Toward eco-justice for all - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 144

This small but important difference can lead to confusion
over the 'sustainability' or otherwise of wildlife use. There is
also an important distinction to be drawn between concerns
over declines in the local abundance of a species, which may
reduce its short-term availability as a resource for harvest,
and declines in abundance which are sufficiently widespread
and diverse to be a cause of concern for species' survival.
Local declines in abundance associated with harvesting
will not threaten a species with extinction unless the rate
of offtake is unsustainable in the longer term. (Caughley et
al, 1996: 8, emphasis in original)
Be this as it may, there are tensions stemming from different
interpretations as to what is acceptable to take from the wild, as
measured in specific cultural or ecological terms. Traditional food
sources are important to indigenous peoples for a wide range of reasons,
but access to these may be hindered due to non-indigenous prejudice
('why should they have more rights than I do?') and concerns about
ecological wellbeing ('wildlife harvests should be restricted in numbers
and types').
What about food and religious prescriptions?
Eating animals is already a contentious and heavily politicised subject
as reflected in animal rights activists' prescriptions that veganism is the
only ethical method of subsistence. For indigenous people and others
this creates a conundrum, given millennia of established eating habits
and practices. To further complicate things, there are issues relating
to hallal and kashrut slaughter methods that immediately raise alarm
bells in relation to animal welfare. According to some religious codes,
there are specific protocols of the slaughtering of animals for food
that must be followed by adherents. Such methods may be associated
with cruelty in several ways. The live sheep trade from Australia to
Indonesia or the Middle East is premised upon the idea that the sheep
must be slaughtered in certain ways and under certain local conditions.
The cruelty lies in both the conditions of transport, and the ways in
which sheep are butchered. Yet, these are foundational to religious
requirements associated with the killing and bleeding of animals.