Adidas’ decision to capitulate to the animal rights lobby and abandon using sustainably sourced Kangaroo leather will not save a single Kangaroo from being shot. It will ensure that more Kangaroos are shot to waste and with less oversight.
The cherry on top of this hollow virtue signalling is that Animals Australia and their ilk are now actively promoting a company that has been found by a court in Germany to engage in ‘greenwashing’ and that Oxfam Australia says subjects its workers to “poverty wages and harsh sweatshop-like conditions”.
Australia’s animal rights umbrella group, Animals Australia, is claiming a reported decision by Adidas to cease using Kangaroo leather as a victory that “will spare many thousands of gentle kangaroos and their joeys from being shot or clubbed to death each year”. This statement from Animals Australia is, at best, hopelessly naïve and misinformed – at worst (and frankly, more probably) it is deliberately and grossly misleading.
The facts about the Australian Kangaroo industry are markedly different from the animal rights lobby’s spin. In an article in The Conversation, Professor George Wilson and Dr John Read, experts with a combined eighty years of experience in Kangaroo management, outlined the real situation;
The commercial kangaroo industry employs accredited, licensed shooters who kill kangaroos in the field at night using high-powered spotlights and rifles. A national code of practice requires that kangaroos are shot in the head and die immediately.
Abattoirs reject carcasses not killed with a headshot. Commercial shooters must not target females with obvious young in their pouch or at foot. If a mother is shot, the joeys must also be killed using sanctioned methods.
The alternative that Animals Australia is championing does not see less Kangaroos killed, it will see more Kangaroos starve to death.
Overabundance can also affect the welfare of the animals themselves. During the recent drought, for example, millions of kangaroos starved and breeding was suppressed, causing kangaroo numbers to fall markedly.
In the absence of commercial opportunities, it is logical that Kangaroos will be killed more cheaply, without the higher standards required by commercial processors and with effectively no oversight.
When kangaroo kills are brought in for processing, regulators can monitor the industry’s compliance with welfare codes. Such monitoring is nonexistent with amateur culling.
We believe a further decline in the kangaroo industry … will lead to worse animal welfare outcomes. It will prompt more amateur culling, and risks mass kangaroo starvation in the next drought.
That is not to say that farmers managing Kangaroos outside of the commercial industry do not act conscientiously or have concerns about animal welfare, the overwhelming majority clearly do.
The cheerleading of Animals Australia for Adidas because more Kangaroos will now be shot to waste rather than be sustainably used stands as an example of the twisted ideology of the animal rights movement.
Oxfam Australia reports that;
Thousands of workers endure poverty wages and harsh sweatshop-like conditions to make adidas their coveted sports shoes.
This year alone, Courts in France and Germany have found that Adidas is guilty of deceptive advertising about its environmental credentials, a practice known as ‘greenwashing’.
When it comes to hollow virtue signalling, it would seem that Adidas has found the ideal partner in Animals Australia.