Revolution Starts Here

A collection of images from our exhibit "Revolution Starts Here" - exploring and challenging the many interconnected issues with our unsustainable consumption of meat.

Pikin rescued by Ape Action Africa fell in love with rescuer Appolinaire - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Chicken and pig from Catskill Animal Sanctuary - Photograph from Jo-Anne McArthur
Tuulispää Animal Sanctuary.- photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Boy with Whale - Photograph by Paul Hilton
Fish killed in ocean dead zone

Factory farm runoff eventually makes its way into the oceans, causing massive dead zones. Add the large and growing number of industrial scale fishing operations and you have a perfect storm that pushes many species of fish to the brink of extinction.

Commercial fishing at current levels is simply not sustainable. Many of us are shocked to learn that overfishing is partly caused by the farming of land animals (eg. chickens and pigs), with one third of all wild fish caught used as animal feed or fishmeal. 

Fish farms are also destroying our oceans as most fish we farm are carnivorous and are fed massive quantities of wild fish that has been turned into fishmeal. It takes up to 3 pounds of wild fish to produce each pound of farmed salmon.

Photograph from Paul Hilton
Sea Turtle looks at camera
Shark caught in net as bycatch - Photograph by Paul Hilton
Shark finning - Photograph by Paul Hilton
Photograph from Paul Hilton
Revolution Starts here Exhibition for No Meat May - photograph by Andrew Alderson
Revolution Starts here Exhibition for No Meat May - photograph by Andrew Alderson
Revolution Starts here Exhibition for No Meat May - photograph by Andrew Alderson
Revolution Starts here Exhibition for No Meat May - photographed by Andrew Alderson
Revolution Starts here Exhibition for No Meat May - photograph by Andrew Alderson
Ancient forest under threat by agriculture - Photograph from Paul Hilton
Land clearing to make more room for agriculture - Photograph from Paul Hilton
cow grazing - Photograph from Paul Hilton
Woman eating ribs with bib on
Smiling Ape saved from bush meat trade - photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Photograph from Paul Hilton
Photograph from Paul Hilton
Living and breathing forest
Photograph from Paul Hilton

Rising seas are caused by the expansion of warming ocean water and water runoff from melting ice sheets and glaciers.

The Antarctic ice sheet alone contains sufficient ice to raise sea levels by more than 60 meters if melted completely. 

The rate that sea levels are rising has increased by about 30 percent over the last decade, and could accelerate even more as continent-sized ice blocs near the North & South poles continue to shed.


Climate Scientists predict an added 5-to-10 cm's will more than double the frequency of flooding in the tropics and challenge the existence of coastal communities across the globe.  

Photograph from Paul Hilton
Children growing vegetables in Cambodia School - Photograph from Chris Gleisner
Boy sits on fence protecting families vegetables in Cambodia - Photograph from Chris Gleisner
Girl raise pig for a wealthier family in Cambodia - Photograph from Chris Gleisner
Sreytouch cooks a typical meat meal without any vegetables - Photograph from Chris Gleisner
Photograph by Paul Hilton
The green world of the Wuaruni tribe at Amazonia Ecuatoriana. Thinking about the Amazon jungle, especially from the inside where everything is so alive and infinite makes you believe that it is eternal and indestructible. It is an organism in which everything functions as it should, it seems as a system of chain reactions which works perfectly, but, unfortunately, it is in a great danger.
Kids with water containers - Photograph by Nicola Bailey
Freshwater is a finite resource and we’re running out of it. 

It takes about: 
•    1,800 gallons of water on average to produce 1 pound of meat, versus 
•    220 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of soy.
The amount of grain stored by governments— a good measure of the global cushion against poor harvests and rising prices—continues to decline.

We are all vulnerable to the impending impact of climate change on our food security. Though none more so than some of the worlds most food insecure people in sub safara Africa, where every grain of corn counts.

These images provide a stark contrast to the western world where food is in excess, is inefficiently fed to livestock, or is binned because we are full, we bought too much and it went off in the fridge, or the produce is the wrong shape for visual merchandising.
Food scarcity at the global level is an issue now with past surpluses being drawn down and it is fast becoming a critical issue as our seven billion population expands towards nine billion by 2050.

