The Animal Justice Party (AJP) is opposed to the exploitation of animals through farming and slaughter for meat, dairy, eggs, fibre, fur and other products.

The animal agriculture industry is immensely harmful to farmed animals, wildlife, the environment and human health. The AJP believes that animal agriculture must be phased out, with a shift towards plant-based and cellular agriculture.

The AJP understands that widespread dietary and industry change will take time. In the interim, urgent steps should be taken to improve the treatment of animals raised for consumption. The AJP prioritises an end to factory farming, supporting and working towards laws that abolish all farming of animals.

For AJP policies on marine animals, see our Aquaculture and Marine Animals policies.

Key Objectives

1. Abolish all farming of animals.
   
   Interim measures until farming of animals ends:
   
2. Rapidly phase out and ban factory farming, including aquaculture.
   
3. Ban live export of farmed animals (see our Live Export Policy).
   
4. Remove the loopholes, exemptions and defences in existing laws that allow cruel farming practices to occur legally (see Animal Law Policy).
   
5. Prohibit routine surgical mutilation of farmed animals (such as castration, tail docking, teeth and beak trimming and mulesing) unless essential for the animal’s benefit and then performed with anaesthetic.
   
6. Require that all farmed animals live in an environment with space and resources that enable them to perform innate species-specific behaviours with kin and are not confined in cages or other restrictive enclosures. 
   
7. Require that all farmed animals have access to prompt veterinary care.
   
8. Implement standards for shade, shelter and protection from the elements for all farmed animals.
   
9. Improve regulation and standards for transport of farmed animals, including stricter limits on travel time and consideration of external conditions such as weather.
   
10. Require the installation of mandatory Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in all factory farms and slaughterhouses, with independent monitoring (possibly by Artificial Intelligence).
    
11. Raise public awareness of animal agriculture as a key contributor to climate change, pandemic risk, deforestation, marine pollution, biodiversity loss and poor human health (see our policies on Climate Emergency, Land Clearing, Water Management, Marine Animals, Wildlife Protection and Health).
    
12. End government subsidies for animal agriculture and increase government funding and support for research into alternatives to animal products and promotion of the ethical, economical, environmental, and health advantages of plant-based agriculture.
    
13. Secure government funding and regulatory support for the development, approval and production of animal cellular agriculture products (cultivated meat and precision fermentation).
    
14. Facilitate a just transition for farmers, including financial and other support, to assist with the move away from animal agriculture.
    
15. Ensure animal wellbeing, environmental and human health warnings are placed on animal product packaging and ban advertising of these products.
    
    

Background

Impact on animals

Every year, hundreds of millions of farmed animals are exploited in the Australian animal agriculture industry. In terms of both the large number of animals affected and the significant levels of pain, suffering and deprivation routinely inflicted on these sentient beings, farmed animals are by far the most exploited and mistreated animals. 

All forms of farming (including free range and organic farming) involve the exploitation and harm of animals for human purposes. Contrary to popular belief, most animal farming in Australia does not occur on small family farms. It is largely carried out by major corporations and most animals are factory-farmed. Factory farming involves housing farmed animals in densely populated environments which negatively impact their health and wellbeing. Farmed animals are often subjected to cruel practices such as intensive confinement, mutilations (such as castration, tail docking, teeth clipping, beak trimming and mulesing) and lack of access to outdoors, often prohibiting them from performing natural behaviours. For example, factory-farmed ducks lack access to surface water despite being primarily aquatic animals, and hens are unable to preen or dust bathe. 

The life span of the animals subjected to this cruelty is drastically reduced compared to their natural life expectancy. The natural life expectancy of a chicken is 5 – 10 years, however the average lifespan of a chicken raised for meat is 40 days, or 1.5 years for hens used for their eggs. Many common health problems seen in farmed animals result from selective breeding, such as chickens with broken or deformed legs due to unnaturally rapid growth, and dairy cows with high rates of lameness and/or mastitis. Other health problems are a consequence of overcrowding, for example, prevalence of disease and weak muscles and bones. 

This routine cruelty is legal in Australia due to loopholes, exemptions and defences in animal cruelty laws. These laws defer the regulation of farmed animal practices to industry-driven codes, standards and guidelines. None of these procedures would be legal if performed on a dog or cat, yet they cause the same level of suffering for farmed animals (for more detail see our Animal Law Policy).

The following is not exhaustive and only deals with some of the largest industries. Some other animals farmed include camels, goats, rabbits and ducks, as well as aquatic animals (see also Aquaculture Policy).

