Does National care about animal welfare?

Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, September 16th, 2010 - 21 comments
Categories: animal welfare - Tags: ,

National will vote against a member’s bill, which could see factory farms phased out within 5 years. Sue Kedgley’s Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill would see practices such as the use of cages for pregnant sows and layer hens, which conflict with several sections of the Animal Welfare Act, phased out over 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.

Of course, National can’t say that they like factory farming, as this would make terrible press. So instead Agriculture Minister David Carter has cooked up a pretty lame excuse.

“The way the bill has been written is problematic and would probably stop the transportation of any group of animals from a farm to a meat processing company,”

The bizarre thing is that it is glaringly obvious that this would not happen. Kedgley’s response today shows this excuse for the pile of BS it is. Because the proposed bill only affects practices deemed contrary to the Animal Welfare Act, and transporting animals isn’t contrary to the Act, transporting animals would be fine under Sue’s bill.

It seems as though National hopes they can get away with this bizarre excuse for allowing disgraceful forms of animal cruelty to continue. What’s more, because of the lack of media coverage so far, they are.

For all those who’d like to see the government held accountable for voting against an end to factory farming, a demonstration is being organised for Wednesday the 22nd of September.

At 12pm, a sow crate will be brought to parliament. Invitations for MPs to try out the crate were put in the post today.

21 comments on “Does National care about animal welfare? ”

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  1. Lanthanide 1
    16 September 2010 at 1:14 pm

    Even if it were true, isn’t the whole point of the 3-readings process so that if problems are discovered will the bill, it can be rewritten or amended to remove the problems? Thus National have no excuse not to let it pass first reading – they evidently don’t disagree with the intent, just the wording, so they should change it.

    • toad 1.1
      16 September 2010 at 1:24 pm

      Yes, that is exactly why Bills usually [sometimes] are referred to Select Committee – to sort out problems with the drafting or unanticipated consequences.

      It is a lame excuse by Carter.

    • Rex Widerstrom 1.2
      16 September 2010 at 2:04 pm

      Bingo. This is why we have a Parliament. IMHO, because individual MPs have limited access to professional advice in drafting, all Private Members Bills ought to be referred to a Select Committee with the proviso that, if they’re such a mess as to be totally unsalvageable even after public input, the Committee is free to recommend they be dropped from any further consideration so as not to waste Parliament’s time.

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    16 September 2010 at 1:52 pm

    Does National care about animal welfare?

    Nope, they only care about their and their rich mates profits.

    • Bill 2.1
      16 September 2010 at 4:18 pm

      Draco

      “Does National care about animal welfare?

      Fat Cats are animals too. So the answer is ‘Yes they do.’

  3. john 3
    16 September 2010 at 2:26 pm

    Nact only care about the Pigs running the swine concentration camp whose profits must be protected!

  4. Tigger 4
    16 September 2010 at 2:33 pm

    Isn’t Simon Bridges working on an animal welfare amendment? So he doesn’t care about this? What about Nikki Kaye who likes to think she’s a greenie? Really Nats, you hypocrites are even turning my Tory mother off you.

  5. Uroskin 5
    16 September 2010 at 3:46 pm

    Can we crate up Garrett with the baby python and send them back to Guatemala now?

  6. BLiP 6
    16 September 2010 at 4:34 pm

    Animal welfare? National Ltd™ don’t even care about human welfare.

  7. fot 7
    16 September 2010 at 4:51 pm

    Remind me what Labour did about animal welfare during their nine years in power?

    Hypocritical wankers.

    • Tigger 7.1
      16 September 2010 at 6:50 pm

      Great to see you passionate about this issue fot. Some of us Labour supporters agree with you – they didn’t do enough. So we encourage them to do something now. Expect you writing to Mr John Key, C/- Parliament about this since it’s National standing in the way. Unless you’re the hypocritical wanker of course.

    • Maynard J 7.2
      17 September 2010 at 1:22 am

      You would be right, fot, if the people talking now were happy with Labour’s record. They were not, there were numerous protests and even posts here that were against Labour’s policies.

      Fot: is it

      A) you not know what hypocrisy is,
      or
      B) you have no ability to follow logic

      You see, in your current argument no one can ever complain about bills like this, because a law must do something new, and apparently no one is allowed to complain if it hasn’t been done before.

      The stupid, it hurts.

    • bbfloyd 7.3
      17 September 2010 at 4:22 am

      note to fotty……oooh look daddy. that man is walking funny… is he ill? no child he’s a wing nut… don’t stare son, it will only incite him.

  8. prism 8
    16 September 2010 at 8:50 pm

    NACTs wouldn’t act! on this Bill because it would mean breaking their pattern of not using their power to do anything positive to improve aspects of society. Higher standards for pigs would mean a drop in the
    gold standard that NACTs live by.

  9. jbanks 9
    17 September 2010 at 9:27 am

    I’m glad National aren’t letting emotion get in the way of an economic decision. The last thing the poor of NZ need is increased food prices because of a few greenies.

    • James Barber 9.1
      18 September 2010 at 9:40 am

      If by increase in food prices you mean a small rise in the price of pork and eggs then yes. (please note that the phasing out of the cages does not mean the phasing out of intensive farming such as barn raised which 50% of the pork market use anyway).

      In fact one could say that this bill would also help out the poor which have disproportionate rates of obesity. It would help out because there would be an incentive to buy cheaper food, eg vegetables, than meat which does no one’s heart or health favours. I’m not saying “go vege” but I’m saying that people shouldn’t be eating alot of meat and that’s well known. A healthy diet involves a good balance between meat and vegetables (and certainly not the vast number of eggs you can get dirt cheap through caged layer hens). If you eat healthy you can tend to eat pretty cheap; sunday markets anyone?

  10. George D 10
    17 September 2010 at 12:11 pm

    No.

    Now that question is answered, what I’d like to know is: do Labour. They were going to support this bill to select committee, but made absolutely no guarantees about supporting it anywhere further. I believe that Twyford was sincere in his public commitment, but I would love to know what decisions the caucus made. It was probably an easy decision in the knowledge that National and ACT would vote the bill down.

    I think fot was calling Labour hypocritical – that would be entirely right. Still, when Labour proves that it supports ending these huge practices of cruelty, that charge can no-longer be leveled at them.

  11. Phil Twyford 11
    19 September 2010 at 2:25 pm

    George D – The decision was just what was reported: Labour would vote for the bill at first reading. Nothing more, nothing less. At the time of the decision I don’t think anyone knew with any certainty what the Nats would do. I’m on the record as personally in favour of ending the use of sow crates and hen cages. There are one or two aspects of the bill that would benefit from scrutiny at select committee. But I am hopeful my colleagues would have been ready to back a law change on this once the details has been ironed out. Sadly because of National and ACT it looks like we won’t get to find out, at least for the time being.

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