Animal rights activists have captured a video from a farm in Victoria, Australia, that showed a farmer executing 10 baby goats. In the extremely disturbing video, the farmer shoots the baby goats in the head and then dumps their bodies like they are trash. The animals were apparently killed as part of an official 'mass cull' as a result of the baby goats not being worth anything to the farms in terms of a financial incentive.
The video was captured in secret by a group calling itself 'Aussie Farms' an animal rights group that stands up for the rights of animals on Australia's vast number of farms. Chris Delforce, of Aussie Farms explained the rationale behind the farmer's decision:
"The baby males are considered a waste product – this is the dark side of the dairy industry that the industry doesn't want to acknowledge. They keep it secret from consumers. Like humans they don't lactate without first giving birth. The babies are taken away from the mothers. If they're males they're useless and killed, if they're females they'll be put into the cycle to replace the milkers."
Shockingly this practice is entirely legal in Australia and is just a symptom of a system built on vast animal exploitation. Similar videos have been released by other activist groups in the past, including a video that showed an Australian farmer beating baby goats to death.
In response to the videos being released an investigation was launched by The Impact of Animal Rights Activism on Victorian Agriculture, meaning the government, instead of looking at the ways in which the animals were treated, focused upon the threat animal rights activists posed to the farms.
Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick said of the decision to investigate the activists as opposed to the farmers that:
"It is the thin edge of the wedge - once we prevent whistle blowers coming forward in the farming sector, you prevent them coming forward in other sectors. We wouldn't have had the royal commission into aged care or the banking sector if we didn't have people willing to blow the whistle on these things."
As things stand, the killing of baby goats remains perfectly legal in Australia.
Cibus Goats, Trafalgar VIC 2019 (full investigation) from Farm Transparency Project on Vimeo
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