The title is given to one of J.S. Bach’s most well known cantatas No. 208 written in 1713, the reference to ‘safely’ is explained by the fact that this piece of music is but part of a larger cantata entitled ‘The lively hunt is all my heart’s desire’, hunting the potential predators to sheep. The above picture was taken at the western end of Westfield Road, Barton with a view across and along the upper Humber Estuary.
Yesterday I was uncertain about a topic for the blog until I read an E-mail from Animals Australia charity. I had become aware of Animals Australia via the website of Compassion in World Farming of which I am a member. The E-mail included short videos taken secretly by a seaman on board a large purpose-built ship transporting 58,000 live sheep and lambs from Australia to the Middle East – this, apparently, an established form of ‘trade’. The images showed sheep suffering extreme heat exhaustion, almost knee-deep in excrement and urine, in danger if they sank down of suffocating in the putrid waste. The images were so upsetting. Also, although the sheep are supposed to be screened to check that they are not pregnant before being loaded some give birth and the crew members are told to cut the lambs throats. This is a commercial trade, organised for profit, pandering to so-called religious dictates at the complete expense of the lives and feelings of sentient creatures.
Animals Australia have mounted a huge campaign against this barbarity not only in Australia but around the World and, perhaps reluctantly, the Australian government have called the ship back to port.
So ‘Sheep may safely graze’, well it’s a nice thought, but now they face a much greater predator than foxes and wolves.