Mathers Mojo: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2753. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): I wish to speak to clarify the intent of my Supplementary Order Paper 355 which is the one that would delete new sections that have been inserted around economic impact and practicality. There seemed to be a misunderstanding that this Supplementary Order Paper would mean that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee can no longer consider these factors. That is not the case. There are already existing allowances to consider other factors including economic impacts and practicality. What we were concerned about is that this bill now elevates them to explicit factors that may be considered. Our concern around that is that these factors are precisely the ones that have been used historically in the past to justify codes of welfare that allow extremely cruel practices such as keeping and confining battery cages sow crates and farrowing crates. Therefore given that history of how economic impacts and practicalities had been abused in the past we are very concerned that elevating them explicitly in the bill will send the wrong message about what kind of factors are important when we are setting codes of welfare when we are setting regulations. It is not that they cannot be considered; they can be considered. They already are considered.But we do not think these factors in particular justify explicit elevation in the bill. That is what this Supplementary Order Paper aims to do. It just removes the elevation of these factors. It does not remove them altogether as factors that can be considered. I wanted to clarify that in light of the comments that were made by New Zealand First and Labour in particular. So it is not about removing those factors that can be considered altogether; it is about stopping them from being elevated because we think that that is given the history not desirable in this bill.I wanted to also respond to the comment that was made by the Minister for Primary Industries around us having been assessed for regulations as being world leaders first in the world. That does not apply in fact to many practices. In particular it does not apply to practices such as battery cages and colony cages. Overseas countries have gone in a very different direction. Many countries are far more progressive around animal welfare than New Zealand is. For example a European Union directive has set a phase-out date of battery cages from 2012 which is nearly a decade ahead of our phase-out date of 2022. In Austria Germany and Switzerland they have set phase-out dates for colony cages now. So at the time that we are bringing in colony cages they are going to be phasing them out. That is how far behind we are in terms of our factory farming of animals. The earlier factory farming is something that still unfortunately is a really significant issue that this bill does not really come to terms with.It is fantastic that the bill is going to have more enforceable regulations but the real test will be whether the Ministry for Primary Industries actually uses the new powers that it has under this bill to take cases to prosecution. The Press just the other week did an inquiry into the number of prosecutions that were happening on Canterbury farms in particular where literally thousands of animals have been found to be mistreated or neglected. They were absolutely shocking cases of abuse and hardly any of them were taken to prosecution. Some of these examples are absolutely appalling like a video of four boys who videoed shearing a sheep that was left with bloodied legs. They should have been prosecuted. Instead they ended up with verbal advice being given to them by the Ministry for Primary Industries. I do not consider that acceptable. The public does not consider that acceptable. We expect more from the Ministry for Primary Industries. We expect it to take cases like that to prosecution. We hope that when the regulations become more enforceable the ministry will be given the tools to be able to prosecute clear cases of animal cruelty on farms because there are far too many and they need to be followed through.The final bit that I wanted to talk to was Supplementary Order Paper 367 which is the one around suitable alternatives. I am hoping that Labour and New Zealand First will support this one. What this one does is require that if animal ethics committees know of a suitable alternative to a particular animal test that complies then they may not approve the trial on animal testing. They may approve it only if it complies with the restrictions on the use of animals in research and testing or teaching and if it complies with any conditions issued by the committee.In this Supplementary Order Paper “suitable alternative” means an “equivalent project that does not involve the use of an animal”. That is really interesting because the Ministry for Primary Industries officials took this particular Supplementary Order Paper out for feedback from research companies and people actually doing research on animals. Some of them came back with the sort of sense that the sky was going to fall in if they actually were not allowed to continue doing all the animal tests that they currently do. It really hinged around their interpretation of what “a suitable alternative” meant because they were saying: “Well we’re required to do some particular animal tests by such and such a regulation.” The reality is that if you are required to test a particular product by regulation on an animal then there is no suitable alternative that does not use animals because you are required to. Maybe the regulations should be updated but this does not affect these kinds of requirements because for the purpose of a suitable alternative means one that meets the purposes of what they are aiming to test for. If you are required to do that by regulation this Supplementary Order Paper would not affect that.Nearly all of the concerns that were raised by animal testing organisations were around that and it is really important to realise that there is a vested interest by these companies in continuing to use animals in their research because their reputation has been built around that that is where they have acquired their skills that is where they have invested in the research facilities and they actually have not invested in the alternatives that need to be brought in from overseas expertise. We need to build up that expertise here and this Supplementary Order Paper will help drive innovation in New Zealand in the direction that we want to go as a country—one that does not rely on the use of animals as testing subjects. This is some of the most cruel barbaric and awful exploitation of animals that goes on in some of these testing research facilities and we should be doing everything we can to ensure that they go through only the most appropriate tests and that everything else is replaced wherever possible. That is what this Supplementary Order Paper demands. Thank you very much.