O'Connor Damien: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3151. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I must say that despite being a longstanding member of the Primary Production Committee—of which the previous speaker Ian McKelvie is of course the chair—I did actually stand aside for the Hon Trevor Mallard who takes the role of animal welfare within our caucus. So I was not there for a number of the hearings but I have followed this very closely because as has previously been said by speakers this does go to the heart of New Zealand’s production systems. As a passionate advocate for primary industries I know the things that we need to protect starting of course with biosecurity and food safety. Animal welfare probably comes third in terms of the hierarchy of the things that we need to uphold both in a reality sense and in a reputational sense because if New Zealand is to continue to export food then the people who have to pay—or should pay—a little bit more for quality food want to know that it has been grown and produced ethically. Indeed this piece of legislation moves us forward some way in that area. So Labour will be supporting it.It is an interesting time because we have a society that is becoming further disconnected from the realities of production. They want meat but they do not want slaughter and this bill is one more realistic step to address the issues to minimise any potential harm to animals but to still leave in place the reality that animals are grown and produced for slaughter. There will be some who are vegan and who do not want to eat that. That is true and that is their right. The vast majority of people in the world need protein and we produce it. We produce it in a very sound and ethical way in a safe way and in a way that does minimum harm to the animals in the system for the most part. We want to continue with that.We are making technical changes with the bill. We are addressing some tricky issues like the use of animals in the area of experimentation and I will say a little bit more about that later. Not only is there a dilemma across society around wanting meat but not wanting it to come from a slaughter process; they also want cheap meat and cheap food—but of course they do not necessarily want to deal with the reality that we have to have commercial systems of production that some say are factory. By international standards most of New Zealand’s systems are pretty much organic. Indeed if you look at the sheep grazing out in the Mackenzie Country you would see that they are as close to the basic first step in the evolutionary process as you could imagine—freedom to roam and handled probably two or three times a year. New Zealand is blessed with systems that are as close to ideal as you can get but there are in some areas systems—particularly in the area of egg production poultry production pork and increasingly in the area of dairying—that are getting to the point of intensity where the public are asking whether there is a better way than the ways that have been conducted over recent years.The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee the organisation referred to by the previous speaker Ian McKelvie is an independent organisation set up to address these quite challenging ethical areas in an appropriate and independent way. I think it does a very very good job. We have got the issues of colonies and cages for poultry what size they should be and what the normal range of behaviours for those chickens is. What has happened over recent years is we have moved—as a country and through legislation—to expand the areas in which chooks live to give them more movement and to give them more freedom. My colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard says that just about all those animals should have the right to go outside. We have some systems like that in the country but not all of them. If we were to move to those systems within a set period of 2 3 4 or 5 years then there would be a cost to the consumer and the producer and some might say that that is a perfectly reasonable cost. There is a reality of course in a low-paid economy particularly under a National Government that seems to like zero-hour contracts that people cannot afford to pay for that food.There are transitional provisions here and the exceptions and the extensions to what are deemed not ideal conditions are necessary to allow that transition to occur in a commercially realistic way. I think we have to accept that—well some of us or perhaps my colleague is more reluctant to. Some of us see that as a normal and sensible transition. But the reality for New Zealand as the producer of fine-quality food is that we will have to move in that direction—that is with eggs poultry and pork. I think those industries have accepted that.The difficult issue of dairying is one that is yet to be resolved because of some Europeans I have to say in reality who have come into this country and think they know how to show us how to milk cows. They want to put all the cows inside in an intensive housed farming system. I would suggest that they are not making money this year at the payout from Fonterra so it might clip their wings and their enthusiasm. That intensive system despite having some advantages over effluent management does move a long way from the pastoral system that we have known—and if not perfected certainly developed well—and that has been the hallmark I guess of our production systems. So dairying is heading in the other direction at a time when other sectors are moving to a less intensified system that provides the animals with a bit more scope a bit more freedom and I guess the range of natural movement as deemed. I think we have to warn the dairying industry here that when moving down that path it has to be very cautious about what that might mean to New Zealand’s brand reputation. It is not something I think we should encourage. The costs of production simply climb to the point where we are at risk of years of low payout where those farmers—and more if they get encouraged into those systems—will go broke.I come back to the legislation. It does include some good objectives. One in particular that I quite like is that there will be encouragement for the labelling of animal products that creates a commercial incentive for improved animal welfare standards. That is a value proposition for those people who are moving their production systems to a better one for animal welfare and it should be labelled it should be identified and the consumers should know if they are going to pay a bit more for the food why they are doing so. Why then does the National Government not endorse country-of-origin labelling for other foods? Why will it not buy into that? I suggest it is because the supermarkets its mates will simply bully it into avoiding that. The fact is that we have trans-Tasman standards. Australia buys into country-of-origin labelling and New Zealand does not. So although this legislation encourages labelling for better animal welfare standards which I think is a good thing there is nothing from the Government to say that they should identify where the food was produced in the first place. So it is quite a bizarre contradiction in the legislation that once this is passed we will be encouraging labelling on the one hand and in fact avoiding it on the other hand.As I said the extension that was proposed under the legislation will now be closed down. In transitioning from the current standards to better standards of animal welfare and production systems the reality is that we must allow that transition to occur. If they were chopped off that would be unrealistic uneconomic and indeed undesirable for many of the consumers across the country.All in all I think this is a good piece of legislation. The question I would like to ask at the end of this is around John Key calling in to Saudi Arabia and we are told having discussions about the renewal of the live export trade to that country. I have not heard too many people asking for that or thinking that it is a good thing other than the Prime Minister perhaps promising his Saudi counterpart that we will get this under way. So I think it is incumbent upon the Government and the Prime Minister to answer the question: are we going to resume live exports for slaughter or not? Although there was a hint from the previous speaker—Hon Nathan Guy: No.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: No. Well as the Minister for Primary Industries has said no that is good. It is good to hear that because I do not think there is any benefit and I am pleased to hear him say that. So I hope he tells the Prime Minister his boss that it is no good kidding the Saudi Arabians that we might get a renewal of that trade.The last thing I would say is that we do not agree with animal testing for cosmetics. Indeed it is pleasing to see as the father of five daughters that cosmetics and make-up are kind of on the way out. I think that is great. It will save me a fortune. Out of all the women around here I do not see one who needs those cosmetics and indeed we do not need the animal testing to try to improve them. This is a wise piece of legislation but the Government has got to follow through on what it says it is doing here.