‘HAVE you tried eating razor blades?’ is the provocative question posed by Cllr Sean O’Donovan (FF) in an animal welfare post that has, so far, been shared more than 8,500 times on his Facebook page.
The member of Bandon Kinsale Municipal District shared an image of a cow bleeding from its nostrils after chewing shards of aluminium cans and he appealed to people to ‘do the right thing’ and dispose of their drink cans responsibly.
‘It takes 50 years for an aluminium can to breakdown,’ he told The Southern Star, ‘but what’s worse than that is when they are discarded in fields, or hedgerows, and find their way into the food chain.’
The graphic photograph shows an animal that is clearly in a great deal of pain in a bid to remind people, ‘This is why you NEVER thrown beer or beverage cans out the window of your vehicle. They just end up getting shredded in grass silage or hay and being eaten by cattle.’
To drive the message home, Cllr O’Donovan likened it to eating razor blades. With the number of shares multiplying at an phenomenal rate, the councillor has clearly found an audience among like-minded people concerned about the welfare of these animals.
He said the problem of illegal dumping is not new and that the indiscriminate discarding of plastic in the sea has been well documented, but it is only now that research in the US is showing that between 55% and 75% of all animals slaughtered have some form of metal in their stomachs.
‘It’s a big problem for farmers, but an even bigger one for the cattle because the metal sometimes pierces their organs, and if it pierces their heart it is, of course, fatal.’
