Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, September 16th, 2010 - 19 comments
National will vote against a Sue Kedgley’s member’s bill, which could see factory farms phased out within 5 years. Despite support from the Greens, Labour, United Future and the Maori Party, without National or ACT’s support this bill won’t pass it’s first reading. There’s no good excuse. The government needs to be shamed on this.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 am, April 16th, 2010 - 16 comments
Today is the last day to send in your submission on NAWAC’s draft Code of Welfare for Pigs. New Zealand Open Rescue have put out a new video containing footage from many different farms around the country, to remind you why it is important to have your say. You can send a submission using SAFE’s template at www.lovepigs.org.nz.
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, April 14th, 2010 - 2 comments
Have you heard of Cyanide and Happiness? A web-comic that walks the line of funny and too far. They have an annual ‘depressing comics’ week. No punch lines. Given our Prime Minister’s aim to restore commercial whaling and the anti-whalers’ success in blocking the Japs from half their target of kills, thought this one would be appropriate [full comic]
Written By: - Date published: 1:56 pm, January 31st, 2010 - 21 comments
John Key has told us that his government’s unrelenting focus this year will be the economy. He has also said his government will focus unrelentingly on education. Already, it has relented to focus on increasing the maximum penalty for animal cruelty from three years to five. Of course what happened with the massacre of those …
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, December 14th, 2009 - 46 comments
In a year when New Zealand factory farming practices for pigs (and earlier for chickens) have been widely exposed and shocked the country, our dairy industry is looking at adopting similar practices for dairy cows. In a year when climate change has been on the world agenda as never before, our dairy industry is attempting …
Written By: - Date published: 8:31 pm, December 12th, 2009 - 156 comments
This is a guest post by Jasmine because I couldn’t be bothered writing it myself Today Rochelle and I were hanging out in Levin, as you do on a Saturday afternoon, and decided to go check out the local layer hen slaughterhouse. There was no one around so we decided to climb the fence and …
Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, November 4th, 2009 - 12 comments
From Phil Twyford over at Red Alert on pig farming. This is Red Alert’s first video blog. Twyford manages to impress me on two of my favourite topics all in one post – technology and animal welfare. Hopefully on both topics this signals Labour moving forward. As the title of his post says: Time for …
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 pm, November 2nd, 2009 - 15 comments
Tonight Campbell Live showed new footage recently shot by animal rights activists on four farms in Ashburton, Greytown, Blenheim and Kumeu. Six months on from the Mike King and Sunday exposé and it’s clear nothing has changed in the appalling treatment of pigs in this country. Not surprisingly, spokesperson for the Pork Board Sam McIvor …
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, October 25th, 2009 - Comments Off
From the NZ Sound Archives‘ weekly feature comes a story involving a farmer, a lack of clothes, a barrel of molasses (treacle-like substance), and a rooster named henny-penny. It’s a bloody classic Kiwi story. Worthy of taking ten minutes out to listen to this Labour weekend.
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, October 6th, 2009 - 15 comments
SAFE is campaigning against a new and very odd form of “entertainment” in pubs. Catcha Cray machines are just like arcade grab machines, with the key difference being that rather than the prize being a non-sentient soft toy, the prize is instead a living and feeling crayfish. SAFE’s campaign officer Mandy Carter says: Like the …
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, October 2nd, 2009 - 24 comments
Following on from yesterdays guest post on World Vegetarian Day, today is World Farm Animal Day. At the end of last year, I was a little bit involved in a documentary created by Animal Liberation Aotearoa called “Who are you having for dinner? The reality of meat production in New Zealand“. On a trip up …
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, October 1st, 2009 - 82 comments
I’m a vegetarian and today, October 1st, is the worldwide day to celebrate the benefits of not eating meat and the healthy contribution to a better society vegetarianism makes. The personal is political. My choice to eschew meat for 30 years has exposed me to abuse from chefs, sexually coded remarks from ‘red blooded’ men, …
Written By: - Date published: 6:06 pm, September 30th, 2009 - 22 comments
The recent news that NZ’s largest dairy farmer allowed calves to dehydrate and starve to death is appalling, but there are much larger issues here than this just being one rogue farm. The fact is, MAF animal welfare is a joke. They have only five animal welfare inspectors covering the entire country, so it’s really …
Written By: - Date published: 12:12 pm, September 30th, 2009 - 46 comments