Chickens

Hens farmed for eggs are often kept in battery cages, producing what are sold as ‘caged eggs’. Due to the high density of hens in cages, many can barely move — most hens have less space than an A4 sheet of paper and cannot turn around, stretch or  express natural behaviours essential to their wellbeing, such as nesting, perching, dustbathing, foraging, walking, running and flapping their wings. This creates the potential for the rapid spread of diseases. Non-communicable diseases such as osteoporosis and fatty liver disease are also associated with intensive confinement. 

Even free-range laying hens are densely stocked with the current legislation allowing 10,000 hens per hectare. 

Chickens farmed for meat are selectively bred to grow at an unnaturally fast rate, which can result in them suffering lameness, heart problems, respiratory and other health issues. They are in chronic pain for the last 20% of their unnaturally short lives and virtually no chickens farmed for meat can walk normally at their slaughter date.

Farmed chickens, both for meat and eggs, are frequently mutilated at a young age, including painful beak trimming.

Pigs

Pigs are highly intelligent social animals. Around 90% of pigs in Australia are raised in intensive indoor production systems. 

It is common practice to confine sows to small cages throughout their entire lifecycle.  Most sows in intensive farms are moved from mating stalls to sow stalls to farrowing crates throughout each pregnancy. The average size of these cages is roughly the same as a fully grown sow, meaning they are only able to lie down or stand, but cannot turn or move around. Sows typically spend more than half the year in these cages and the limit on time spent in a sow stall is largely unregulated. 

Piglets bred for meat consumption also experience major welfare problems. It is common practice to dock their tails and clip their teeth. The move towards better welfare practices has been incredibly slow to date, and the industry commitment to phase out sow stalls by 2017 has not occurred. 

Dairy cows

To produce enough milk for human consumption the vast majority of dairy cows are forced to give birth to a calf every year. These calves are separated from their mothers – sometimes just a few hours after birth, most within a week of birth. Most male calves, and a percentage of female calves are slaughtered within the first weeks of their lives as ‘bobby’ calves. Their short lives are of poor quality and their trip to the slaughterhouse is itself a fearful experience. Their mothers suffer greatly from this separation. 

Some dairy cows are kept indoors, without access to pastures, which can result in poor health. Genetic selection for high milk yield has caused an increase in major health problems such as lameness, mastitis and metabolic disorders. Dairy cows are not given the freedom to roam and they suffer from poor welfare practices, as do their calves.  

Grazing animals

There are multiple welfare issues facing farmed sheep and cattle. These include painful mutilation and lack of access to shelter and shade. The absence of adequate shelter means the animals have little protection from the cold. For example, more than 20% of lambs (10 million) die within the first week of their lives, exposure to cold being the overwhelming cause of death. 

Sheep and cattle can also suffer from heat stress even in moderately warm conditions. This is exacerbated by a lack of shade being provided at feedlots and pasture. Providing shade has minimal economic impact and would reduce the number of animals suffering and dying from heat stress. 

Male lambs and calves are routinely castrated with a blade or rubber ring without any anaesthetic or pain relief. This is done even when the animal is due to be slaughtered prior to sexual maturity. Young cows are regularly subjected to an invasive removal of their ovaries, called the Willis technique. In some states it is not a requirement for the procedure to be performed by a veterinarian, and the tool used is available for purchase by the general public. 

Another common practice is mulesing, which is the slicing off of skin around the breech and tail of lambs to reduce the risk of flystrike. There are inconsistent laws between states regarding the use of acute pain relief during the procedure. No state requires post-operative pain relief.

Transport and slaughter

Regardless of whether an animal is factory farmed, barn-raised, kept free-range or organic, all farmed animals will face the same fate at the slaughterhouse. 

Climatic conditions often adversely affect farmed animals during transportation to slaughter. Transportation often entails a long journey, and the animals may not be fed before transport and are densely packed into the vehicle so that they can hardly move. This regularly results in high stress, injury or even fatality. They are routinely deprived of water for up to 24 or 48 hours depending on species.

When animals arrive at the slaughterhouse, stress and suffering endured during transport continues. Slaughter, the killing of animals for food, is regulated by the states and territories through various mandatory and regulatory standards. Stunning before slaughter is generally a legal requirement in Australia (with exceptions for religious or cultural reasons), with the stated aim of minimising pain and suffering during the killing process, but stunning methods do not always work as intended.

