Il devient VG et défenseur des animaux grâce à sa fille...

[Animal 0]

Last Update: Sunday, July 17, 2005. 12:11pm (AEST)

Brian Sherman tells Australian Story about his journey from high-flying businessman to co-founder of animal rights organisation, Voiceless

Daughter inspires equity man's jump to animal rights
Ondine Sherman was eight years old when she made the connection between the meat on her plate and animals on a farm.

She vividly remembers the night her grandmother cooked up a pot of tongue for her family.

"My grandmother lived with us and she was serving up the food up. And I think I took my first bite and I looked at it and I said 'what is this?' And she said, 'it's tongue, it's a cow's tongue'."

"I just went into shock. Like I just couldn't believe I was eating somebody's tongue. And I realised that I didn't want to eat animals any more," Ondine recalled.

For Ondine, the idea that all animals play happily in the sunshine on Old MacDonald's Farm was shattered.

And while most parents might put an early declaration of vegetarianism down to childhood petulance, Ondine's parents encouraged her freedom of choice and allowed her to begin a journey into animal activism.

Her teenage years were spent handing out leaflets for Animal Liberation New South Wales, rescuing ducks injured during the hunting season and debating the legitimacy of her vegetarian lifestyle with family friends and school mates.

While not in itself a remarkable or unique teenage pursuit, her passion for animal rights eventually infected her family.

One by one, the Shermans became vegetarian and ate their meat-free meals around the kitchen table.

But this was no ordinary kitchen table. Years earlier, Ondine's father Brian and his business partner Laurence Freedman had developed their funds management business Equitilink around it.

The Shermans enjoyed the sort of success that migrant families dream of.

Brian and Gene Sherman had escaped the horrors of apartheid in South Africa in 1976 with their two young children, Ondine and Emile, and $5,200 in the bank. Taking a risk in the early 80s, they built Equitilink from a company with no clients into the largest privately held funds management company in Australia.

They controlled $6 billion of investors' money and when in 2001 they sold it for $152 million, Brian had the time and the right sort of influence to become Ondine's most powerful ally in her personal fight to end the abuse of animal rights.

"For me as a person, I've always felt that there was a lot of injustices in the world," Brian told ABC TV's Australian Story.

"Coming from South Africa, there was racism and prejudice. But for me, living in Australia, living in this world in fact, there was something else that I was waiting to do, essentially growing within me.

"In the end it was my daughter who opened my eyes."

'It just felt ungodly'

In 2003, Ondine took Brian to an animal rights conference in America. It was there that he made the same sort of connection that his daughter had made as a child eating her grandmother's dish of tongue.

"These images I saw at the animal rights conference in America some two years ago stayed with me, and have stayed with me for a long, long time," he said.

"After 23 years of not eating meat it was the first time that I actually understood the issues.

"I felt in seeing these living beings in these steel cages, never to go out until their deaths, that we were somehow playing God. It just felt ungodly. It just didn't feel right, there is something intrinsically wrong."

Returning with fire in their bellies, Ondine and Brian founded Voiceless, a non-profit organisation which aims to promote respect and compassion for animals.

Voiceless says its approach is "mainstream": they use a grants program to support the work of existing animal protection organisations, they have a legal arm which works on public policy and law and they have an educational arm which promotes compassion for animals to school-aged children.

"At Voiceless we don't do raids, we don't support any illegal activities," Ondine said. "We are taking a very mainstream and inclusive approach.

"[We need to be] able to put out a very professional image so we can talk to the corporate sector, we can talk to the industry, we can attract people that perhaps aren't as comfortable being associated with the more protesting style."

This is where Ondine says her father's years as a corporate high-flyer have been invaluable.

"I think people are used to labelling animal activists or animal protectionists as being radical and ratbags and you know, hippies and whatever," she said.

"And I think because Brian comes from such a serious corporate business-finance background and has been so successful and been so respected, I think it's been a great opportunity and a great success."

Humane farming

With a growing number of corporate backers, the Shermans say Voiceless aims to lift the veil of secrecy to show the Australian public what is happening with modern industrialised farming practices.

They hope power-wielding consumers can pressure producers to return to what they see as more humane farming practices.

"When you drive through the countryside today, you don't see pigs rolling around in the mud, you don't see chickens running around. That's because industrialised farms have taken over," Brian said.

"People are sitting at their dinner tables eating meat and they don't know where that meat comes from and they don't want to know. But they should know, because it's not good."

It is probably not surprising that Voiceless has drawn the ire of primary producers.

But conservationist friend and director of the South Australian Museum, Tim Flannery, says the Shermans want to work cooperatively with primary producers to see an end to the abuse of animal rights.

"Brian has had a lot of criticism over these ideas and they come from a number of sectors," Flannery said.

"I mean, people in the farming community [are] probably thinking 'oh god is there another thing we've got to deal with, we're desperate to try to get a living here, is this yet another problem?'

"And I'm sure there are people out there who are probably starting to resist. I think cooperation is going to be a lot more profitable than resistance because there'll be a lot better outcomes for everyone in the end," he said.

'The secret sheds gone'

Rebuilding the Old MacDonald's Farm scenario on farms around Australia is the sort of outcome Brian and Ondine are working toward.

"If I was driving though the country in 20 years' time, I'd like to see the sheds gone, the secret sheds, the animals returned to the field and a lot less animals," Ondine said.

"As a vegetarian, I think not eating meat is a very healthy, viable option, however I do acknowledge that people want to eat meat. So I think for those that do, they will be buying meat and animal products that are humane and come from farms that are open and are transparent and industries that we can trust.

"Animal protection is not something I see myself doing in the short term. It's really my passion and I'm planning to do it for the rest of my life. There's so much to do and I really want to make a difference," Ondine said.

Brian adds: "In business, you can have victories, you can have a win, you can launch a fund and do a deal. With animals it's very different. This is eternal, this is a long, long marathon.

"This is something that each of us needs to search our hearts for and to find some mercy for these animals who have no voice," he said.

-'The Sherman Fortune' will screen on Australian Story on ABC TV on Monday July 18 at 8pm. The program will be repeated on Saturday July 23 at 12.30pm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1415933.htm