From Aotearoa Indymedia:
Animal rights activists protested outside the Ministry of Agriculture offices in Wellington today. The protest was a reaction to the news that Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton is overruling parliamentary legal advice and supporting the use of battery cages.
While it was a small protest called without much notice, it seemed to really upset the Ministry of Agriculture, who seemed offended that we named and shamed David Bayvel of MAF. Several MAF staff came out and took photos and video film of protesters and scuttled back behind the police when challenged.
Despite overwhelming public opposition, Minister of Agriculture, Jim Anderton, has yet again interfered with the democratic process to protect
the profits of the egg industry.Parliament’s Regulations Review Committee recently ruled that battery cages do not comply with the Animal Welfare Act, and they must be phased out over time. Jim Anderton has overruled the committee and says he will ignore their advice, ignore science, and ignore public opinion. Instead he defends the cruel egg industry and will allow them to continue cramming birds into tiny cages for their entire lives.
Protesters said today “It’s time we stopped tolerating these spineless apologists for the animal abuse industries. Jim Anderton and the rest of the Labour led government have done nothing to help these animals, despite overwhelming public opposition to factory farming for years. The faceless bureaucrats at the Ministry of Agriculture who advise the Minister are also to blame. People like David Bayvel, Director of Animal Welfare at MAF, who hasn’t done a thing for animals since he got the job”.
If you want to really help animals, forget the politicians, forget lobbying, and help us to hit the industry where it hurts – in the pocket.
Boycott battery eggs and get involved in our campaign to expose and disrupt factory farming!
And here’s some photos I took at the demo:
July 29, 2006 at 10:59 am
Just out of interest, is there any notable campaigning going on in NZ about animal testing? or is it more focussed towards the welfare of animals destined for eating/breeding?
I just ask ’cause it’s been a really big thing in Oxford over the last year.
July 29, 2006 at 11:50 am
Vivisection is a pretty heavily worked on topic here, yeah. The main 3 things that the Animal Rights / Liberation movement works on are fur (in Auckland, and very successful), vivisection (nationally, especially focussed on the trans-tasman ANZCAART vivisectors conference each year) and chickens/pigs destined for eggs/eating (both via ALF rescues and via photography/video and open protests).
July 30, 2006 at 12:48 pm
yeah, although factory farming is the big issue here, a few of us are working on anti vivisection stuff, we have a newsletter and website (not updated very much cos we are crap at webbery). Hopefully with a few big exposes and some media coverage, vivisection will start getting as much attention as factory farming does.
NAVC
PS the oxford campaign rocks. http://www.speakcampaigns.org.uk
July 31, 2006 at 4:24 am
Depends how you define ‘rocks’. The problem with their campaign is that driving animal testing out of Oxford will only push it into total deregulation in places like Singapore, where there are no protective laws at all and British pharmaceutical companies are already starting to outsource anything that they think won’t go down too well in the UK.
August 5, 2006 at 5:30 pm
the alternative to closing down the oxford lab,is letting it open. so it has to be closed. as for singapore, you are assuming the UK laws are somehow better than singapores. there is not difference from the point of view of an animal in a cage. and, if the industry is driven out of england etc, then that is still a good thing because the pharmaceutical industry is still based in the UK and US, and they are the ones who call the shots. If the US and UK and Europe drug companies stop doing vivisection, the rest of the world will follow.
August 25, 2006 at 2:16 am
I’m not assuming, I know Singapore have either no animal protection laws or very lax ones because I’ve spoken to a British guy who is involved in outsourcing a pharmaceutical company’s animal testing there precisely for that reason. So don’t kid yourself that stopping testing in the UK/USA etc will stop testing.
The only way of doing that is to stop testing is by banning tested-on products, and that’s not going to happen through demonstrating against the labs, the only way that governments and the scientific community will stop testing is by engaging in the intellectual argument rather than standing around shouting.
August 26, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Yeah, I’ve kinda thought the same myself – it’s the same with capitalism – if you get gains in one place, they’ll outsource the practice to somewhere they can do worse, so you’ve got to try and destroy the demand. In some ways it might even be ‘better’ (ie the lesser of two disgusting evils) to have testing remain in the UK and USA while the campaign to highlight the scientific fraud and cruelty inherent in the practice, and thus destroy demand for this kind of “research”, goes on. Interesting points jude.
September 23, 2006 at 5:32 pm
May as well ban eating eggs altogether, those bloody capitalists wont listen until something drastic is done. I reckon we should fundraise to buy lots of heaps of organic free range eggs, so their business will rise and it will be more profitable to lower free range prices. then we can destroy the market for battery hen eggs and liberate these oppressed animals from their lives of imprisonment.
“The only way to fight back is to strive forward” – Gandhi
April 19, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Great…
A spanish translation about this topic might be found in here
http://www.viajes-en-oferta.com.ar