Outrage over bobby calves treatment

TV One's Sunday programme showed gross maltreatment of the calves, filmed by the animal rights group Farmwatch. It showed bobby calves left in open crates in the sun for hours, thrown onto a truck and thrown and kicked at a petfood plant.

Guy told Dairy News he's had many phone calls expressing outrage at the mistreatment and calling for the people responsible be held to account for their actions including damaging the reputation of the whole dairy industry.

"Farmers have come a long way in a short time to improve their animal welfare standards onfarm. But it takes only a couple of cowboys as we saw on that footage to damage the reputation of the NZ dairy industry," he says

Guy says he's also disappointed that SAFE is deciding to make a big thing of this in our international markets. Animals and animal products are worth about $25 billion to the NZ economy and scaremongering in our international markets is disappointing.

He says NZ is ranked first equal of 50 countries for its good treatment of animals. Under his watch the regulations and penalties for animal cruelty have been toughened. There is a five year jail penalty for wilful mistreatment of animals and a $100,000 fine for an individual and up to $500,000 for a company.

Guy says he also disappointed the animal rights people took so long to give the footage to MPI.

This view is shared by MPI's director-general Martyn Dunne. He says he understands the footage was taken over two seasons (a fact confirmed by the animal right groups) and says MPI could have acted sooner if it had the footage earlier.

He is appalled it has taken so long for MPI to get the footage and is annoyed at what he saw on television, believing the days of leaving calves in crates had long gone.

Dunne says as soon as they received the footage of the mistreatment of calves on September 14 it began an investigation. He denies claims that MPI has done nothing.

"A lot of issues have had to be examined including the legality of [them] recording the footage and the various actions that needed to be taken. We have to look at the viability of the footage itself and who's involved, so there is a multi-pronged force in place for this investigation. But before we initiate a prosecution we have to establish all the facts," he says.