Desmond Bellamy, Byron Bay, PETA
News headlines seem to have been outsourced to horror story authors this year, and none more so than the gobsmacking headlines saying that the proposed overseas bans on kangaroo meat and skins will cause more cruelty.
How much crueller can humans get than gunning down millions of our national animals annually? There is a ‘Code of Practice’ for humane shooting (now there’s an oxymoron) of kangaroos and wallabies for commercial purposes. It requires a lethal shot to the head, but up to 40 per cent of commercially shot animals are hit in the neck or elsewhere on the body instead, only to endure a long and painful death as a result of their injuries. The Code also requires hunters to decapitate or ‘crush the skull and destroy the brain’ of pouch young, meaning that most joeys’ heads are swung and smashed against hunting vehicles to kill them. Many dependent joeys are just left in the field to suffer from exposure, starvation, and predation.
This is not about sustainability. To say kangaroos are damaging the land they’ve lived on for four million years is simply absurd. Overgrazing by introduced sheep and cattle is the real culprit behind land degradation. The best way to protect the environment and save animals is to adopt a vegan lifestyle.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
