by Sue Kedgley
I am delighted my private members bill, the Animal Welfare Amendment (Treatment of Animals) bill has been selected from the parliamentary ballot, and will have its first reading in about a month.
The National Government has made much about its newfold interest in animal welfare and of its commitment to getting rid of animal cruelty. It has even introduced its own Animal Cruelty bill which extended the length of sentences for animal abuse and created a new category of offence for animal cruetly.
So it will be fascinating to see whether the government will support my bill, which would require sow crates to be phased out; give the Minister stronger powers to amend any Code of Animal Welfare, and widen the definition of what constitutes ‘normal patterns of behaviour’ for an animal – to include freedom of movement. (At present the act assumes that animals can express normal patterns of behaviour when they are locked up in a sow crate or a battery hen cage).
At the moment the Animal Welfare Act contains a series of loopholes which allow practices that clearly breach the purposes of the Animal Welfare Act such as sow crates, to continue to be used indefinitely. My bill closes these loopholes and requires that any practice that breaches key provisions of the Act must be phased out within five years.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured by Sue Kedgley on Thu, August 5th, 2010
Tags: animal welfare, pigs
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Very impressive questioning in the house Sue Kedgley. Shame the object of your questions is devoid of any real empathy for these animals.
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Ok, sounds promising. One of the usual rejoinders to proposals like this is to say that this will make overseas meat (well pigs seem to be the example of choice here) more competitive over the better treated NZ stuff. I don’t have any cost estimates or anything, but any reason/s this won’t happen? Cheers
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Re StephenR’s comment: we already import a ridiculous amount of pork from elsewhere. That is not an excuse for treating animals badly. In fact, one of Sue’s other campaigns, the country of origin labelling, fits with this – if you know that what you are buying is from a place with poor social, environmental or animal health stats, then you can choose not to buy it. I would never buy imported meat.
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Re StephenR’s comment: we already import a ridiculous amount of pork from elsewhere. That is not an excuse for treating animals badly.
Nothing to do with excuses, i’m just interested in likely outcomes resulting from solutions. I didn’t actually know we imported much foreign meat – that’s kinda unexpected considering how much meat we export. Where does it come from?
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Not sure which countries – I did know,(possibly Northern hemisphere) but probably not hard to find out. But, yes, we import pork in significant quantities, have done for decades.
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Mainly Canada and Australia, Janine.
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“..I would never buy imported meat…”
you prefer your maltreated animals to have a local-flavour…?
(that is a high moral-peak you have perched yourself on…eh..?..)
home-grown torture….eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil, I don’t personally buy (or eat) meat – it was a rhetorical statement. Don’t make assumptions.
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my bad…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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That one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od-PzIXa8LU ?
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I am in support of anything which will improve the life of the animals we kill for food. I am a meat eater but I admire those who choose not to eat meat. although I don’t follow that path I do care about how animals are treated and I find it unacceptable to treat animals badly simply so that we can have cheap meat.
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We should all be veggie except where absolutely vital for health reasons. Even the relatively few animals who have a pleasant life still suffer physical and psychological pain when being slaughtered, especially halal and kosher. If people really can’t resist meat, at least buy/eat organic.
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mary girdle..that you know it is ‘wrong’…
but can’t be bothered stopping..(?)
make yr protestations of ‘care..
pretty much nothing but unadulterated cant…
and leonard…
being vegan is ‘absolutely vital for health reasons’…
are you able to present one hypothetical-scenario…
where an individual would have to eat meat..?
and you are right about the pain/suffering/terminated-short-lives of ‘organic/free-range’..animals…
and those who pat themselves on the back/feel superior/justified (?) to eat these ‘free-range’…
they take cant to a whole new level…
eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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and the i-only-eat-free-range people/farmers are very much like the bit-players in a previous great/historical moral battle…
those who prided themselves on being ‘good slave-owners’…
..but i expect they would fail to see that…
..and would react with the self-rightous anger of those ‘good slave-owners’..
..when their ‘wrongs’ were highlighted by the abolitionists…
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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and the historical echoes don’t end there…
those same economic reasons/justifications/imperatives were cited as the reason for the impossiblities of abolishing human slavery..
given many economies were dependant on that free/slave-labour..
and now…it is the same with the animal-slaves…
in that new zealand here/now is pretty much up to its’ economic-kneck in that animal-slavery…
all the money we touch is splashed with their blood…
and most harrumph at any suggestion things don’t have to be that way…
much as afghanistan is manacled to opium/heroin..
so are we manacled to the evils/iniquities of this animal-slavery/abuse…
we are the modern-day slave-trading-nation…
and that has to change…
..and it will..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil, Sometimes I hear that some people who have “iron deficiency” are advised by their health “professional” to eat meat because it’s impractical to eat VAST amounts of spinach. Whether the iron-deficient patients really do need meat to keep healthy I really don’t know, but it’s what I had in mind as a hypothetical scenario.
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