The Labour Party has announced it would ban all factory farming by 2017, as animal activists release more footage of poor farm conditions.
MP Trevor Mallard says it is important to move quickly because the world is watching.
Hidden cameras show how some piglets are getting to the market. At a Hawera farm a shopping cart has been converted into a crude medical table – trolley and instruments are caked with blood and piglet tails hang, seemingly on display.
"It looks like they've been lain across here and just snapped off," says Farmwatch investigator John Darroch.
It's the latest footage released by Farmwatch. Last week it was a South Island farm with sows covered in faeces, living among rats.
"Every single time we release footage the pork board comes out and says, 'This is a rogue farm. This is not typical of the industry.'"
Labour says enough is enough. It would ban all factory farming by 2017.
"It's disgraceful the way that we're treating pigs," says Mr Mallard.
There are about 125 commercial pig farms around New Zealand, producing about half the pork eaten here. No New Zealand-grown pork is exported, but Mr Mallard says it is about our image abroad.
"If people in Europe see this then we will have trouble getting any of our meat into Europe," says Mr Mallard.
Last week Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy told 3 News he had told the pork industry to pull its socks up. But that a clampdown couldn't be rushed either.
"Then we have greater imports coming into New Zealand and we have no control over the country's animal welfare standards where these pork imports will come from," says Mr Guy.
Mr Guy says the Government supports a step-by-step approach. That will see sow stalls gone next year and battery cages for hens gone by 2022. Like the Labour Party, the Greens and Internet Mana want intensive farming gone, full-stop, by 2017.
3 News
source: newshub archive
