Murray Gibb: Animal welfare act light years ahead of its predecessor

The animal welfare codes for circus animals, layer hens and pigs released just before Christmas have prompted criticism from Bob Kerridge, of the Auckland SPCA, and others.

In an article entitled "It's a crime the way we treat animals", Mr Kerridge asked where animals could turn to enhance their wellbeing.

He suggested that although the principles behind the 1999 Animal Welfare Act were laudable, its wording was such that these principles were merely paid lip-service.

The act is light years ahead of its predecessor, the 1960 Animals Protection Act, and is working well.

Here's why. First, it allows for a more active and preventive approach to the care and management of animals. This is achieved by clearly setting out the obligations of those in charge of animals by imposing on them a duty of care.

These obligations are designed to meet an animal's physical health and behavioural needs and to alleviate unreasonable distress.

Physical health and behavioural needs are defined by reference to what are known as the five freedoms, covering matters such as food, shelter and handling.

These needs are required to be assessed case by case according to what is appropriate to the species, environment and circumstances of the animal.

This recognises that the level of care owners and people in charge of animals have to meet varies according to the situation.

Two statutory committees set the standards. The National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee advises the minister on the use of animals in research, teaching and testing, and the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee advises on the use of other animals, including those used for leisure and production.

Second, the old statute was short, simple, prescriptive and inflexible.

Containing only 21 sections when originally written, it proscribed a list of activities as being cruel and, therefore, offences; others that were more cruel and, therefore, deemed to be nastier offences; allowed for inspectors to be appointed and conferred on them certain powers. And that was about it.

Third, standards set by the committees are flexible and able to be altered to meet changing circumstances or expectations of society.

Change to animal welfare law is never accorded high priority in any parliamentary legislative programme in Western democracies.

In most national jurisdictions, such legislation does not exist at all.

Welfare codes must be reviewed every 10 years and their requirements can be altered at any time if there is enough evidence that change is required.

Mr Kerridge has focused entirely on those parts of the codes he does not like, and ignored the fact that there is much in them that specify significant improvements in conditions for the species involved.

His statement that 79 per cent of those interviewed claimed they would be happy to pay more for free-range eggs does not stand up to scrutiny. New Zealanders have the option of buying free-range or barn-laid eggs. If they voted with their wallets, battery cages would soon disappear.

The alternatives to intensive production may not produce better welfare. Hens, for example, have been bred from jungle fowl that in natural conditions live in small groups.

Keeping them in large flocks results in cannibalism, a significant behavioural problem in the free-range system. That system also brings with it very significant animal health problems, such as internal parasitism.

There is no question that cages and dry sow stalls do limit opportunities to display normal patterns of behaviour. But what is normal? The drafters of the Animal Welfare Act had in mind a relative rather than an absolute need, and one that has to be put in context with the other restrictions imposed by livestock production systems.

The fact is that most management systems impose restrictions on the opportunities for animals to display normal patterns of behaviour.

Mr Kerridge walking his dog on a lead is denying it the opportunity to display normal behaviour.

And life in the wild is not necessarily very healthy.

The principles of the act are not to be pursued on behalf of animals alone, as Mr Kerridge suggests, but in a deliberate and considered way, taking into account the needs of society as a whole along with sound scientific evidence.

Finally, the act allows for improvements for welfare to occur much quicker than before. That is why the Veterinary Association strongly supports it and the welfare code methodology.

* Murray Gibb is the chief executive of the Veterinary Association. He is responding to Auckland SPCA chief executive Bob Kerridge's view that the revised codes fly in the face of public sentiment and overseas practice.