Live export of cattle to Indonesia

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Cattle are exported from Northern Australia in massive container ships to feedlots in Indonesia. There they’re fattened for slaughter and then taken to abattoirs where they go, literally kicking and screaming, to their deaths.
We’d been warned it was coming up on TV. They’d promoted the programme heavily before it went to air. It was shown a couple of weeks ago, in vivid detail! There was outrage. It held the news for over a week. The government banned cattle exports to Indonesia, causing all sorts of political waves.
Watching TV at home and seeing this sort of thing happening obviously has a great impact on the general community. And it’s a double whammy - it’s the story itself followed by the wow-factor of all the interest shown, as the cruelty is discussed in the media.
What did we learn? That there’s a very different attitude-to-animals in other cultures, where ‘sentience’ isn’t considered and, in very practical terms, where refrigerators aren’t common. In Indonesia most people have no way to keep chilled meat chilled, so animals need to be freshly killed for the market. And for religious reasons the animals must be killed without pre-stunning, according to the rules of halal (or in other countries the rules of kosher-killing). It comes down to men with blunt knives wrestling huge animals to the ground and inflicting mortal wounds so they bleed to death ... and that episode is not a pretty sight to watch. They even let other animals, who are about to die the same way, look on.
In our culture that looks like torture or at least salaciously bloodthirsty behaviour . People were so offended that the government saw fit to legislate against it, by banning the export trade there, despite the huge negative reaction from the cattle farmers and the Indonesian government.
Now it’s stopped. Isn’t that great! ... but probably, once the dust has settled and the story is stale, it will all resume with a bit of sugar coating somewhere. The government will resume these cattle exports because it knows it has the blessing of the general population. The consumer is so fearful of a meat-less society that they’ll allow even the atrocities they saw on TV to be forgotten ... and do nothing to even indirectly endanger their own meat supply ... which means, saying nothing to offend our cattle farmers, whether they’re raising cattle for export or home consumption. No meat-eater wants to drive a nail into the coffin of meat-production.
As for the impact of this TV coverage, yes, it was a shock to everyone. But it will soon become an ‘un-remembered’ story ... about ‘an uncivilised people who barbarically kill animals’. The focus will return to the general fear of life-WITHOUT-plenty, particularly without meat. The specific fear - moving towards ‘vegan-thinking’; of veganism setting a trend; of people giving things up on moral grounds ... which is a discomforting thought.
As a vegan I see my job as trying to lessen that fear ... the fear of no more Cadburys Dairy Cream chocolate or hamburgers or cheese sandwiches ... so that everyone can look dispassionately at today’s situation and act accordingly.
If you’re going to change you’ll be wanting the full story? Fair enough. So I’d be wanting to explain the conditions down on the farm and how we can personally help them by boycotting their by-products. I’d also be wanting to describe how wonderful it feels to be actively boycotting.
Of course the live export trade has got to stop, just as the slave trade had to be stopped before the negro slave could be freed ... it’s the same with animals, it’s the slavery-consciousness of humans that has to end. All killing, not just the worst aspects of it.