Raising cattle for slaughter is incredibly resource intensive - requiring vast areas of land for both grazing and feed production, and causing significant damage to the native Australian landscape.

In Queensland, Australia's worst deforesting state, a massive 2,446,600 hectares of land was cleared between 2010-2018, with over 90% of cleared forests being replaced by pasture required for beef and leather production. Cattle farming accounts for 86% of land use in the state, significantly degrading the homes and food sources of native wildlife.

The sheep industry producing meat, wool and lanolin – used in cosmetics – is extremely land inefficient and destructive, too. To produce 1 medium weight knit sweater made of Australian wool, 1837.5 square metres of land must be cleared or kept cleared. Comparatively, if this same sweater was made from Australian cotton (which must be sourced with sustainable, wildlife friendly farming in mind), just 7.44 square metres of land must be cleared or kept cleared. Most land-efficient, this same knitwear produced with Tencel lyocell would require only 1.25 square metres of land must be cleared or kept cleared.

The killing of native Australian dingoes is also driven by sheep producing industries in Australia. Since European arrival, the dingo has been inaccurately regarded as a serious threat to sheep, and as such the Australian, and all state governments, have spent millions in taxpayers money to drop poison baits in their environment, deploy foothold traps to shoot them, and runs bounty programs, placing a monetary value on the head of every dingo killed.

Kangaroos are arguably the most iconic and globally recognised native Australian animal. Living on this land for 20 million years, they play a pivotal role in the Australian ecosystem, promoting the regeneration of native plants and reducing fuel loads in forests and grasslands. Tragically, these incredible creatures are under threat. Kangaroos are killed in the thousands each night under a veil of darkness to satisfy an unnecessary and declining sports leather and pet food industry, justified by an inaccurate and morally repugnant ‘pest species’ status.

Australia’s killing of kangaroos is the largest land-based slaughter of mammalian wildlife in the world, responsible for killing ten times the number of harp seals during the infamous annual Canadian seal hunt. The devastating impacts of this senseless operation are not only devastating kangaroos as individuals, but the broader ecosystem too. This mass slaughter is only able to continue because of corporate support from brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma, which all use kangaroo leather.

Crocodiles are a native Australian animal that have lived on this land for over 100 million years. They play an important role in their ecosystem, maintaining the diversity and productivity of wetlands. Today, these ancient reptiles are being factory farmed and slaughtered to satisfy the desires of a lucrative luxury leather trade. Their skins are used for handbags and accessories that are sold for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by fashion houses around the globe.

While the crocodile skin industry claims to exist for the sake of species conservation, this is little more than a greenwashing tactic used to retain the industry’s social licence, in order to continue profiting from the exploitation of these prehistoric, thinking and feeling creatures. Tragically, there are now more crocodiles living in confinement and misery on Australian farms than in their native habitat – this is not conservation.

Around 22 million hectares of land is used to plant grain crops across Australia, with the domestic feed grain industry representing the single largest market for production. Of this around 6,947,600 hectares is used to grow grains for farmed animals.

A report released by the Feed Grain Partnership in 2018, which looked at grain production for animal feed between the 2017/18 and 2018/19 period, found that between 2018 and 2019, 66.43% of the total grain used was fed to farmed animals, whilst only 27.26% represented grain used for human consumption.

This growth in grain consumption by animal farming industries reflects the continued growth of intensive farming of cattle in feedlots, and factory farming of chickens used for meat production.

Stretching across 13.86 million square kilometres, and home to a diversity of marine species found nowhere else in the world, Australia’s marine environment is the world’s third largest marine district in the world. Australia’s species and natural marine treasures are iconic to this country and provide $25 billion of essential ecosystem services, including carbon dioxide absorption, nutrient cycling and coastal protection.

Sadly, this planetary treasure is under threat due to a range of human-driven risk factors. Climate change is placing the Great Barrier Reef at serious risk. Plastic litters our coastlines and pollutes our oceans. Despite the threatened status of a variety of native marine species, Australian marine parks have continued to have their protections downgraded in favour of economic pursuits.

Our oceans not only provide habitat and resources to a huge array of marine species, but are essential to all life on earth and must be protected.

Pig rearing industries, much like chicken rearing industries, require vast areas of land to grow feed for pigs that are being raised for slaughter.

Pig farms also produce massive amounts of waste, which is stored in large ‘lagoons’ on farming properties. This waste not only creates local air pollution, which can impact the surrounding natural environments, but they can also leak and contaminate surrounding waterways and groundwater.