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Everyone needs farmers, but farmers don’t need to keep animals for meat, eggs, or dairy.
Raising and killing animals for food is exacerbating the climate catastrophe, damaging the environment, and causing immense suffering to chickens, cows, pigs, and other sensitive animals. The government grants that prop up animal farming must stop.
Please urge the government to support ethical and sustainable plant-based farming.
Animals Suffer on Australian Farms
Animals on farms are treated as commodities, not the thinking, feeling beings they are. In the dairy industry, female cows are forcibly impregnated and their calves are taken away so humans can steal the milk that was meant for them. In the meat industry, piglets’ tails are cut off without any painkillers, and male chicks are often ground up alive for the egg industry.
Australia claims to be committed to “high welfare standards”, yet cruelty investigations like this one at Baiada, which supplies the Lilydale “Free Range” brand, prove that humane-washing labels such as “free range”, “high welfare”, or “grass-fed” are meaningless – they comfort consumers, not animals.
The only label that assures a product is cruelty-free is one that reads “vegan”.
Farmers Need Support
PETA encourages all farmers to grow plants and leave behind the heartbreak and violence involved in raising animals for food, but they can’t do so without substantial financial support from our leaders.
Good Money After Bad
Australian farmers – including crop farmers – are some of the least subsidised in the world, but those who breed, confine, and kill animals still receive substantial government support. Meat & Livestock Australia receives funding from the Australian government, and both state and federal governments invest billions in promoting and supporting animal-derived products, from meat to wool.
Destroying the Planet
The United Nations warns that animal agriculture subsidies are fuelling the climate catastrophe. In Australia, just over 10% of emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, come from the meat industry – almost half the amount generated by the direct combustion of fossil fuels. Raising animals for food is also incredibly water-intensive and pollutes waterways like the catchments for the Great Barrier Reef. Land-clearing to make room for grazing animals drives most of Australia’s deforestation, including the destruction of vital koala habitats.
As long as it continues to pour billions of dollars into animal agriculture, the government is supporting a leading cause of planetary destruction.
Animal farming causes other negative impacts, such as biodiversity loss and the spread of devastating infectious diseases like avian influenza and swine flu.
Despite the clear environmental damage and extensive suffering involved, Australia continues to celebrate meat via events like Beef Week, which cost taxpayers a whopping $6 million in 2024 alone. Tens of millions more Australian taxpayer dollars are spent every year on promoting animal-slaughter industries.
Over 700 million land animals are killed every year in Australian abattoirs. Even more are shipped overseas to be slaughtered there as part of the gruesome live-export trade. None go to their death willingly.
An Ineffective Way to Feed the Nation
Over half (54%) of Australia’s land is given over to farming animals, but it is extremely inefficient to source protein from animals. It takes around 25 calories of grain to produce one calorie of beef, and animal-derived foods provide only 32% of calories consumed. Research suggests that growing plants to feed humans rather than produce meat can even help solve world hunger!
Take Action: Support Plant Farmers
The government must do more to support those who are leaving behind the meat, egg, and dairy industries in favour of ethical and sustainable farming. We need farmers to provide the oats, grains, beans, nuts, vegetables, and fruit that we eat – and stop the slaughter.
Please send a message urging the government to cut subsidies for farms with animals and support plant-based farmers instead: