Will the “Pub with No Beer” Become the Pub with No Meat?
Sixty eight years ago, Australian country music legend Slim Dusty wrote the ballad a Pub with No Beer. This song, which was the first-ever Australian-recorded song to receive a Gold Record in Australia, was based on a poem written in and about a pub called Lee’s Hotel, in Ingham, Queensland.
PETA Asks Ingham Icon For Menu Change
PETA has written to Lee’s Hotel, the venue that started it all, urging it to become a Pub with No Meat. We’ve even offered to cover the cost of a year’s worth of monthly mushroom meat trays to replace the pub’s animal flesh-based raffle prizes.
Australians abhor cruelty to animals, and climate change is already reshaping the nation for the worse, making now a great time for Lee’s Hotel to lead with a positive difference. Not only would this move be novel, but it would help Aussies stay slimmer, make our green spaces less dusty, and spare animals from morbid and drear lives on farms.
Animal agriculture has long been noted as a leading driver of climate change. Summer’s deadly floods, linked to the warming atmosphere, claimed the lives of two Ingham residents and decimated valuable sugarcane crops, and the CSIRO predicts worse to come. Conversely, the most comprehensive science to date notes that a global shift to an animal-free diet would slash greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent, land use by 75 per cent, water use by 54 per cent, and biodiversity loss by 66 per cent.
Raising animals also has significant ethical implications. In Australia, millions of clever, sensitive individuals are confined to filthy factory farms, where they are denied sunshine and space to walk that country mile.
Every animal is a complex individual, and no system designed to breed, fatten and slaughter them can ever accommodate their unique personalities and preferences. Cows have best friends, pigs recognise their names, sheep wag their tails when they’re happy, while chickens and fish in nature live in large social groups with complex hierarchies. Do right by them by choosing vegan.
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