360 | Law and Animals: Australia industries While they are characterized as representing industry best practice, in reality they help justify many practices that would otherwise constitute acts of cruelty to animals, since compliance with a code generally provides protection against prosecution for cruelty Examples include: • The permanent confinement or factory farming of millions of pigs used to satisfy Australia’s appetite for ham, bacon, and pork These sensitive and intelligent animals are kept indoors for the duration of their life, confined in sheds with thousands of others of their kind, and denied the opportunity to exercise many of their natural behaviors Their mothers, female pigs or sows used for breeding, are generally treated as piglet producing machines Under Australia’s current animal welfare laws and policies, they may be confined in pens known as sow stalls, in which they can barely take a step forward or backward, for the majority of their reproductive cycle Once they stop producing, they are considered of little utility and, with no meaningful legal rights to assert, they are sent straight to the slaughterhouse • The factory farming of millions of chickens or battery hens, bred specifically to lay eggs Under the current regulatory framework, battery hens may spend their entire lives standing on sloping wire bars in cages with between four to 20 cage mates At 216 in (550cm) their allocated area is less than a letter-sized piece of paper Australia’s current animal welfare laws not give them the opportunity to perform many of their natural behaviors such as dust bathing, nesting, and foraging for food They also nothing to protect millions of male layer chicks who, since they cannot lay eggs, are generally considered waste products to be disposed of shortly after birth • The carrying out of various procedures or mutilations on young animals, generally without pain relief These procedures include the teeth clipping, castrating, and tail docking of piglets and the beak trimming (debeaking) or removal of one third of the beak of layer hens These practices, which are carried out routinely in Australia’s intensive or factory farming industries, would be considered acts of cruelty if they were carried out on companion animals, and would likely outrage a considerable proportion of the community Reform Efforts In recent years, Australia’s legal regime for the treatment of animals has come under increasing scrutiny from legal advocates for animals This appears to be part of a broader international movement in animal protection law The primary indicators of Australia’s budding animal law movement include the increased availability of animal law as a course of study in universities, and the emergence of a community of legal academics and lawyers interested in debating and discussing present laws, and identifying potential areas for law reform Although law reform is not an overnight process, it seems likely that in the coming years legal advocates will challenge the many inconsistencies and inequities in Australia’s regulatory framework