One area where I agree with Fran O’Sullivan is the dairy industry. Today she covers the Crafars: CraFarms’ bankers should do the decent thing and put the so-called dairy farming “giant” into receivership before its practices further decrease the value of its assets and bring New Zealand’s prime agriculture export industry into international disrepute. The …
Written By: - Date published: 12:54 pm, September 13th, 2009 - 25 comments
On Thursday Animal Rights Activists did a protest outside the Norwegian Embassy against the fur trade there. This was to support the campaign in Norway, where activists have just released an investigation into 50 fur farms. During the protest a man was observed sitting in a car across the road taking photographs of the protest …
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, July 7th, 2009 - Comments Off
Just received this from Drinking Liberally Wellington: We hope you’ve enjoyed our unannounced winter break. We’re back this Thursday, at 5:30 at the Southern Cross on Abel Smith Street. This week our special guest speaker is Mark Eden, from the Wellington Animal Rights Network. He will be speaking on “Sow crates, battery hens and not …
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 15 comments
MAF has released the final report of their investigation into the pig farm owned by former Pork Board Director Colin Kay, exposed on the Sunday programme in May. As all those who knew anything about the Animal Welfare Act and subsidiary Codes of Welfare predicted, the farm in question has been found to be operating …
Written By: - Date published: 5:22 pm, June 25th, 2009 - 5 comments
Over at the Labour MPs’ blog, Red Alert, Brendon Burns has written a piece criticising Agriculture Minister David Carter on the welfare of pigs in sow crates. But while it’s good to see Labour, or at least a Labour MP, finally take a stand on the sow crate issue (God knows the Tories won’t), I …
Written By: - Date published: 12:23 am, June 22nd, 2009 - 5 comments
From SAFE: Join Mike King, one of New Zealand’s leading comedians and pig campaigners, launch an exciting new pig-friendly initiative to help end pig suffering in New Zealand. Mike King has become the country’s most notable ambassador against pig crates. Hear how he went from the ‘King of Pork’ to a champion for pigs. Hosted …
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 9th, 2009 - 8 comments
The Minister of Agriculture David Carter really outdid himself in the house last week. First he completely dodged and didn’t address the question put to him by Sue Kedgley on the use of sow crates. Next, clearly feeling the pressure he had a National backbencher ask him a nice easy question with which he took …
Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, June 5th, 2009 - 14 comments
Animal Liberation Aotearoa (ALA) have for the past year or so been running a series of farm tours, taking members of the public onto factory farms to see for themselves how they work. They do these openly and in broad daylight, accepting the possible risk of minor criminal charges that may result (though thus far none have).
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, May 27th, 2009 - 14 comments
It’s good to see Green MP Sue Kedgley calling on John Key to personally fix the abuse of pigs in sow crates. The chair of Nawac appears incapable of seeing that there’s even a problem, and the Minister of Agriculture has already been caught misleading the public on national television to defend the industry. It’s …
Written By: - Date published: 5:59 pm, May 26th, 2009 - 16 comments
It seems the Minister of Agriculture David Carter misled the public regarding his knowledge of the use of sow crates in pig farming, when he stated on the Sunday Programme on May 17th, “No I didn’t know to the extent to which they were confined other than for farrowing purposes” During question time in the …
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 21st, 2009 - 30 comments
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 20th, 2009 - 59 comments
Chair of the NZ Pork Industry Board Chris Trengrove told Campbell Live last night, “The industry is changing and has been changing since 2005, we’ve been monitoring those changes, um, we have over half of the industry now out of the stalls altogether…” He then went on to say that research shows sows stalls are …
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, May 19th, 2009 - 22 comments
So, Agriculture Minister David Carter finally creaks into action on the brutal and inhumane treatment of factory farmed pigs, then spends most of the press release attacking the animal rights group that brought the issue into the public light. He’s obviously covering for his abysmal performance on Sunday, where he had to admit he didn’t …
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, May 19th, 2009 - 44 comments
When Mike King, comedian, celebrity, and front-man for the pork industry’s advertisements for the past few years found out the truth about the industry he was promoting, he says he was “deeply ashamed”. What worse news could there be for an image-conscious industry who doesn’t want their consumers and the public to know about their …
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