Food for Thought

This body of work was made for the Gift of Fire Exhibition at Banyule Library April12th/4th June 2023

Victoria is in the process of updating the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (POCTA) Act 1986.

We are finally recognising animals as sentient beings. However, initial drafts still deemed it unnecessary to administer pain relief for some procedures undertaken on animals we breed for food, something we would never contemplate for our pets.

We are very disturbed by the mere thought of eating our “part of the family animals” and images of their captivity elsewhere. And yet, we turn a blind eye when it comes to our intensive farming practices. In Australia over 5 million animals are confined every year for food.

Primarily docile by nature and herd animals, making them easy to control, they come to trust us and we literally lead them to slaughter in their prime. The complex brain of these mammals render them intelligent, curious, sensitive and caring parents, just like us and our pets. But, we have manipulated them to meet our own requirements, treat them as a “commodity” and billions live miserable lives with an unthinkable death. There are more food animals now than wild ones.

“If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history.”

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

I am not opposed to eating meat, just horrified at the way we treat the mammals we eat and so I choose not to eat them at all. I wonder if future generations will look back in shame and see our behaviour for the barbarism it is.