Kedgley Sue: General Debate 
Kedgley Sue: General Debate 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 On behalf of the Green Party I pay my respects to Sir Archie Taiaroa. I acknowledge what a great leader he was and I convey our condolences to his whanau. Today is a members’ day and my member’s bill the Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill was to be debated in the House. However I have delayed its consideration because I want the vote on the bill to be a personal or conscience vote. Animal welfare is above all an ethical and moral issue. I wrote to the Speaker requesting that MPs be allowed to exercise a personal or conscience vote. It was considered by the Business Committee yesterday and supported as I understand by the Labour Party the Green Party and the Maori Party. But National argued that animal welfare was an economic issue not an ethical or moral one and that MPs should not be allowed to vote with their conscience on this issue. 
I have written once again to the Speaker requesting that he reconsider my request. The simple fact is that animal welfare is an ethical and a moral issue. Some farmers may wish otherwise. They may wish that it was just an economic issue and that it was left up to them to decide whether they consider it profitable to treat animals humanely. The reason that so many New Zealanders feel passionately about animal welfare the reason there were protests outside Parliament today about animal welfare and the reason a petition on animal welfare was presented to Parliament today is that it is an ethical and a moral issue. It revolves around questions such as whether animals have an intrinsic value and should therefore be treated with compassion and respect or whether they are just the property of humans and can be manipulated and treated in whatever way farmers want as long as it makes them more efficient sources of cheap meat milk and eggs for humans. 
These ethical and moral issues are particularly important when we consider an animal such as a pig. Pigs are highly sociable intelligent and very curious. Professor Stanley Curtis who spent his career studying pigs taught them to play computer games using joysticks which they were able to move with their snouts or by holding them in their mouths. He said that pigs are one of the most intelligent animals on earth and that they far surpass the mental capacity of dogs. They communicate with each other constantly and given a choice they will live in families or small groups. They love to root around in the soil and forage for food and socialise. They have a strong mothering instinct but when they are cramped together for long periods of time or locked in cages their social skills break down. They become aggressive and frustrated and engage in infighting. Imagine how these sociable animals feel when they are locked in cages unable to exercise search for food be part of a family socialise or build a nest for their young. 
This begs the question a moral and an ethical question for this Parliament: do we have a right to require highly intelligent animals like pigs to live miserable lives of suffering just to satisfy our desire for cheap meat especially when we can farm it perfectly well in humane free-range conditions where pigs are able to express normal patterns of behaviour? Parliament needs to consider whether it is ethical to treat animals in a way that would be considered torture if it was carried out on humans or even companion animals. Why is it a crime to keep animals such as dogs in a cage for long periods of time but perfectly acceptable to keep other animals such as pigs and hens in cages for prolonged periods? These are ethical and moral issues that this Parliament has to consider and debate when it considers my bill. We cannot have one law for companion animals and a completely different law for farm animals. Animal cruelty surely is animal cruelty whether it happens to a pig or a dog. I acknowledge that there are economic issues that we need to consider but ultimately I want my bill to be a conscience vote. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.