Mathers Mojo: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10707. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): I want to focus my comments on animal welfare. Last year our reputation for being world leaders in animal welfare took a really big hit. We saw broadcast on TV compelling evidence of animal cruelty to farm animals occurring in nearly every sector—dairying pig farming and the egg-laying sector. Undercover footage showed baby calves laying hens and mother and baby pigs either being violently handled or kept in appalling conditions.Last year TV One’s Sunday programme aired appalling footage of baby calves being seriously mistreated on farms in transport and in a slaughterhouse. Earlier this year Story aired footage that showed conditions on a brand new colony-cage farm as bad as any I have seen on battery farms; scenes of dead dying de-feathered hens crammed in cages in appalling conditions. Add to this the hundreds of deaths of mother pigs and their babies packed in farrowing crates in a piggery farm and it clearly has not been a good year for farm animals.What really did it for me and gets many others is that despite the compelling video evidence and witness statements that have been handed over to the Ministry for Primary Industries of suffering to the animals hardly any have actually resulted in the Ministry for Primary Industries following up with a prosecution. It is particularly shocking that it has said that it will not prosecute the colony-cage farm that was aired on Story. If footage of dead dying and suffering hens in overcrowded cages is not enough evidence for the Ministry for Primary Industries to prosecute then something is seriously wrong. That level of suffering that was shown should have resulted in more than a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.So in my view and in the view of the many thousands of New Zealanders who really care about what is happening to our animals and not just our pets but what is happening on the farms to farm animals as well the Ministry for Primary Industries is failing them on several fronts. It is failing our animals by leaving it to members of the public to go undercover and film the footage of what is happening behind closed doors on factory farms and in cage slaughterhouses to expose the cruelty that is happening there. It should not be up to members of the public. If the Ministry for Primary Industries was proactive enough and doing on-the-spot audits of these farms without notice then it would be on top of this and there would not be anything for undercover footage to reveal.The ministry is also failing our animals because it is still saying it is OK to keep hundreds of thousands of animals in cramped cages even when these systems are clearly in breach of the Animal Welfare Act as farrowing crates are. Keeping animals in confined cages is doubly cruel because they are not set any requirement for there to be fire sprinklers which means that these poor animals not only suffer miserable lives in these cages but are at risk of horrible deaths by being burnt alive when a fire breaks out as happened in the Waikato piggery and on multiple occasions on factory farms over several years. We need to be able to trust the Ministry for Primary Industries to ensure that all our animals are treated humanely and our international reputation is protected.As I said before the Minister is right; New Zealanders do care about our pets but we also care about farm animals and what we are seeing on our TV screens of what is happening to these farm animals is not OK. Especially these colony cages are not a humane alternative to battery cages. If McDonalds and Wendy’s and Burger King have all committed to going cage-free—if these major fast food companies can afford to ditch cruel eggs—then the Ministry for Primary Industries can say that we can ditch them too as a country. We do not need them. They should go.