COST is just one flaw in PETA's stance on memorials, writes CHRISTOPHER BANTICK
Overwhelmingly, as shown by The Weekly Times poll last week, 75 per cent of respondents agree that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has gone too far advocating roadside memorials for animals killed in road accidents.
The cost of memorials alone would be prohibitive.
But I don't hear PETA is prepared to cough up with a subsidy for any memorial for a dead sheep?
So who is to fund any memorial?
Local councils, farmers or maybe motorists through a dead parrot levy?
Next we'll be paying compensation to rabbits.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Animal memorials is a fly-blown idea.
Any sensible person, whether an animal lover or not, would baulk at crosses and signs for squashed steers.
No matter that PETA's Australian spokeswoman, Claire Fryer, with a whacking dollop of sentiment, said: "Roadside murals or memorials for animals killed in road traffic accidents would provide a valuable reminder to motorists that it is not only humans that suffer at the hands of dangerous drivers."
PETA's problem, and it's a biggie, is that it cannot understand that country people do not like seeing any animal suffer.
Whether it be mulesing, PETA's main beef, or live sheep export, Indonesian abattoir practices or cutting the throat of a doe-eyed two-tooth for the table, is not something people relish.
It is a necessity. But there is an inconsistency with PETA's sanctimonious argument over feeling all warm and fuzzy over the memory of dead animals.
If we take PETA's line, Australia is supporting a US initiative over roadside memorials. The permits PETA has applied for in the US relate to farm animals killed while being transported.
PETA's Australian wing supports this.
But maybe PETA does not want it known that it approves of roadkill being eaten.
In their diverting, satirical recipe book, Roadkill Recipes: Australian Wildlife on the Verge, Patricia and Tim Leeuwenburg, include this statement:
Animal rights group PETA ran a campaign entitled: "Roadkill - meat without murder", highlighting the fact that, "roadkill is natural, organic, and pesticide-free".
This seems to me to be just a tad hypocritical.
If I run over a kangaroo, pick it up and put it on the barbie, that's OK. No memorial is necessary.
But if a bolshie bull gets over a fence and wipes out a family in a car, we need to put up a memorial to the animal.
A load of bull indeed.
It is worth keeping in mind that in Tasmania, a state that has plenty of bushland and dense numbers of native animals and sheep, a 2008 report from RACT insurance describes eight successive years of growth in claims from car drivers who have hit an animal, or tried to avoid hitting one.
The average repair cost was more than $4700 an accident. Then there is the risk memorials pose. Distracted drivers die.
And motorists who slow down to look at memorials - they do this now when there is a roadside shrine to a road fatality - are a risk to themselves or others.
PETA should be doing something purposeful about animal welfare.
I don't hear of a wildlife shelter staffed by PETA volunteers who actually get blood on their hands as they help animals that have been hit.
Our local wildlife shelter, staffed by informed volunteers, is anything but political.
They blame no one but patch up magpies, possums, lizards and other hurt animals before returning them to the bush when ready.
To this end, the comment by Australian National University branding specialist, Andrew Hughes, as we reported recently, rings true:
"If they (PETA) were putting up a wildlife shelter (for animals injured on roads) they might get some traction," he said.
PETA's woolly thinking could do with a bit of mulesing: RIP.
- Christopher Bantick is a writer and reviewer for The Weekly Times
