J. M. Coetzee is the 2003 Nobel Laureate and twice winner of the Man Booker Prize, and will be chairing the judging panel and serving as Patron of the Prize. Ondine Sherman is the Voiceless co-founder and Managing Director. Wendy Were is the immediate past Director of the Sydney Writers Festival. Susan Wyndham is the Literary Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

The 2013 Voiceless Anthology

By J.M. Coetzee, Ondine Sherman, Wendy Were, Susan Wyndham

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2012 Allen & Unwin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74331-330-5

Contents

Judges’ Report,
Meera Atkinson, Confessions of a Vegetarian,
Laklak Burarrwanga, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Banbapuy Ganambarr, Djawundil Maymuru, Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Kate Lloyd and Bawaka Country, They Are Not Voiceless,
Darren Chard, The Horses,
Liana Joy Christensen, Big Ears,
Anne Coombs, Fugue for Elsie,
Hilary Key, Shooting a Wombat,
Olga Kotnowska, The Other Days,
Craig Simpson, Kangaroo,
Jessica Stanley, Not Long Now,
Wayne Strudwick, Caged,
About the Contributors,

CHAPTER 1

Confessions of a Vegetarian

Meera Atkinson

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein, New York Post, 28 November 1972

Let’s get it out of the way: I’m a hypocrite. I’ve been a committed vegetarian for over twenty years but I sometimes buy and wear leather shoes. I became vegetarian on ethical grounds, yet I still consume dairy products and eggs, which, when produced for human consumption, necessarily involve the exploitation and abuse of animals. These contradictions are hard to justify when you vehemently question, as I do, the assumption that humans have the right to enslave and kill other sentient beings, given viable alternatives, and when you believe, as I do, that no circumstance gives humankind the right to routinely oppress, or ritually torture, animals, as is the custom of our culture. How then do I plead in defence of this hypocrisy? And why have I bothered taking a stand at all, when I clearly fall short of my own altruistic ambitions?

I could protest that I buy organic dairy products wherever possible on the understanding that foods farmed in this way are more ethical and humane; that the animals are happier, healthier and more respectfully handled on what I, perhaps romantically, imagine are small farms run by kindly hippies. I could tell you that my partner and I recently made a commitment to purchase Elgaar Farm dairy foods — a commitment that requires travelling well out of our way and neighbourhood to shop, and that we made this commitment primarily because Elgaar Farm, run by descendants of Bavarian farmers, name their cows and let them roam in lush Tasmanian pastures, and because Elgaar does not brand, tail-dock or de-horn animals, administers no hormones or antibiotics, allows calves to stay with their mothers until naturally weaned, and sends the fewest number of calves to other (no doubt less idyllic) farms. A secondary consideration for us is that, unsurprisingly, Elgaar Farm dairy products, sold in recyclable and refundable glass, are superior in quality to every other brand on the market.

I could point out that I eat only organic, free-range eggs and that I have been known to walk out of restaurants rather than order a meal made with eggs born of a caged hen. I could bemoan the difficulty of finding a truly comfortable and smart non-leather shoe for a fussy, difficult-footed, style-conscious fashionista such as myself, despite my awareness of the existence of vegan footwear specialists and non-leather options in mainstream stores. I could protest that, furthermore, some animal welfare groups condone the use of leather, deeming it the lesser of evils on the theory that it is a by-product of meat (though this is not necessarily, nor reliably, the case). I could explain that I buy non-leather alternatives where possible on days when my moral fibre is high, and that I buckle only when worn down by lack of suitable, readily available non-leather options, or in moments of self-centred weakness and wanton vanity.

Justifications aside, I am forced to own that my hypocrisy is shameful, and that at times I can and do talk myself into supporting industries and actions I deplore because I am, despite my self-image as an evolved and sensitive person, still capable of the kind of denial that has turned the other cheek in the face of outrageous injustice throughout the ages. There are times when I am my most petty self — selfish and greedy and unwilling to make certain sacrifices — and I am prone, when clouded by compulsion, to delude myself that the irresistible shoe was not once a living being that deserved a better life and death.

My answer, therefore, in defence of my hypocrisy, is that I have no defence. There is none, in my view, that stands up against the knowing of my conscience. The Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946 — the landmark military tribunals held by the Allied forces following World War II — solemnised the decree that one’s conscience, and one’s conscience alone, can be the only ultimate authority of one’s actions. At Nuremberg, Nazi war criminals, standing accused of unspeakable genocidal atrocities, argued their duty to the German nation and the Führer, defending their participation in, and perpetration of, mayhem and carnage as obedience to their superiors. The response of the international court to their protestations was to legally declare, for the first time in human history, that each and every person is responsible for their actions, and that the conscience of an individual overrides all and any other considerations.