As our population increases, available land, water, energy and other finite resources decrease. 
Dash was given to a lovely woman who works in a pet store when she was a chick.

She grew up in a loving household with dogs and cats, but no other chickens. One day, I happened to be chatting to this beautiful woman in the pet store about my chickens, she mentioned that she had one chicken who was a year old and that she was upset that she was living without other chickens. I offered to take her to Lefty’s Place to be part of a chicken family. I picked her up one Wednesday morning in April. Their parting was full of tears.

Although Dash had been kept as an only chicken, she was so very loved living in that household, but a new life awaited Dash. A life living as a real chicken.

Read more on Dash's story 

- Tamara Kenneally
Dash - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
Bobby Calf - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Australian ‘bobby calves’ are either sent to slaughter (more than 2 million over the past 5 years) or are killed on farm in their first week of life so that the milk intended for them can instead be collected and sold to humans.

Considered economically insignificant, male calves, and the females who are excess to the dairy industry’s needs, are separated from their mothers on their first day of life.

From as young as 5 days old, they can be loaded onto trucks and sent to saleyards or slaughterhouses.

Read more 

- Words from Animals Australia

- Image from Tamara Kenneally 

A group of us spent a full day at a small-scale dairy and veal farm. We witnessed the milk line production, artificial insemination and the birth of a calf who was taken away from her mother not 15 minutes after she was born. 

- Jo-Anne McArthur


“Still wet from birth, she will be added to the rows of other calves and crates, and raised in this confinement.”

Dairy calf in wheel barrow - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Veal Fun Book - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Crabs in restaurant window - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
"I took this photo through two thick panes of glass. He saw me. He watched me. He probably wondered if I was going to be the one who would pick him out to eat him. I wasn’t, but someone will pick him out soon. A customer will walk up to the tank with an employee of this Chinese restaurant, point to him and that will be it. He will be boiled alive."

- Tamara Kenneally
As people walk by without giving these fish a second thought, these living beings stare out in to a foreign land whilst labouring for every breathe.
Sea animals in restaurant window - Photograph Tamara Kenneally
Patty Marks - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Animal Rights Activist Patty Mark captured here holding Shmuel, a rescued piglet who did not survive.

Mark has been described as “fierce and fearless” in her efforts to make the world a better place for animals.

She has been fined and arrested numerous times for her role in open rescues, but this does not deter her. She refuses to pay these fines on “ethical grounds,” noting that if she receives a parking ticket she pays it immediately, but that “there is something very strong inside me that balks at paying a fine for what is simply taking an ill, crippled or stressed individual for medical treatment and/or freedom.”

She acknowledges that “it can be stressful being arrested and it’s definitely not something we want to happen, but it’s nothing compared to what the animals we are being arrested for are going through.” When talking about these arrests Mark points out that these experiences “only served to strengthen my resolve to keep working to free the animals because you really get a taste (albeit short) of what they are going through when you are locked up and can’t do what you want to do.”

If you've ever held a tiny, chirping chick in your hand, you'll know that for that moment, you hold complete responsibility for his or her life. With the greatest of ease you could take that life, and with the same ease you could protect it from harm.

There's nothing more vulnerable and defenceless in this world than a newborn chick. Yet deep inside Australian hatcheries, their lives are being snuffed out every single day. Since they can't lay eggs, male chicks are considered 'worthless' to the egg industry. So, every day, they're sorted from the females, dumped onto moving conveyor belts and dropped into giant metal grinding machines or gassed to death. This is the first (and last) day of life for over 12 million chicks in Australia every year.

 

The killing of day old chicks happens in all commercial egg systems, be it caged, organic or free range. And it's legal. We have made cruelty to some of the most vulnerable members of our society routine and lawful. This is the true cost of eggs.

 

Source: Animals Australia

Male Chicken Discarded - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
Battery Hen - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
The purpose of intensive farming is simply to produce the most meat, eggs and dairy at the lowest possible financial cost.