For example, electrical stunning is commonly used to render birds such as chickens and ducks unconscious before slaughter: ‘It involves birds being shackled upside down by their legs on a moving shackle line. The birds are stunned by passing their heads through an electrified waterbath – the aim being that birds immediately lose consciousness on contact with the electrified water.’ However, some animals avoid stunning by lifting their heads, remain conscious while having their necks cut and subsequently bleed to death.

In 2023, slaughterhouse footage from hidden cameras revealed to the public how pigs suffer for prolonged periods while being stunned through exposure to CO2 (carbon dioxide): ‘The squealing is intense. The thrashing is violent. Some appear to froth at the mouth as they reach their noses up through the bars. Eventually, they succumb to the gas.’ In Australia, around 85% of pigs are killed using CO2 stunning.

Very young animals of no commercial value to the industry are often killed in brutal ways. For example, maceration (i.e. shredding to death) of one-day-old male chicks is a common and legal practice in the egg industry. Most calves are not wanted unless the herd is being expanded and are killed soon after birth. Calves less than 24 hours old can legally be killed by a blow to the forehead (blunt trauma).

Impact on the environment

Animal agriculture has a large global environmental footprint. Compared to plant-based foods, it produces vastly more greenhouse gas emissions (see following chart), uses more water, pollutes waterways, and reduces wildlife habitat and biodiversity through clearing and degradation of land.

Animal agriculture and climate change

Animal agriculture is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for a minimum of 14.5% of total global emissions, which is a similar contribution to that of the transport sector (see our Climate Emergency Policy). However, this 14.5% figure is misleading because the methane from sheep and cattle warms the planet far more than carbon dioxide over the 20 years after release. This is why Australia’s animal agriculture industry is responsible for about half of our warming impacts. 

Methane from cattle in feedlots constitutes only 5% of cattle methane emissions, the remaining 95% comes from cattle on pasture, hence the widely touted feeding of seaweed to cattle (in feedlots) will, at best, reduce cattle methane by 5%.

The impact of animal agriculture on climate change is not only a consequence of animal production, but also the land use required for these farming practices. If this land was forests and grasslands it would store rather than emit carbon. Agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are so extensive that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed that:

"… even if fossil fuel emissions were immediately halted, current trends in global food systems would prevent the achievement of the 1.5°C target and, by the end of the century, threaten the achievement of the 2°C target."  

Land clearing and loss of biodiversity

Animal agriculture affects not only the animals that are raised and killed for food and fibre but has a major impact on wildlife and their habitat (see our Land Clearing Policy). Since colonisation, approximately 40% of Australia’s forest and woodland has been cleared or extensively modified for agricultural, urban or industrial development. More recently, the Queensland Government’s Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) shows that in 2018-19, 93% of land cleared (633,000 ha) in Queensland was cleared for grazing.

This contributes to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and removes native vegetation and habitat, such as bushland, woodland, forest and native grassland. It has resulted in vast loss of biodiversity.

Of the 387 million hectares of agricultural land in Australia, 332 million hectares (86%) were used in 2020-21 for grazing, mainly by 68 million sheep and 22 million cattle used for meat production. Crops were grown on 29 million hectares (7.5%) of agricultural land. Typically, over 40% of Australia’s grain production is used as animal feed (mainly used in feedlots and chicken farms), compared to 9% for domestic flour milling, 3% for domestic malting grain use, 2.5% is retained as seed, and 45.5% is exported.

The global food system is the primary driver of accelerating loss of biodiversity around the world. ‘Over the past 50 years, the conversion of natural ecosystems for crop production or pasture has been the principal cause of habitat loss, in turn reducing biodiversity.’ Loss and degradation of habitat also brings species into contact with each other and creates new opportunities for diseases to jump species.

Water use

Dairy farming is the largest water-consuming industry in Australia, accounting for approximately one-third of land under irrigation. It uses about 25% of the surface irrigation water in Australia and is also a major user of groundwater. Victoria is Australia’s largest dairy producing and exporting state. Dairy farming uses 53% of the state’s irrigated land.

It takes up to 11,000 litres of water to make one litre of milk when taking into account the amount of water needed to dilute the pollutants produced by the runoff water from dairy farms to meet ecosystem health standards. For more information see our Water Management Policy.