It is portentous to mention the Holocaust at this stage, because there is perhaps no more fitting human likeness to factory farming than the Nazi death camps, in which Jews, homosexuals, political dissidents, Gypsies and others deemed undesirable were herded, like sheep are, branded like cattle are, housed in unbearable and degrading confinement like pigs are, and murdered systematically — sometimes sadistically — by the Nazi henchmen who, in Nuremberg, claimed to be merely doing their jobs, and whose consciences had so spectacularly and tragically eluded them.

So it is that I can offer no rationale that makes my complicity with the mistreatment and slaughter of animals, however comparatively minor, acceptable to me. This remains, to the degree that I continue to partake in that mistreatment and slaughter, a nagging guilt, a personal failing, and a proverbial stain on my soul.

The second question is far more promising in terms of engagement: why have I bothered at all, given my obvious shortcomings, and what does it mean to bother? How does this bothering, for those of us who are moving away from an animal-based diet in any measure, affect both individual and society? Does this bothering really, as some claim, have the potential to help save the planet and ensure the future survival of humanity?

When I first became a lacto-ovo vegetarian — a vegetarian who consumes dairy and eggs, but eats no flesh products; vegans eat no animal products at all, and usually boycott non-food animal products such as fur, leather and wool — I was not concerned with the question of bothering in the context of ‘big picture’ theories. Mine was a humble shift of consciousness and lifestyle. My decision to become vegetarian was not motivated by health issues or by the subscription to religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, in which vegetarianism is lauded. It was a decision born of the sudden onset of unabashed empathy with non-human animals, and a spiritual awakening of the sort Einstein described. I had been to see a movie called Gorillas in the Mist, based on the real-life story of scientist Dian Fossey, who both studied gorillas and fought to protect them from poachers in the Rwandan mountains before she was brutally murdered for her trouble. The movie had nothing to do with vegetarianism or factory farming, but I left the cinema feeling a burning sense of injustice about the exploitative way humans view and treat animals. That dawning of compassionate consciousness inevitably led to the matter of eating meat. I found I lost my appetite for it once I could no longer so neatly deny the reality of its production, and I promptly decided to give it up.

Mark Berriman, Director of the Australian Vegetarian Society (NSW) has been vegetarian since 1981. He stresses that most people — particularly urbanites, who account for the majority of Australians — don’t make the connection between the meat they eat and the reality of its production, due to geographical distance, the sanitised illusion of pre-packaged abstraction, and the picturesque happy farm-life imagery promoted by the meat and dairy industries in their determination to maintain a highly profitable collective and culturally conditioned oblivion.

‘If you took people into the process and made them aware, then they’d have to make a decision based on that,’ Mark says. ‘From the year dot they’ve been raised to eat animals. It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done, and they can’t imagine anything different because it goes against the grain. If they really looked into it they’d realise what an abomination it is.’ He adds that we also have an entrenched species-centric resistance to registering the suffering of non-human animals. ‘It’s hard to break the species barrier in order to acknowledge sentience in something that can’t advocate for itself. We have a great capacity for telling ourselves stories and to believe them en masse.’

David Thomason, former general manager of marketing at Meat and Livestock Australia, an advocacy agency for beef, sheep and goat meat producers, agrees that city folk are woefully ignorant about the production of meat, but unlike Mark, David insists people would be pleasantly surprised and reassured were they to visit a farm and witness its operations. He is so sure, in fact, that he endorses a venture called FarmDay, an annual one-day event that encourages city dwellers to spend a day on a property on which animals are farmed.

Mark dismisses David’s claim as a standard public-relations line spun by those with vested interests, and the FarmDay campaign as a whitewash, pointing out that it’s easy enough to stage-manage an otherwise inaccessible industry for one rehearsed promotional day a year. To get an accurate representation of current farming practices, Mark contends, a person would have to see the entire process, including moments certain not to be on view on FarmDay — like overcrowded and traumatic transportation and un-anaesthetised castration.

Predictably, presented with such challenges, David remains firm in his conviction that if people broke out of the air-conditioned metropolitan rat-race come next FarmDay they would eat meat guilt-free forever more. ‘There’s a vast and fantastic area of country that they’re blind to and haven’t experienced,’ says David. ‘There is a lifestyle that they haven’t even touched. I urge people to get over the Great Dividing Range and get out there into seeing real Australia and real agriculture and meet the real people out there doing the job.’ Also predictable is the patriotic Aussie flavour given the rural environment in which the salt-of-the-earth producers of meat and dairy foods labour, upholding the bastion of ‘real’ Australianness — despite the fact that corporations, not farmers, control most animal industry.

