Posted on 05/06/2005 10:55:13 AM PDT by Born Conservative
AN animal rights activist charged after he added ham to animal feed to stop the export of live sheep to the Middle East, has been cleared.
Ralph Hahnheuser, 42, pleaded not guilty in the County Court in Geelong to contaminating feed to cause economic loss. A jury yesterday found him not guilty.
Animal Liberation activists welcomed the verdict as a "fantastic win".
"This couldn't come at a better time with the news the live export trade to Saudi Arabia is about to resume," Animal Liberation NSW executive director Mark Pearson said.
"This is despite the Government's own Keniry inquiry report recommending exporters not send sheep from southern ports to the high summer in the Middle East, which is what will happen now they have reopened the trade like this.
"The jury has made it very clear that he is not
a criminal."
The court heard Mr Hahnheuser, a leading member of Animal Liberation in SA, added pig meat to the feed of sheep in a Portland feedlot on November 19, 2003.
The sheep were waiting to be sent to Kuwait the following day, prosecutor Mark Gamble, QC, said.
Strict Muslim dietary laws prohibit eating pork products or products that have come in contact with pig meat.
Mr Gamble told the court Department of Primary Industries investigators found shredded ham among feed pellets in troughs at the feedlot.
As a result, an export licence could not be issued and about 70,000 sheep had to stay at Portland feedlots for another two weeks.
Defence counsel David Edwardson, QC, told jurors there was no dispute Mr Hahnheuser, of Semaphore, South Australia, put ham in the food and that he called a press conference to publicise it.
He said his client did it to prevent unnecessary cruelty to sheep and not, as the prosecution said, to contaminate the feed.
ok, so it might not really be relevant, but it was in my buffer and it IS about feeding meat to sheep...
He is an economic terrorist. How they could have rendered this verdict defies reason.
Spam!
This guy causes major economic damage and he is not convicted?
How bad was the criminal prosecutor?
I hope a civil lawsuit for damages sends him to the poorhouse forever
Shipped to the Middle East? He was just trying to prevent the sheep from being sexually abused........
Feh. America cares about things right up to the time it costs them money. Then they shed any shred of altruism.
Then remind your self that in America (albeit the Sheeple's Republic of FloriDUH) I was convicted of "conspiracy to commit animal cruelty" for videoing a puma wearing a state radio collar as it attacked the seventeenth animal at a private campground.
Just a misdemeanor and a fine, but if allowed to stand, the state and the animal rights whackos can then force all animals to be kept in predator proof pastures
I'm not seeing how the two are connected.
That picture is PERFECT for the post titled :Bestiality on the Rise in Sexually Libertine Sweden just a little earlier on the forum
LOL!!!!
"Hey, sometimes the sheep just get stuck and need to be pushed through the fence."
You Dog! :) I knocked over my coffee cup! :(
ROFL!
I don't suppose this animals rights guy thought to ask those sheep if they wanted ham in their feed. I mean, come on, now. What about the rights of those sheep to keep to their vegetarian diet? He purposely took those rights away from those poor sheep, and all in the name of "animals rights." Go figure. Just shows they don't really care about the animals, just the damage they can inflict on the "bad guy."
i know. that's how it got in my buffer int he first place.;-)
And that's how I found this article while doing a google search on sheep for the bestiality thread (I have a link to google news, typed in sheep, and then planned on switching to images, but saw this at the top of the news page when I searched). Why is that that "sheep" is the first thing to come to mind when speaking of bestiality?
not there's anything wrong with that...
fed ham to sheep?
well, what CAN one say?
*whistling and retreating*
Just damn.
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