Editorial, Tuesday December 8, 2015

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

The real agenda

Life on the farm is rarely as idyllic as it is generally portrayed for our entertainment, but the images that have gained worldwide attention courtesy of covert filming in the Waikato by animal advocacy group Farmwatch are utterly abhorrent.

Even those who have a reasonable idea about how a farm works and the realities of exploiting animals for human benefit would have been disgusted by the sight of bobby calves being kicked and thrown with no regard for their physical well-being, or left distressed and even perhaps to die, without water or shelter while awaiting their ride to slaughter.

We are now told that one of the people whose ill-treatment of calves was recorded was sacked before the images were screened, while the Ministry for Primary Industries insists that it had launched an investigation, having seen the images weeks before they were released for worldwide consumption, without prompting by public outrage.

Maybe, but the ministry, not uncommonly for government departments, can at least stand accused of moving at a glacial pace when a much more immediate response was clearly warranted.

The ministry, Fonterra, Federated Farmers and others have since claimed that cruelty to bobby calves and farm animals in general is a rarity. How they know that isn't explained, but it can probably be accepted that the great majority of farmers, if not truck drivers, do treat their livestock with at least a modicum of respect, if for no other reason than the fact that a happy, healthy animal is more profitable than a frightened, sick or injured one.

For all that, many a non-farmer would be distressed to see some of the realities of animal husbandry, even at its most responsible. Farmwatch knows this; that is why its revelations included the sight of cows' distress at losing their calves within hours of their birth.

Cows tend to have as strong a maternal instinct as any other mammal, but removing calves is fundamental to the dairy industry, as is discarding bull calves, which in general terms have little if any value. And that reveals the real agenda of organisations like Farmwatch and SAFE, namely to undermine public acceptance of the exploitation of animals for their benefit.

SAFE has claimed that human beings can live quite healthily without dairy products, and has used the images of cruelty to calves to launch a campaign aimed at encouraging New Zealand's dairy product customers to accept that. Using graphic images of cruelty to force the industry to adopt higher standards of animal welfare is one thing; calling for a worldwide boycott of our dairy produce is another.

Animal advocacy groups are hardly alone in arguing that we need to diversify our exports, but we now know that some at least want to go further. They want to destroy the dairy industry, if not pastoral farming in all its forms, and that is nothing short of sabotage. Mounting a campaign aimed at reducing our ability to sell our most lucrative exports on the world market is outrageously irresponsible, unless some viable alternative is offered. No such alternative has been suggested, and any damage this campaign does to our economy will affect each and every one of us.

The logic is difficult to follow. The same people who claim that dairy farming in particular is ruining our environment, and now say that we are consuming dairy products oblivious to the inhumane treatment doled out to the animals that keep milk in our fridges, would no doubt argue that we are failing to deal with an unemployment crisis, that we need to spend more on social welfare and that we need to lift ourselves out of the low wage economy that has made life increasingly difficult for many people over the last 30 years.

How we do that while destroying our single most important export industry might well escape most people, but now that the process has begun it is unlikely to end any time soon. Those behind the campaign will be encouraged by the fact that the ill-treatment of calves by some farmers and others has attracted worldwide attention, including in Australia, Europe and China. Even the Green Party is worried by that, MP Mojo Mathers uncharacteristically aiming her rage not at farmers but at the MPI for its alleged reluctance to prosecute, or take any other remedial action, not just in this latest case but others.

Ms Mathers was quoted last week as saying that the latest "scandal" had the potential to be very damaging to the milk and meat industries if the Minister and his ministry did not take urgent and comprehensive action to fully enforce animal welfare standards and to ensure compliance by all farmers, transport and meat processing companies.

She rightly made the point that perception is everything. However misinformed or misguided they might be, if consumers get the idea that the products in their local supermarkets are the result of inhumane practices, they will stop buying them.

It could have been worse though. We could have seen pictures of cattle, including bobby calves, being slaughtered. There has been no suggestion that abattoirs are flouting the relevant standards, but it's a given that the average consumer would be horrified to see how the job is done. Add to that the on-going revelations about the manner in which pigs, battery hens and chickens bred for the table are treated and we could well be on the verge of becoming a vegetarian nation.

And it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the MPI really wasn't too fussed about the bobby calf revelations until they were publicly released, which it reportedly received on September 14. Certainly it seems to have displayed a singular lack of urgency, and it is telling that it is now refusing to say exactly how its investigation is/was being carried out. Dollars to doughnuts the ministry did bugger all until its hand was forced.

The problem now facing the industry is that public sentiment will be firmly on the side of SAFE and Farmwatch. Nothing generates more sympathy than a baby animal of almost any species, and however effectively codes of animal welfare are enforced, the thought of calves going to the works just three or four days after birth can be guaranteed to upset a lot of people.

To a degree the outcome of all this is now out of our hands. No one in this country can control the response of consumers in other countries to yet more claims that our primary industries are not what they are portrayed to be. The best we can hope for is that the MPI begins to show a great deal more enthusiasm for enforcing compliance with animal welfare codes than it seems to have displayed in the past. For a start those people we have seen abusing animals should be prosecuted.

The prima facie evidence supplied by Farmwatch clearly suggests that they have broken the law, and they should be dealt with, very publicly, in the appropriate fashion.

That at least would demonstrate that the codes of animal welfare have some meaning and the ministry charged with enforcing them has teeth, which it is prepared to use.

No one will ever be able to guarantee that every farmer, every truck driver and every meat processor will unfailingly treat animals in a humane fashion, but we are entitled to expect that those who are caught breaching the legal standards will be punished. There is no excuse now for not doing so.