Ardern Shane: Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ardern Shane: Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15223] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I do not know whether anyone in this House could argue against some of the points that Sue Kedgley put up in her debate on this bill against cruelty to animals. I know that she is genuine in her desire to see an end to cruelty to animals whatever form it takes but from time to time—and I know it is sometimes challenging—one has to inject a few facts into the debate about farming systems why they have evolved in the way they have and what the member is railing against. 
The Animal Welfare (Treatment of Animals) Amendment Bill has a genuinely admirable objective: to see an end to all cruelty to all animals. I stand here as a farmer as someone who has been working with animals all my life from the time I was old enough to walk. There is no logic whatsoever from a commercial point of view from an animal welfare point of view from a profit point of view or from whatever angle one wants to consider for being cruel to the very animals that provide one with a livelihood. It is as dumb as destroying the environment one farms in. Those two things are totally irreconcilable with farming; one cannot destroy the environment one farms in and one cannot bring about damage or harm or inflict pain or other such on the livestock that provide an income. 
I have a lot of sympathy with the argument that the member is raising but the officials have told us that if this bill were to pass the unintended consequences—in terms of the independent advice that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee would be able to provide to the Minister—are such that the bill would have an absolutely opposite effect to what the member desires to see. The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee is an independent group that provides advice to the Minister regardless of the Minister’s political persuasion. It is a real irony I have to say that throughout most of the 9 years of the previous Labour Government supported by the Green Party no changes were made to the Animal Welfare Act but in the first 12 months of this National Government substantial changes to legislation came to the Primary Production Committee which the member was a part of and those changes were brought about. In addition those changes were supported by substantial increases in funding for SPCA officers and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry staff to conduct inspections relating to animal welfare issues. 
The issue the member raises around sow crates is highly contentious very very emotive and needs to be addressed and I do not know of anybody including those in the pork industry who would argue against that. The member herself made the point that commercially New Zealanders are making that decision; all customers worldwide are making that decision. We do unfortunately have to compete in an international market place to sell products and it is a fact that cheaper pork products have been imported into New Zealand from places that do not have the same high animal welfare standards that we do. That is not an excuse to allow cruelty but it is a commercial reality in this argument. 
I want to share with this House a very brief story a personal story about how sow crates were developed in the first place. As a young lad I was invited to a sporting event in the sport that I was pretty competitive in. I never had the funding to go to such events—my father was a sharemilker of limited means—so it was decided that as a fund-raising option I would raise a couple of pigs to a porker level and sell them to the meat company for profit to pay for my sporting trip. I got two small piglets from the same litter. I got them because they were small and not able to compete with the rest of the litter for their mother. I reared those piglets to within 3 weeks of when they could be sold off for profit but the male of the couple attacked the female injured her to the point that she was unable to be salvaged and she had to be put down. They were in a free-range environment; they were living in luxury. If there was ever a pig heaven they were in it. They were being fed twice a day by a very dedicated farmer who was farming them for profit and they were living in the lap of luxury. One pig attacked the other and that pig had to be put down as a result of the injuries. It was devastating for me because I had spent so much time raising the pigs to that point. The reality is that I should have separated them. They should have been contained. They should not have been able to be free range in the way that they were—for their own protection. Sow crates have evolved from the circumstance that pigs will injure themselves. Animal welfare is actually the reason why they were developed. 
I do not think that any member would condone what we have seen in some of the media coverage of the battery-type farming systems that the member spoke of. I do not think that there is a single person with any type of compassion towards animals who would condone that. But the irony of the debate is this: the founder of Kathmandu has decided with the money she has made from that enterprise to develop a campaign against animal cruelty but in the very television campaign shots I saw she had a beautiful Labrador dog in a townhouse or an inner-city apartment. Tell me that it is not cruel to keep a Labrador in an inner-city apartment. No one would see that as cruel; it is normal it is perfectly OK. The cruellest thing that someone could do to a dog designed and bred to roam and exercise is to lock it up in an inner-city apartment. Yet across the world that is perfectly OK and perfectly normal. That dog cannot show its normal animal behaviour in an inner-city apartment. Some of those dogs are so obese so unexercised and so unhealthy and yet that is perfectly OK. Society has normalised that. That is fine. That is OK. But if we design something in a farming or commercial sense that allows animals to be contained in some way then that is deemed to be cruel and should not be allowed. As we look to find a way forward through some of these issues in a way that is sensible humane and in the best interests of the animals we should at least be consistent in the argument. 
SPCA officers tell me that the worst cruelty they ever see to animals is on lifestyle blocks. People decide that it would be good to go out into the country buy a little bit of land have a few sheep have a few animals have a horse. Then they decide to go away on their normal summer holiday and they forget about the animals. That is the worst type of animal abuse that SPCA officers report back to me. Those officers are genuine about animal protection of course; others are on a political crusade against agricultural farming and have a different view. In the case of animal welfare I think we need to be consistent. 
In response to this bill I say that National is doing more for animal welfare than the previous Government did in its whole time in office including with the support of the Green Party throughout that whole time. We will continue to work constructively with the industries involved to ensure that animal welfare is No. 1. It is absolutely in our best interests to do that because we are an agricultural export nation that has to uphold the highest standards for us to be sustainable going forward in terms of both our production systems and our economic survival.