This focus on cost-cutting invariably comes at the expense of the health and welfare of individual animals whose pain and distress are often disregarded. 
Saleyard - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
Dogs in cage prior to being sold for meat
Eggs have become such a staple food in our diet, that it is barely thought about by the average joe, but eggs come from hens and hens that are used and abused by humans in the most disgusting ways.

A battery egg farm consists of shed apon shed filled with small cages layered on top of each other. Just one farm can trap up to 150,000 hens.

Chickens are naturally happy animals, whose joys are directly connected to the earth.

Chickens love to scratch and forage in the earth, they need to bathe in dirt to get clean, they sunbake in delight in the sun and hens make nests in private areas to lay their eggs.

In a battery egg farm, they experience none of this. They are put into the cages and left there for 18 months until they no longer produce eggs and then they are ripped out of those cages. slaughtered and replaced with younger hens.

Learn more about the reality of the egg industry here. 
The price of eggs - Tamara Kenneally
The price of eggs - Tamara Kenneally
Popeye the chicken - Tamara Kenneally

Most roosters who are hatched into this world are killed, Popeye was extremely lucky that he was born into a sanctuary.

Most chicken breeders slaughter their young roosters as there is no demand for them. Hatching school project roosters have such trouble finding homes and most are slaughtered. The egg industry has no need for roosters and all male hatchlings are either gassed or ground up alive.

Popeye is very lucky. Read more of his heart-warming story here.🥰

Jane at sunset. Farm Sanctuary, New York - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur

Constantly producing milk puts a huge strain on the metabolism of dairy cows and they need to replenish that energy through their food.  If a dairy cow is producing 7 gallons of milk a day their feed alone requires 4,788 gallons of water per cow per day.

Dairy Cow - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
Sheep at the sale yard - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally

Farm animals are trucked to saleyards under stress. Yarded with unfamiliar animals. Locked in pens with no shade for up to 24 hours, sometimes more. The animals are stressed by loud noises, crowds, rough handling and dogs. They have no water and no food. Legislation states that farm animals in saleyards only need to be provided with water after 12 hours of being there.

Whilst walking through a large sale of sheep lately on a 30 degree day, I saw each of them. Each individual sheep who looked at me was someone different, just like my sheep at home. They were all languishing in the heat, panting and desperate for shade and water. To these farmers, they were only money. Their lives were for sale. Most were trucked off for slaughter and some may have been purchased as breeding stock for wool and/or meat, but there was no future for any of these sheep.

What really struck me was how they were all treated the same. How no one knew them or wanted to know who they actually were. Like they were nothing.  Read more 

Pig with mother in factory farm - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
I find that so many of the sows I meet at pig farms are curious, and cautiously friendly, despite the confines they live in and the treatment and deprivations that they endure. 

- Jo-Anne McArthur

A piglet and her mother in a gestation crate at a large pig farming facility in Italy.
Cat with pig in factory farm - Photograph by Jo-Anne McArthur
A cat stopped to watch we humans take photos and video during an investigation at a large pig farm in Italy.

The piglet, who could not run free, had just had his tail docked and been castrated, evidenced by the scarring on his scrotal sack. 
Her final plea for help - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally

HER DESPERATE PLEA FOR HELP

There she stood, in that bare paddock at the back of the abattoir. She had no food. She was starving. She hadn’t been milked for some time and her udder was full and painful.

As soon as she saw us, she mustered up all the strength she had left and walked over to us as quickly as she could…..and then she pleaded with us for help. She desperately screamed and screamed and screamed at us for help.

They all screamed at us for help. Their emaciated, broken bodies, full of milk, standing on dirt and/or mud were asking us with all they had left to please give them food and to please help them…and we couldn’t and it completely broke us to leave them there.

This abattoir specialises in slaughtering spent dairy cows to be turned into mince meat for the American fast food industry. Many of these girls are shipped to Melbourne from Tasmania and then driven three hours to the abattoir. The others are purchased by the abattoir from farmers mostly around the area.

We saw them on Friday and they had no food. They were still there on Saturday and had no food except for the little my friend was able to give them.

- Tamara Kenneally  (from the series “Dairy”).

Cow in the sunshine - Photograph by Tamara Kenneally
George & Sebastian - Photograph by Guy James Whitworth

"What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." - Dr Jane Goodall