DUBAI: Radical animal rights group PETA is set to launch for the first time Monday a Middle East campaign to highlight alleged abuses in slaughterhouses in Egypt and several Gulf countries.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), best known for its aggressive stunts against celebrities who wear or promote fur, was to hold a press conference in Dubai to deliver its findings and announce plans for demonstrations in Kuwait next week said one of its representatives.
It is also planning trips to Egypt and Qatar and wants concerned citizens in the region to rally behind its call to stop the import of livestock from Australia, a lucrative trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars that has seen its share of controversy and even diplomatic rows over the years.
This is our first salvo to engage people in the region, PETA s Africa representative Andrew Butler told AFP.
We are making a call to people in the Middle East to stop buying live sheep from Australia. This comes after we failed to get any response from the agriculture ministers of the countries involved in the trade to the urgent letters and video footage of the investigation we sent.
PETA has released footage it says was filmed by its undercover activists in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar showing cattle and sheep kicked in the face and stabbed in the eye before being slaughtered in a manner described by the organization as non-compliant with Muslim halal practices.
Australian sheep and cattle shipped to the Middle East suffer atrocities beyond your worst nightmares, read the caption to one of the videos, said to have been filmed in a Cairo slaughterhouse.
It shows men in a messy and bloody abattoir chasing cows, slashing their leg tendons with knives and hitting them over the head with metal poles until they fall to the ground.
In footage purportedly filmed in an Oman slaughterhouse, a scared herd of sheep are dragged by their ears and horns, trampled on, kicked in the face before their throats are slit slowly with jagged knives.
According to the practice of halal, the animal must be slaughtered with a razor-sharp knife without being stunned. Some modern slaughterhouses in the region use devices to hold the animal in an upright position.
Animal rights activists in Australia have for years resorted to radical stunts to stop what PETA describes as the barbaric trade of sheep with the Middle East.
In February, they clashed with police at a port in Tasmania and chained themselves to the gangway of a ship loading 50,000 live sheep destined for Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
In November 2003, activists said they had fed pig meat to 70,000 Australian sheep to scuttle their shipment to Muslim countries.
Islam bans Muslims from eating pig meat or products associated with it.
Protests against the trade in live animals reached a peak in August 2003 when Saudi Arabia turned away the MV Cormo Express with its load of 57,000 sheep, claiming they had scabby mouth disease.
The shipment was also rejected by other Gulf countries.
After almost three months at sea and in confined conditions, and amid outraged protests from activists, about 44,000 surviving sheep were donated to the impoverished African nation of Eritrea.
Australia then banned further live exports to Saudi Arabia, but lifted the ban in May 2005.
The live sheep trade with the kingdom alone was worth about 78 million US dollars (62 million euros) in 2003. Australia earns more than 700 million US dollars (560 million euros) in total from the trade. AFP
