Interesting comment from David Carter, Minister of Agriculture – and responsible for the Animal Welfare Act 1999. Not surprisingly, Parliament is fast-tracking Simon Bridges’ Bill to up the penalty on wilful ill-treatment, but Carter indicated in this article that he would consider ‘whether [the Bill] should be widened to make the Animal Welfare Act work better’. Wow! Could be significant. Stay tuned…
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Its time to push the argument a little more towards farm cruelty and animals that are designated as research subjects, thus having no protections whatsoever. A half-assed review would be a real shame methinks.
Posted by AaronC | 2 February 2010, 4:11 pmI think what Carter may be thinking about is a review designed to look at the various crimes and way they are prosecuted. If so, it would be progress. To get things pushed more towards farm cruelty and research – which I agree is the long-term goal – will take greater societal change and pressure. But I think a sensible review of how we deal with crimes against domestic animals, if it actually happens, would be much better than the knee-jerk decision to simply raise the maximum penalty. Gotta take progress wherever possible…
Posted by Peter Sankoff | 2 February 2010, 5:33 pmSome good points here (and some not so good) in relation to the idea of using jail as a tool generally (which I hinted at in my first post – but did not address), and the problem regarding prosecutions by Andrew Geddis: http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/how-many-years-is-an-animals-life-worth
Posted by Peter Sankoff | 3 February 2010, 11:56 am