Nitrogen contamination

Animal agriculture is a major contributor to the contamination of waterways and estuaries. In particular, the high content of nitrogen and other nutrients in manure runoff from factory farms leads to algal blooms, eutrophication (excessive nutrients in a body of water) and hypoxic areas where the oxygen levels in the water have been reduced or completely depleted (see our Marine Animals Policy). Nitrogen pollution is a global driver of human-made biodiversity decline and a threat to human health (e.g. nitrate in drinking water is a risk factor for cancer; ammonia emissions lead to air pollution with adverse health effects). Scientists have concluded that the ‘amount of nitrogen pollution emitted just by global livestock farming is more than the planet can cope with’.

Antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobials such as antibiotics are widely used to kill or reduce the growth of microbes (e.g. bacteria, fungi, algae, viruses and parasites) in humans and other animals. In animal agriculture, the diseases caused by these microbes are exacerbated by cramped, stressful conditions, poor hygiene and the fact that antibiotics have been used as a growth promotant in the past.

Unfortunately, these drugs become less effective the more they are used, and antimicrobial resistance has become a worldwide problem (see our Biosecurity Policy). The Australian Government undertakes monitoring for residues of various veterinary drugs and treatments via random sample collection and analysis. However, there is no limit to the amount of antibiotics farms can use.

Evidence suggests that ‘superbugs’ are present in commonly consumed animal products. University of Canberra researchers who collected 404 pig and chicken meat samples from Australian supermarkets found that ‘of the 33 types of bacteria isolated from the samples, all except one had some form of resistance to antibiotics’.

Human Health

Our food choices are not only important for our planet but also for human health (see our Health Policy). Processed meat has been classified by the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen. Red and processed meat are risk factors for colorectal cancer and red meat is associated with colon cancer risk. There is also some evidence that red and/or processed meat intake is associated with stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer and breast cancer, while consumption of dairy products may increase the risk of prostate cancer. Non-fermented dairy products such as cheese and milk may increase the risk of coronary heart disease.  

The various indirect detrimental costs of animal agriculture are not included in the price consumers pay for meat and other animal products. They are borne by third parties (such as individuals who become ill), the environment and society (for more see our Ethical Economy Policy). For example, 3 in 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.

Impact on workers 

There are many occupational hazards associated with animal agriculture, one of the most prevalent being zoonotic diseases which are diseases and infections transferred between humans and animals. Common examples include E. coli, Japanese encephalitis, ringworm, salmonella, Q fever and avian influenza. Zoonotic diseases are transmitted rapidly in environments densely populated with animals, such as factory farms, as traditional disease control measures like movement and separation are largely ineffective in these situations. Additionally, respiratory problems are a common occupational hazard resulting from poor air quality which may be a result of many farmed animals being forced to remain indoors. There are many other occupational hazards associated with animal agriculture, including antimicrobial resistance, physical injuries and psychological distress (see our Decent Work Policy and Mental Health Policy). 

Alternatives to Eggs, Meat and Dairy 

Plant-based alternatives to eggs, meat and dairy reduce pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, save water and use less land. Plant-based meat is made directly from plants. It does not rely on animals to transform plants into meat and is, therefore, much more efficient. ‘Like animal-based meat, plant-based meat is composed of protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water. Next-generation plant-based meat looks, cooks, and tastes like conventional meat.’ Over recent years, plant-based meat has become more popular with consumers and most supermarkets now stock these products.

Cultivated meat, also known as cultured meat, cell-based meat or lab-grown meat, is produced by growing animal cells in a nutrient-rich environment. Early forms of this technology used foetal bovine serum (FBS) as part of the culture in which the cells are grown. Some companies have since developed methods free of animal products. 

Precision fermentation uses microorganisms to produce alternative proteins. It can be used to improve the flavour or functionality of plant ingredients (e.g. tempeh), grow microorganisms to be used as ingredients for alternative proteins, or to make specific proteins, enzymes, flavour molecules, vitamins, pigments and fats. Ingredients made by fermentation can be combined with plant-based ingredients to make plant-based meat or provide nutrients for cell-cultured meat.

A just transition

All farmed animals experience pain and suffering as a result of common farming practices. We believe that animal farming must be brought to an end as soon as possible. However, we understand that this change will not occur overnight and will take time. We support a just transition away from animal farming, with the goal of ending animal farming entirely. 

The goals of the Animal Justice Party are to rapidly phase out factory farming practices and legislate a ban on the practices that cause the most harm and suffering to farmed animals. We want to increase the prevalence and consumption of plant-based and cellular agriculture foods to enable society to phase out animal farming, before legislating a total ban. The transition will require kindness and financial support for those working in the animal agriculture industry.