Animals for Slaughter

This is , as gentle as I can make it, a story of Malcolm's life encounters with the subject of the slaughter of animals prompted of course by the recent events in Pakistan with regard's sheep and cattle shipped to Indonesia.

Many years agoe in the town of Lymington, Hampshire, England, there stood a heavy pole at the top of a short passageway to the waterway below. Apparantly on market day, which was on the high street, where cattle would be traded and perhaps a big old bull would be selected by a local butcher. The old fello would be gently led to the pole and two men would tie him up and say hold still there Ferdninand and place what looked like a blacksmiths , horseshoe hole piecing spike and the second man would swing a hammer- whack and the bull would effectively be dead followed by the butcher and blood would run down the passageway into the water below, all very humaine for the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, if not exactly hygeinic.
These days that passageway is very up market with boat brokers; Art gallery; Estate agents and soveignier shops, still cobbled paved and all very HoHo and a major Yachting harbour.

In the nineteen fithties I was to get my first experience of 'Up close and personal'. I must have been about ten, just before my Polio year. I lived in  Lydney Gloucestershire and near the Cross and townhall was a butchers shop. At the rear they despatched sheep using a kind of spring loaded gun - snap it would go as we passed to school. They used to throw the skins, inside out over the  wall inside out and I really hated that shop, so much so that my dad to shut me up went to see the butcher and they refrained from the skins over the wall - Up close and personal. It was of course humaine and the numbers were such that they had time to attend to detail.

You will; have gathered by now these stories are just stories in my life, based on  facts as I remember them.

Around the time I was fifteen years old, I witnessed an old chap killing a dog by holding by the neck and hitting him with a steel bar , by the time I got over the fence, the dog was dead. I picked up a log and wacked the old man until he cried, this was the cruel way and cheap way, just like recent happenings in Pakistan where the quantities were enormous and the payment no doubt small. There was an outcry then as now and did I cop flack, the local police man told me never to take things into my own hands again, then winked and said ,I bet Mr X didn't feel too good , still next time call me.

We have hopefully reached the sixties. Ha yes dear Brigette my friend the farmers daughter - We would enjoy our area and all living things in it. It was near a Christmas, when she said with a big smile, DADDY asks if you would like to help with the Turkeys, next week, of course says in innocent bliss of real farm life and death.  On the appointed evening ,I duly arrived and directed to the barn by Brigette, she was preparing super for all at ten o,clock. A lot of gobbling and noise greeted me as I entered the area of processing the birds,. DADDY said my job was to take the dead birds over to the  feathering table and on to the drawing area. This definately not my scene and withdrew. The young lady saw me making for my car, came over, kissed me on my cheek and said BYE BYE Malcolm,. She married a player in a Guards military band I believe and like me no doubt have children and grandchildren- all happiness to her, after all she was a farmers daughter.

Around the midsixties I first became aware of slaughter on the grand scale. It was a black and white UK tv program on the Chicargo sales yards and meat processing industry where I sure the way in which animals were killed on mass de-production scale, horrible. There was this African American with a Pole Axe who as the cow came down a ramp, whacked on the head and immediately a hook was put through its leg and up it went, kicking to the dis-assembly area and on. What happened if the man missed one can only imagine. Of today I no not.  I wonder if the Sydney  facility operated like that, I do not know as right now the site  of all that processing is under the Sydney Olympic Stadium.

I was on in the sixties through and postgraduate university to The British Motor Corporation. and whilst with then for a good part of my life I covered many areas of operation and it was as a corporation representative -trucks and fighting vehicle Internationaly, that a interesting job came up. By the way I am trying to make my stories as gentle as I can.
One fine day the boss said Mason, please go over to the main board  room in the HQ building the subject is IRAN and  Abatoirs- charming I thought. Well in the time of the Shah Iran it was decided they wanted to modernise their animal slaughter and processing through to transport of animals in and out of modern facilities.OK, heres the plan they had addressed by the lead project tenderer of a consortium.

 
 As I recall the construction company was Tarmac; the chill facilities Halls of Dartford; BMC trucks -thats me and a manufacturer of abbatuior equipment. I wondered what a boss of  company such this would be like, he did not seem to be here.
Then a quiet voice said Here I Am and there stood up an impecably dressed gentleman in a dark suite and silver tie. He then proceded to relate his trip to Tehran. Not a good situation was his first comment, total chaos, but of course we can all do a good job to rectify matters and he continued through his strategy to deal with the volumes they wanted to process at each facility, the number I cannot remember, although it was about one hundred trucks of various kinds. Our abattoir man had one very firm condition and that was, they would only participate if they also supplied Stun guns spring or air operated with settings depending on degree of hit required, as he put it , just stunned or brain dead and he thought the former would be accepted, if we were firm enough. BMC did not get the tender so I do not know how it all turned as not too much later the Shah was gone --   We all did our best.

