Prosser Richard: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2743. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we debate the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. This is a bill that New Zealand First does support and we have supported it from the outset.I am not going to take too much issue with the position of the Minister for Primary Industries and berate him too savagely at this stage in spite of what other Opposition members have done. I think the National Government has taken enough of a flogging at the hands of New Zealand First this week so we will let those wounds heal a little before we come back to it. I do wish to look at some of the Supplementary Order Papers and particularly the Minister’s own amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 69.I do as other members have done want to acknowledge the work of Mojo Mathers and her team in the Greens in bringing this issue to the attention of the House. I would call it a success in terms of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has now brought. We did look very closely at Mojo Mathers’ first Supplementary Order Paper dealing with cosmetic substances but we are much more comfortable with the version that the Government has now brought. We are certainly not happy that there has not previously been a prohibition on testing cosmetic substances on animals in New Zealand or at the very least that there has not been a practice of prohibition for quite some time.We were concerned when looking at the original draft that we saw from the Greens that there was no protection for ingredients in the supply chain that although they may end up being used in cosmetic substances were not solely intended for that. We might have had a situation where there would have been a prohibition on the testing of ingredients for cosmetics that also had application to other products such as medicines agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines as the Minister has pointed out. So we are much more comfortable with the thrust of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has brought forward and we will be supporting it for that reason not because we are opposed to the proposition that Mojo Mathers has brought. We do support it and we thank her and the Greens for it. We just feel that the version that the Minister and his advisers have created is going to be far more practical in terms of its utility.I will now turn to Supplementary Order Paper 48 in the name of Trevor Mallard. We do support it. There is a great concern that the bill as drafted as the explanatory note says “allows regulations to be made for up to 10 years with a potential extension of another 5 years when phasing out harmful practices relating to animals.” At the time this was being debated through the select committee and through the term of the last Parliament I sat on that committee as an observer by the committee’s leave. It was noted both by industry and by ministry advisers that for certain things such as sow crates there was no technical alternative on the horizon to the crates as they were being used. It was not a case of people being opposed to phasing them out but for the system of farming that requires them there was simply nothing available on the immediate horizon to replace crates for that type of usage.We certainly take note of that. However we do agree with Mr Mallard that 7 years has to be a sufficiently long period of time for the industry and for technology to catch up with where that requirement is at. We could of course—as I have mentioned earlier in the debate—move to an entirely free-range farming system that does not require the use of crates. That is a decision that the British Parliament made some years ago and so all pork that is farmed in Britain now is free-range. However Britain has a situation where they still have subsidies for agricultural production as does the rest of the European Union. We do not of course so if we were to bring in such a system in New Zealand it would be the New Zealand consumer who would be shouldering the entire cost of that more expensive free-range farming system whereas in countries like the UK and other places that do have subsidies obviously that cost is not borne so that is a consideration that does have to be taken into account by politicians and by voters in New Zealand. It is a separate question that has got to be addressed differently.Just taking a step backwards slightly I say that when we look at Supplementary Order Paper 355 we do oppose it. Again I give credit to Mojo Mathers for bringing the issue to the attention of the Committee but to remove the ability of the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to take into account practicality and economic impact when carrying out its functions kind of runs contrary to the basis the reasons for New Zealand being an agricultural nation. Yes we do have a reputation to protect in terms of how we are regarded in overseas markets and yes we do want to give the best regard to the animals that we farm that we keep as pets etc. etc. But we also have to remember that at the end of the day when we are farming animals we are farming them predominantly for our own purposes and for our own benefit. Regardless of how well we treat them and how well we keep them at the end of the day for the most part we kill them and eat them. It is a matter of expediency for us to do that.There is some ground in between the two ideals—the one that is purely economically driven and the one that is purely ideologically driven. Somewhere in between those two extremes there has to be a practicality that takes account of the fact that in order to enable us to farm these animals in a way that suits our purposes there are going to be times when we do not treat them particularly nicely. One of those of course is at the end of their lives when as I say we kill them and we eat them.So there does have to be provision I think for the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to take into account the practicality and the economic impact of the measures that they bring to bear on animal welfare. For that reason we will be opposing Supplementary Order Paper 355.As the Minister pointed out in his opening address thanks again to Mojo Mathers who really has done a great deal of work with regard to this—to the benefit of animal welfare and to the benefit of the whole Committee. It is gratifying to know that if a technical fault such as the words of a particular sector can slip through the net with all the oversight that the ministry gives it and that political parties give it that technical fault can be taken out at this stage in the Committee. We are thankful for that. We appreciate that. We will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 46.There is another one that we will support—Supplementary Order Paper 367 also in Mojo Mathers’ name—but with a little clarification. It speaks about a suitable alternative. It says: “In this section suitable alternative means [an] equivalent project that does not involve the use of an animal.” I do have a slight concern going back to what I said before with regard to the higher cost of some non-animal tests. We would just like some clarification from Mojo Mathers or perhaps from somebody else from the Greens when they make a contribution as to whether or not economic considerations will be included in the definition or in the consideration of the word “suitable”.It is all well and good saying that there may be alternative methods for determining say toxicity and there are technological advances that are happening right now and other ones that are on the horizon which will mean that certain tests that now require the use of a live animal can be done with dead animal tissue or even cultured animal tissue. But we do also have to look at the practical considerations that those tests certainly in the early years until the advance of technology reaches a certain point may be prohibitively expensive. If we can get some clarification on that we would be much happier about supporting that.Finally getting down to Supplementary Order Paper 47 with regard to the deprivation of life of non-human hominids—we will be opposing this. The primary reason is not that we do not believe that our great ape brethren do not deserve the same regard. It is simply that we believe that if an animal such as a great ape is going to be deprived of life under these circumstances it should be a vet who makes that decision rather than a bureaucrat. We do not want to leave that decision solely to a director-general who for all their qualifications and professionalism may well be subject to any other kind of political pressure. We would rather leave that to the vets and that is why we will be opposing Supplementary Order Paper 47. However all those things said we do still support the passage of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I will speak more about this in the third reading. Thank you very much.