Hard to comprehend how horrible life would have been for cows

THE most distressing news item on Thursday detailed the sinking of the livestock carrier Gulf Livestock 1 with nearly 6000 pregnant dairy cows on board (ODT, 3.9.20).

Much concern has been shown for the missing crew but nowhere have I seen any compassion for the animals that died by drowning after three weeks at sea.

No doubt the financial cost will be borne by insurance.

I have 14 years’ experience of dairy farming and can attest to the reaction of cows under stress.

I have never been on such a ship but it is easy to imagine the conditions prevailing aboard as it is buffeted by the reported typhoon.

The cows will be desperately trying to keep their feet as the ship rolls. If the pens have not been kept clean, some will fall, possibly breaking a limb and rendering them unable to get up. The stench of fear and the deafening bellowing will have no effect on their carers, the crew, as they seek their own salvation.

The rolling motion of the ship increases and, according to a survivor, it is swamped by a wave and capsizes.

The 6000 cows, according to breed and age weighing up to a combined 3000 tonnes, are quickly silenced as they go down with the ship.

Men and livestock thrown into a predictable calamity for someone’s profit.

This situation, so reminiscent of past centuries’ slave traders, is totally preventable and it is heartening to see the Government crawling in this direction.

Nigel Ensor

St Leonards

Nazi links

I AM at a loss to understand what demonising exSS member Willi Huber, more than 70 years after the cessation of hostilities in Europe, is intended to accomplish.

I favour the approach of the good residents of Cooktown in Queensland’s tropical North.

Some time after WW2, a stranger arrived. Old ‘‘Hans’’ remained a bit of a mystery. By the time he had let slip that he had been a member of Hitler’s SS during the (then) recent war, he had been accepted as a local, and through a twist of fate, a very valuable one, as he could play the bugle.

That led, in turn, to his being invited to play the Last Post at the Anzac Day commemorations, something he had done, subsequently, for many years.

It might pay to remember that many of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, revolted by some of the things they had seen and been required to do, suffered years of psychological trauma, alcoholism, and alienation for carrying out their Fuhrer’s orders. That is the nature of war, unfortunately.

Reprisals conducted by Russian troops during their invasions of Eastern Europe and what were to become the Eastern Bloc countries were just as bad as, incidentally, but on a smaller scale, those perpetrated on the pacifist inhabitants of the Chatham Islands by Taranaki Maori.

Does this demonising of the SS, but acceptance of the infractions of other wouldbe invaders, not smack of some rather hypocritical double standards? Ian Smith

Waverley

[Abridged]