The website of Fonterra Foodservices boasts the company is ‘the world’s largest exporter of dairy products’. At time of writing, the website of Tatura Milk Industries states that with the aid of its ‘suppliers of milk’, the company ‘manufactures quality Australian dairy ingredients for the global market. Approximately 80,000 tonnes of manufactured products are produced per annum using state of the art technologies and systems.’ And the homepage of the multinational corporation Elders (yes, the very same Elders that deals in real estate) declares it is ‘one of the largest suppliers to the live export market’ and specialises in the export of cattle, sheep and goats from Australia and New Zealand to all parts of the globe. Elders is also one of the largest exporters of dairy cattle and suppliers of wool. Fifty years ago, the same protestations of innocence came from tobacco companies waving so-called studies and ‘evidence’ supporting the safety of tobacco, so when Mark scoffs at FarmDay, I’m inclined to scoff along with him.

For city-based animal lovers like me who felt uncomfortable enough to make the switch to a meatless diet, in spite of never having seen the ‘production’ process first hand, it is easier than ever to be a vegetarian.

The availability and range of vegetarian products has grown radically over the last fifty years. My early days of vegetarianism in the 1980s were, like that of many virgin vegos, somewhat clumsy and uneducated. There were a number of vegetarian restaurants in Sydney, a basic vegetarian meal could be had at most restaurants, whatever the cuisine, and cafes usually had a decent selection of vegetarian options, but there were nowhere near the plethora of vegetarian and vegan products now lining even the most mainstream of supermarket shelves.

Tofu, tempeh, all manner of vegetarian sausages and burgers, soups, dips, soy milk, rice milk and almond milk, soy cheeses and pre-packaged meals abound, in addition to the staple vegetarian wholefoods such as lentils, chickpeas, split peas, beans, and high-protein grains such as buckwheat and amaranth. Like many new vegetarians I lived, for a time, on pasta and bread, oblivious to the wide range of nutritious and delicious foods and meals that show up on a cultivated vegetarian’s menu. I knew nothing of the less common grains, I thought of lentils and chickpeas as the redundant comestibles of a generation of flower children, and I didn’t care much for tofu, having only experienced bland and uncreative preparations of it.

During this time my interest in animal rights led me into contact with hard-core vegans. Over the years I made several attempts to become vegan, but I was, in the long run, unsuccessful in maintaining the diet. I could clarify that I have digestive sensitivities and don’t tolerate large quantities of soy products or legumes, and complain that veganism can still be, depending on the circles you move in, restrictive socially. I could lament that I had already made more than my fair share of non-diet lifestyle modifications, and just how much should one person be called upon to sacrifice? I could mention that to do veganism well, to guarantee adequate, balanced and enjoyable nourishment in all circumstances, can require forethought and sometimes time-consuming preparation. The bottom line is, though, that dairy food is a habit I have been unwilling to do without, and that I have not been inclined to stretch my commitment to animal rights that far beyond my comfort-food comfort zone.

There has also been, at some level, an anxiety around alienation. As a non-drinker and reformed smoker I feared being a social pariah, the killjoy who refused every tribal offering brightly extended my way; the wowser whose social refrain is a constant chant of ‘No, thank you. I don’t …’ If I feared being socially disadvantaged and rejected as vegan, the picture painted by pioneer Australian vegetarians makes it clear that even lacto-ovo vegetarianism was, back in my parents’ day, a wasteland occupied by outcasts, and that only the most freethinking and strongest of character could withstand the hardships of non-conformity.

My father, Russell Frank Atkinson, a retired naturopath and author of a series of health titles, became vegetarian in the late 1940s at the age of nineteen. His change of diet was inspired by the spiritual teachings of Eastern philosophy, which he studied after discovering yoga. The son of a Scottish mother who prided herself on her Sunday roast dinner and a fifth-generation Australian butcher, my father’s decision was not warmly received. My grandparents fretted that their son would die of malnutrition, and they worried what the neighbours would think. Others thought him strange and suspicious, a deviant. Initially, my father suffered from the common conversion affliction of zealotism, lecturing his bewildered ageing parents, and anyone else who would listen, about the karmic parallels between Nazi concentration camps and abattoirs. There were no vegetarian restaurants or products. It was a tough and lonely dietary and social path.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The 2013 Voiceless Anthology by J.M. Coetzee, Ondine Sherman, Wendy Were, Susan Wyndham. Copyright © 2012 Allen & Unwin. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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