Category: Animals

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Animal Welfare Amendment Bill

Most of us are horrified to read in the news stories of cruelty to animals but it is happening every day to certain farmed animals. To help protect the rights of animals NZ has the Animal Welfare Act. Unfortunately there are loopholes in the act through an exceptional circumstances provision. Through this provision practices such as sow crates and battery caged hens are allowed and are the norm in NZ. Sue Kedgley’s Animal Welfare Amendment is due to be debated on September 21st. The aim of her private members’ bill is to ensure that farming practices which breach key principles of the Animal Welfare Act are no longer allowed to continue. Countries such as Britain have banned sow crates since 1999. So many of us are proud to be New Zealanders but NZ has many shocking skeletons in our cupboards that we have no reason to be proud of. You can do something by emailing/writing a letter to your local MP or to David Carter. Animals can’t vote – they need our support.

Bob Kerridge : Buyers want end to barbaric farming methods – Environment – NZ Herald News

Parliament’s chance to combat animals suffering | frogblog

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Cat Discount

Around our household it’s that time of the year for the cats to have their annual vaccination & health check up. Having pets is not cheap but they do make up for it with their unconditional love. Yesterday we saved by taking both cats up together which saves 10% ($10.80). On top of that I found out that there is also an evening surcharge which I didn’t previously know about, we always take them up in the evening after work – I thought the surcharge was only for the weekend. So by taking the cats up at 5:30pm yesterday rather than 6pm onwards we avoided the surcharge – something we will be doing from now on. Moral of the story – always ask businesses how you can save money by using their services.

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Is your cat too fat?

We’ve been trying continually to see how we can shave our spending, seeing as we are on one income many weeks. I decided to work out if our cats are fat and could do with cutting down on the eating a bit. After all everyone in the family should make sacrifices during hard times. Some studies have estimated that from 25-40% of cats worldwide are overweight so it was highly possible my lovelies fell into that category Biscuit snacks can lead to fat cats – Obesity – NZ Herald News . Seemingly male cats should weigh between 4.53 -4.98kg and females 2.49-3.49kg. So I grabbed the first cat that turned up to dinner (usually a good sign of the best candidate for obesity) and dragged a rather bemused male off to the bathroom scales – 4.6kg – damn, more of a flat cat than a fat cat. Oh well it was worth a try, perhaps we could train our hunter cat to become a cat burglar so he can bring in items a little more valuable than mice……?

    

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Free range pork

We walked into Pak n Save today and there was free range pork chops from Freedom Farms – shows the power of the consumer. I didn’t check to see if they had their bacon as well as we weren’t buying bacon today. They had Freedom Farm leaflets there as well with the product which was interesting – I’ve never seen any company have leaflets in a supermarket before? (Freedom Farm link can be found over on the right in the links). One thing that struck me reading the pamphlet that was also noticeable in the news coverage the last few weeks is the lack of focus on products that have a pork component e.g. sausages. How many kiwis would give up their staple sausage? Over the last few months since I wrote about the shocking conditions that many NZ pigs were kept in (Feb 2008) hubby and I have come to a compromise as he would not give up all pork. Roast pork, pork chops etc, sausages are not on the shopping list. Hubby will still have bacon but I won’t, thereby reducing the amount we have to buy. Ham we have reduced the same way as well. We will probably change to free range for ham and bacon now that it is a bit easier to get but will just continue to try not eat other pork products as much as possible.

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River Cottage

We’ve just finished watching the final of River Cottage Autumn Series. I was balancing the accounts for the week, freezing stewed feijoas and packaging puff pastry apple ‘turnovers’ ready for lunch over the next few days while watching TV. We don’t have a garden at the moment as our land is still a building site so it’s nice to live vicariously through enthusiastic Hugh. River Cottage, promoting small holdings, was in huge contrast to the Sunday programme on Channel 1 earlier in the evening regarding the farming practises of pigs in sow crates in NZ Mike King tackles pig welfare after seeing “despairing” pigs | NATIONAL.

