VARC, based in facilities in Manawatu and Hawkes Bay, had been experimenting on beagles and was also supplying beagles to other experimenters. SAFE have campaigned vigorously against the VARC facilities, and at Parliament in April last year, then Green MP, Sue Kedgley received SAFE’s 12,000 strong petition against animal research on cats and dogs. SAFE deserve a big pat on the back, as it appears that VARC’s inhumane operation has now effectively collapsed.

Secrecy around animal experiments must be blown open and VARC were prize examples of why. VARC’s public statements said that there were not animal deaths at their facility, but the very first records eventually obtained showed 33 experimental deaths. Media follow up clearly shows that there have been more. The public deserves to know what is going on, so that animal welfare and rights can be discussed with full facts openly, and unnecessary pain, suffering and death of animals is stopped.

As well as using the money to encourage workers to speak up about cruel factory farming practices, SAFE plans to set up a team of lawyers to help fight strategic court cases around animal welfare. And it will continue to hi-light cruel farming practices so that consumers can see for themselves the conditions that intensively raised animals are forced to endure.

I can’t think of a more deserving organisation than SAFE to get this money. They—and in particular Hans Kriek—have been battling away, for the most part on the smell of an oily rag—for more than a decade, trying to get the industry and the government to end animal cruelty.

Surely Jan Cameron’s donation to SAFE will make the industry realise that the writing is on the wall—that they are going to be forced to abandon cruel farming practices that they have tried to keep hidden away from consumers for many years.

You would think that the government would also work this out, too, and instead of defending the pork industry board, and the vested interests that want to keep animals in cages, they would take a lead in getting rid of animal cruelty.

You would think the Government would vote for the animals, and support my private members bill which would phase out cruel farming practices such as the sow crate and the battery hen cage, instead of behaving like King Canute and voting to stop it from even being discussed.

My Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) amendment bill was launched today, with the support of all the key animal welfare amendment groups in New Zealand–the SPCA, SAFE and WSPA, as well as the Managing Director of Freedom farms, Gregor Fyfe, and Mike King.

My bill will strengthen the Animal Welfare act, and require that practices which breach the purposes of the act –such as sow crates and battery hen cages—are phased out within five years. It will also give the Minister of Agriculture power to amend codes of animal welfare, to reduce animal suffering, and require that animals should be able to move around, if they are to be able to express normal patterns of behaviour.

Labour, the Maori party and United Future are supporting my bill, which now needs just four more votes to get a majority in Parliament to vote it to select committee.

So the pressure is on to persuade the National Party MPs to vote for the bill.

As I said at the launch today, my bill will be a test of whether animals, or vested interests, are more important in our Parliament.

The choice facing MPs is stark—will they vote with their conscience and vote for the animals, or will they vote to support the vested interests –such as the Pork Industry Board and the Poultry Association—who want to be able to keep animals in cages indefinitely.

MPs know only too well that animals suffer dreadfully when they are locked up in cages. Like most New Zealanders, they have seen the footage of sows locked in cages, going demented with frustration, endlessly chewing the bars on their cages.

They know that there is overwhelming support amongst New Zealanders to get rid of cruel practices like the sow crate and the battery hen cage.

Now they have a chance to do something about it, and end the suffering of millions of animals, by voting to support my bill.

McDonalds is the first fast food retailer – in fact the first large commercial business in New Zealand – to commit to using free range eggs in 19 of its restaurants in New Zealand.

You just know its all part of McDonald’s re-branding exercise, a cunning plan to try to shed their nasty ‘junk food’ image and reposition themselves as a more serious, credible, caring food outlet.

But hey, they are the first fast food company to do it. So whatever their motivation, congratulations! It will have the effect of sparing about 7 thousand (out of 3 million) hens from living their short and tragic lives inside a cage. And if other fast food companies join in, it could have the effect of phasing out demand for cruel, battery raised eggs altogether.

I know SAFE has been trying for years to persuade restaurants and food businesses to convert to using free range eggs, but most businesses have resisted their call, putting profitability ahead of principle.

So it’s great that McDonalds has decided to take the plunge, and hopefully others will follow. We certainly hope McDonalds will extend its decision to other stores outside of Christchurch and Dunedin. And we hope it will give a big boost to free range egg production, as well.

Speaking of free range egg production, its time we had some statutory guidelines about what actually constitutes a ‘free range’ egg. I have been told there are some companies which use the free range label, but you and I wouldn’t consider their farms to be free range at all.

So to protect consumers and ensure the word free range isn’t being abused, its time the Commerce Commission or the Ministry of Consumer Affairs took the lead and developed clear guidelines for the industry, and for what practices may, or may not, be deemed to be free range.

SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek, who organised the survey, said the results are disappointing. “The two main parties were simply not interested. Neither Labour or National completed the survey but National did send a brief position statement,” says Hans.

The results are:

• Act 0 out of 10
• Greens 9 out of 10
• Labour 0 out of 10
• Maori Party 3 out of 10
• National 1 out of 10
• Progressive 0 out of 10
• United Future 5 out of 10
• New Zealand First not listed

The Green Party was also the only political party with a comprehensive animal welfare policy. The Greens would support the appointment of a Commissioner for Animals; implement labelling of animal-based products; and ban dolphins in captivity, intensive farming practices, the live-export trade, genetic modification of animals, and animal research that results in severe or very severe suffering.

The 1 missing point must have been our lack of policy on banning exotic circus animals.

Visit our Safe Food Campaign webpage for more information.

Chicken has gone from a relatively rare and unusual meat (under 1kg per capita in the 1960′s) to the most consumed meat in New Zealand. The Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand says we kiwis consumed nearly 90 million chickens in 2005, or 38.8 kg per person.  If a chicken Happy Meal were actually all chicken that would be about 6 McNuggets every day for each child.

According to this PIANZ report [pdf] Tegel Foods Ltd, Inghams Enterprises (NZ) Pty Ltd, and PH van den Brink Ltd dominate the industry with about 97% of production.

Pressure on those producers to keep costs low comes from our supermarket duopoly (Foodstuffs and Progressive) which controls about half the market for chicken in New Zealand.  The other large chicken purchasers are mostly takeaway firms, particularly KFC, but also McDonalds Subway and Burger King and others.

As the PIANZ report notes:

There is a high level of vertical integration within this industry with the three major suppliers owning and controlling more of the stages of production, from hatcheries and breeding farms to feed mills, processing plants and distribution to the retail outlets.

… Nevertheless the major companies contract out the growing of broiler chickens to contract growers whilst still retaining ownership of the chickens.

All of which means that the industry has the capacity, the outside pressure and the desire to keep costs as low as possible.  Which doesn’t bode well for the ever increasing number of chickens.

PIANZ says:

New Zealand broiler (meat) chickens are not kept in cages. They are free to roam around inside the barn, where they have free access to feed and water.

It also says that an average NZ chicken shed of 150 metres by 15 metres houses 40,000 chickens – that’s 18 per square metre, even before you put anything else in the shed such as ‘access to feed and water’.

SAFE describes these chickens’ lives less obscurely:

91.9 percent of New Zealand’s broiler chickens cannot walk normally…

Broiler chickens are crammed inside large sheds at 20 birds per square metre. They suffer from various degrees of leg weakness, skin abrasion and dermatitis and can not express their normal behaviour. They spend their short lives standing in their own faeces and will never see experience daylight or anything that resembles a normal life.

All broilers are routinely fed antibiotics for their entire lives. This prevents widespread outbreak of disease that otherwise would be unavoidable in these overcrowded conditions. Antibiotics also promote growth and exacerbate the already unnatural fast growth of the animals.