Two shorts before I get to Australia. My Mum, through out the fifties and sixties pursued what were kinow as the Pig Stickers, men who went to domestic backyards and gardens  where the family ad a pig sty. They would use a knife only and allow the blood to be caught in a bucket and carried off to make Black Pudding,a kind of sausage . Gertrude used to after them and demanded they stunned the animal first- she had quite precense when she felt like it, must to no avail. In the end she was successful in arranging licienced butchers with their stun guns and gradually the practice died out. Go0od work Mother.

One of my  jobs was to find and send wayward reps home, usually to0 do with climate or ladies of the night. However, one time in the sixties a colleage company man fell off an Hotel balcony in Tunis and died of his injuries. I was sent out to repariate Bill and to obtain the necessary paperwork for insurance purposes so I  was given sufficient funds  to make that happen. I arrived and enquired  where is the body of our man, rather hessidently they said , in the chill room of the abbatior . This was my one vist to a middle east unit, I survived  and we got Bill home. We did not his family where Bill had been spending his last days i9n Tu7nis.

All this is a little distressing for me , in a good cause hopefully.

At last on the third September 1971 Mal and his family arrived on Qantas flight 168, the originals on my mothers side, The Birch's and Cartwrights in 1928 by ship. 
Whilst waiting to join Leyland Australia as Export Manager, I got a job as a sales rep for Fruehoff trailers and my first encounter with stock carriers Sydney to the Victorian border and shortly for  the Homebush sales yards and meat works.  They were certainly into rising quantities of animals at a time when the place was outdated and obviously not able to cope with modern demands and so it was closed before too long. The site after being cleaned up,  became Olympic Park and it looks as if the old rail loop now transports happy event fans.

Up until 2004 I had hear about Live Animal exports in very high quantities. Special ships with animals in  their thousands on board, shipped and disgorged at destination middle and far east. How the  Abattoirs coped with the shere volumes I used to wonder. Then the Saudi Arabia problem came up with sheep being rejected on mouth problems which the Saudi Vetinarians  would not pass. At the time I was writing the first of  my 'think' trilogy. Damn, I must say something and this is  what I said in my Essay on Governance sent to our Prime Minister plus P M,s around the World plus people in high office.
""Sheep - Live Exports. Failed to protect the sheep to Saudi Arabia- live sheep! Whilst not being the brightest souls around do think and feel. The trade is a bad one, as added value is being missed by not being processed in Australia - even the ships are off shore owned and operated, more revenue lost which would be picked  up if the meat were frozen.
Whether the case of tha one Saudi shipment was really a matter of failure to run the double and triple invoice procedure, I do not know" and I went on, but its getting away from slaughter, except to say that in this matters there is the more suble C>E>O incentives in price lowering!!. I have explained this elsewhere to our Government --- enough for now.

Last year we saw the specticle of cattle being crudily sluaghtered in Indonesia where I'm certain the quantities or numbers of animals at one time, out run the capacity to handle the situation with dignaty for all not to mention Muslim rituals involved and definately the facility infra stucture was inadequate.

This year, it is sheep in Pakistan, thousands to be killed, not for food but for disposal and health reasons, thus the men  may not have had to fallow protocols. The reason behind the cull looked very like the Saudi  on years before. By the way I travelled quite extensively in these areas years agoe when I represented the British Motor Corporation, mainly and their assembly plants, all good people and true.

All this says the product is too cheap and the volumes too high and most of all Australia is giving away also valuable added value plus the all too needed jobs in the Abattoir industry.

That marvelous fello in Victoria who won the cattle breeders award this year with those Weggie!!! cattle whose meat cuts cost a fortune and has taken on the Japanese breeders. This incredible man and company decides his own price and chooses his own abattoirs. His lastest market DUBAI, how's that for performance.

Heres the game plan -----------------

1. Breed good stock - cattle;sheep etc on the farms ,in reasonable numbers.
2. Obtain best prices  per kilo live weight. That is farmers demand higher prices and with draw if reserve is not reached.
3. Truck, on just in time basis, animals to abattoirs near container ports. Abattoirs structured to process to Muslim or whatever protocols, like facing a certain direction, bodies kept together. All animals to be stunned to unconciousness where clients demand the animal not be braindead at slaughter cut. all other times brain dead.  Remember the Iran story, where I believe clients will accept this procedure.
4. Chill products.
5.Containerise chilled..

To achieve the most humaine slaughter ANIMAL SLAUGHTER and in Australia we all need people like the RSPCA; Animals Australia and the all important Abattoir workers unions, no no one more. Abattoir operators old and NEW  to into  the processing of our exports of  the Worlds best meat cuts,--Chilled.

Come on Aussies, we can do it, and those that can do it , get out there and sell our top products. My Mum would have been proud of me, and know of the sad memories I ave gone through to tell you all.

All the best, and see you next time.

Malcolm E Mason

See you next time.  Malcolm E Mason