 

I love watching Hugh cook his recipes even if I’ll never have access to many of his ingredients. His recipes can be accessed from http://www.rivercottage.net/SeasonalRecipes/.

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Breakfast Club gossip

I get to work at about 7:05 a. m. along with a few other colleagues. We have breakfast together to start the day off well – porridge every morning. It’s meant to be an extremely good way to start the day due to the low GI index of porridge which means I don’t usually need to eat again until lunchtime except maybe a piece of fruit.

 

I hadn’t meant to write about pigs again but this morning at the breakfast club talk turned to Jaimie Oliver’s programme on bacon – I hadn’t seen it. The people I was with said they had to turn it off. It was purely by chance that I had written about pig welfare in my blog last night. So I mentioned to my colleagues that what they had seen on the programme re British pig farming might actually be worse in some pig production farms in NZ. I told them about the article I had seen regarding a case of a farmer breaching the less than adequate standards that we already have – they were horrified to think that this could happen here. This article “Small sow stalls found even smaller!” SAFE LovePigs Campaign : Latest news was the one last month that made me stop purchasing pork. If even minimal regulation standards can’t be adhered to and enforced then I would rather opt out of eating pork altogether. So if you are out and about and chatting to people let them know that NZ is not leading the world in animal welfare and that we the consumers have the power to change things.  

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New Zealand Pork (Suffering Babe)

I wrote the main bones of this blog last week, it has just been sitting in my file while I’ve been doing a bit of consumer research. It sort of seemed relevant after my blog on battery hens to also focus on pig welfare.

 

Reading February’s Healthy Food Guide magazine my interest was taken with a small paragraph titled “another reason to buy NZ pork” (pg. 13). The last sentence of this paragraph promoting buying NZ pork read “There’s also no way to know what sort of welfare standards pigs have been raised in overseas”. Knowing that NZ falls behind many other countries in terms of our welfare of pigs I wondered why do we continue to ignore what is in front of us and place ourselves up on a holy “NZ made” pedestal ahead of “overseas”? In NZ we allow our pigs to be raised in appalling conditions all in the name of cheaper pork while other countries have taken significant strides to improve pig welfare.

 

One of my February challenges has been to give up pork – it’s not that hard when you see those crates and those pigs. Hubby still loves his bacon and is holding out so one of my tasks over the next few weeks is to find a free range supplier of bacon for him. 

SAFE this week have sent footage of our pig farming to Jamie Oliver to see if they can gain his assistance to put international pressure on our government Scoop: Jamie Oliver Asked To Save Kiwi Pigs . 

 

This year the NZ government is expected to review pig farming standards. It’s a great time to be lobbying your government – see SAFE LovePigs Campaign : What you can do for lots of good ideas.  

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Battery Hens

As usual the weekend Dominion Post paper (Dominion Post, 23/02/2009) provided some interesting reading material (as well as my rubbish bin liner for the week). In amongst an article on raising chickens in your garden was a little paragraph inset quoting Agriculture Minister David Carter. According to the article David has stated that he has no plans to change the regulations covering battery farming in NZ and that the issue will be driven by consumer demand.

 

It got me wondering. I’ve bought free range eggs for as long as I’ve been of the age to do my own grocery shopping but how many others are also purchasing free range? How long will hens have to wait for reasonable animal welfare standards if NZ waits for the consumer? According to the NZ healthy food guide magazine sales of free range eggs now account for 11% of all the eggs we buy in supermarkets (Feb 2009, p. 10). I don’t think the battery caged hens in NZ will be expecting liberty any day soon somehow with that small figure. So why is NZ so far behind other countries? Sainsbury’s announced this year that it will now only sell free range eggs and other big supermarkets in England will be similarly following suit (Supermarket to go free-range only – World – NZ Herald News).

Why is animal welfare such a low priority in New Zealand? Lots of good questions regarding animal welfare and farming can be sent to David if you have the time – postage to parliament is free.

If you’re interested in making life for ex- battery hens a bit more comfortable check this link out New life for battery farm hens | Otago Daily Times Online