Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 Parliament has a chance tonight to right a terrible wrong and to end the suffering that millions of factory-farmed animals experience every day of their short and miserable lives so that we can have access to cheap meat and eggs. Parliament also has a chance tonight to respond to the overwhelming desire of New Zealanders to get rid of cruel farming practices such as sow crates and battery hen cages by supporting this bill. 
Animals have no vote in this Parliament. They have no voice and they cannot vote so it is up to us to speak on their behalf and to protect them from cruelty and abuse. That is why every member of Parliament in this House tonight has a stark choice to make: whether to vote for the animals or for the vested interests who want to keep animals in cages indefinitely. That is the stark choice that every MP will make tonight and regardless of whatever weasel words are said MPs who vote against my bill will be voting to allow animal cruelty to continue indefinitely. 
Public concern about animal welfare has been growing steadily in recent years. New Zealanders were repelled by what they saw on television last year—images of pigs with sores all over their bodies looking demented and chewing on bars—and they cannot understand why Parliament has sat on its hands and done nothing since then to stop this cruelty. They certainly will not understand it if Parliament rejects this bill which would require sow crates and other cruel practices to be phased out within 5 years. 
Most people cannot understand either why Parliament allows millions of factory-farmed animals to be grievously ill-treated on a daily basis when we have an Animal Welfare Act that states it is an offence to ill-treat animals. People ask me why when it is an offence to ill-treat animals it is not an offence to ill-treat animals by locking them in cages where they cannot even turn round. The answer is that although the Animal Welfare Act has some very good principles it contains a series of loopholes that exempt the worst cases of animal cruelty in factory farms from having to comply with the Act. These loopholes mean that even though the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee acknowledges that using sow stalls for prolonged periods of time does not meet the obligations of the Act it can still recommend that sow crates continue by using the “exceptional circumstances” exemption in section 73 of that Act. That explains why we have ended up with an Act that pretends to protect the interests of animals but that really protects the interests of farmers and animal users; an Act that allows us to get tough on individual acts of cruelty and turn a blind eye to institutional acts of cruelty; an Act that makes it an offence to keep a dog in a cage but that says it is legitimate and somehow not cruel to keep a pig or a hen in a cage; an Act that allows one standard for companion animals and a completely different and lax standard for the treatment of farm animals. 
My bill removes that contradiction at the core of the Animal Welfare Act and states that any practice that breaches the Act but that is permitted under the “exceptional circumstances” exemption must be phased out within 5 years. It also expands the definition of the needs of animals to include having freedom of movement and sufficient space to express normal patterns of behaviour. It gives the Minister the power to amend an animal welfare code if the Minister considers this to be necessary in order to prevent the suffering of any animal. 
The Minister will trot out a series of feeble excuses as to why the National Government opposes this bill but the public will see them for what they are: the feeble excuses of a Government that is casting around for an excuse to try to justify why it pretends it is all in favour of animal welfare yet will vote to allow some of the worst cases of animal cruelty to continue indefinitely. The Minister will no doubt argue that the survival of the pig and poultry industries will be at risk if we require cruel farming practices to be phased out within 5 years. But he knows that is nonsense. It ignores the facts that 60 percent of pig farmers do not use sow crates and that free-range producers are booming in New Zealand. While the mainstream pork industry is losing its market share to imported pork some free-range producers expanded their market share last year by an extraordinary 170 percent. The managing director of Freedom Farms says it is absurd that the pork industry is clinging to cruel farming practices at the very time that consumers are clamouring for meat from animals that have been well treated. “Instead of behaving like King Canute” he said “they should be developing a niche for themselves as producers of quality humanely raised meat.” 
Animal welfare is above all an ethical and a moral issue not an economic one. Some farmers may wish it were otherwise; they may wish it was left up to them to decide whether they considered it to be profitable to treat animals humanely. But the truth is that the reason that people feel passionately about animal welfare is that it is an ethical and a moral issue. Our attitudes to animal welfare and to this bill hinge around ethical arguments such as whether we have a right to require highly intelligent animals like pigs to live miserable lives of suffering just to satisfy our demand for cheap meat especially when we can farm them well in free-range conditions where they can express normal patterns of behaviour. There is a substantial body of international research that shows that animals experience a huge range of emotions and suffer terribly when they cannot express normal behaviour. That is why I am seeking a conscience vote on this bill. It is incomprehensible and deeply offensive to me that Parliament would allow gambling and shopping hours to be voted on as a conscience issue but not animal welfare. It is a sure sign that vested interests have won out over the interests of animals yet again. 
Animal cruelty is animal cruelty whether it happens to a pig or a dog. We cannot in good conscience as a Parliament get tough on individual acts of cruelty to animals while ignoring the more serious cases of institutional abuse. We cannot have one law for companion animals and another law for farm animals. We cannot pretend that it is not cruel to keep a pig or a hen in a cage when it would be illegal and in breach of the Act to keep a cat or a dog in a cage. 
I have been inside factory farms—numerous factory farms. I have seen for myself the pain and the agony that sows experience when they are locked inside cages either desperate with boredom or screaming in agony. I have seen with my own eyes pigs lying motionless in their cages chewing on the bars in deranged frustration. I have tried to take a cross-party group of MPs to visit pig farms to see for themselves the suffering that sows endure in sow crates but the pork industry has refused to allow our visit. 
I believe that every MP in this House would like to see an end to the use of the sow crate and the battery hen cage and that the only reason some MPs are voting against this bill is that their party whips are demanding that they do so. I would like to thank Labour the Maori Party United Future the Progressive party and Chris Carter for supporting my bill. And I would like to say to MPs who oppose this bill that their vote will be a conscience issue whether or not they like it and it will be something that they will have to live with for a very long time.