could define allowing a baby to drink milk as "waste".
You can help! Stop buying dairy products, and the giant dairy corporations will stop this vile cycle of breeding and killing.
Desmond Bellamy, PETA Australia
BIG BACKERS NEVER HAD A SAY
Like me, the reader may be puzzled by the local grocers and the local bankers on the main street entered the political debate to coerce voters in The Voice referendum. They are amongst us but are they really one of us?
Here is a theory. It's either all about money or a mission from God.
Super wealthy foreign individuals sitting on fortunes of funny money don't get a single vote in Australian referendums.
CBA, Woolworths, BHP and Rio Tinto (to name just a few) are more than 60 per cent owned by American based investors including derivative companies of BlackRock and Vanguard. These groups have about $17 trillion under management and were the big backers of the BLM movement in the US.
The financial payback for these companies from a win in the Voice was low and the potential cost of a loss was relatively high, so it seems unlikely this foreign intervention was all about money.
Therefore the intervention by foreigners in our democracy is more likely be driven by a "mission from God". The mission from God for these US firms is "absolute wokeness".
Foreign Woke Imperialist Tyrants (FWITs for short) would therefore seem to be working to impose their world view on a relatively stable and "so far" successful democratic nation state.
Do we really need the intervention of the likes of BlackRock and Vanguard with their woke agenda in our politics?
Based on the alignment of their mission perhaps the next corporate move will be to publicly support the Greens and Holmes-a-Court parties at coming elections?
Would they be welcomed by those parties after the corporate elite "effect" in The Voice campaign?
Peter Paradice, Wagga
BILLIONS OF LIVES AT RISK
Scientists have been warning us for many years that for as long as the burning of fossil fuels - coal, gas and oil - continues at the present usage rate to create energy, it is possible over the next 50 years or so one to three billion people will not be able to survive because they live in areas hardest hit by human-caused climate change.
Of course scientists, like other professionals, are capable of making mistakes but with the supporting evidence being almost undeniable, and associated risks being so frightening, surely it is time now for our federal government to place the action of phasing out burning fossil fuels on top of the must do now list.
Brian Measday, Kingswood
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