NZ's Dirty Secrets
The way we treat animals in New Zealand is incredibly disturbing, especially when you look at battery farming, as Megha Kehar finds.
It has been an extremely hard day for you. As soon as you plonked yourself down on your chair in your coop-sized office cubicle, you realised you could not log in to Facebook. No random strokes of witticisms in the form of status updates to be shared today, no commenting on photos and looking through albums of friends of friends is certainly out of question. Oh misery.
You soon realise it is not just Facebook. The Internet is down today. So almost instinctively you locate Counterstrike on your computer. “File corrupt,” the system unapologetically informs you. It’s a day when nothing seems to comply with your simple wishes. Seven hours have gone by and all you have done is gnawed on various computer cables, one colour at a time. Total emptiness has started to take control over your brain. All you want to do is go home and scream into a pillow and punch cushions.
Oh there is nothing that could make this day any worse, except the realisation that this is exactly what every day is going to be like – for the rest of your life. You feel like a caged animal suffering the death of one brain cell at a time, as mind-numbing nothingness slowly draws you towards a state of paranoia.
Suddenly someone switches the light on and you wake up with a jolt. The nightmare is over. But for hundreds and thousands of farm animals across New Zealand, the actual and absolute every day reality is only a thousand times more miserable and abject, and the only likely end to which is a sharp hack of the butcher’s knife. The farm animals probably pray for such an end to their morose existence in captivity.
Most of us like to think of ourselves as nice, peaceful individuals but don’t realise that our apathy towards animals starts as early as the morning breakfast. All the meat that we consume throughout the day comes from animals that were not only mercilessly butchered but also made to suffer an intolerable life consisting of overcrowded pens and crates so small and cramped, it’s impossible to turn around.
It is easy to be oblivious to these animals’ misery but there are some who feel strongly enough about it to go out of their way to bring about a change.
Diane Smith is a volunteer for SAFE, a New Zealand-based animal rights organisation. Every now and then she and other SAFE volunteers dress as sows and go around Central Auckland campaigning against cruelty towards factory farmed animals.
She says she gives up her time because she feels the need to empathise with all factory-farmed animals.
“People generally empathise with dogs because they’re companion animals, because you can see their character and relate to them. They can’t do the same for farm animals, so it is hard to empathise with them,” Smith says.
She says farm animals are treated as little more than machines.
“Mike King went to some of these farms and saw the state of these animals. He could see that these animals are suffering from depression. He was able to see it in their eyes. They displayed stereotypical behaviour like animals in zoos. It’s repetitive behaviour – like monkeys pull out their own fur, leopards walk around the cage endlessly,” she says.
The animals are doomed in these conditions, she adds.
Summer Smith is a vegan-turned-vegetarian-turned-“flexitarian” who lives and studies in Auckland. She says she eats whatever she wants but wishes she didn’t.
Summer says she is “consumed with guilt” whenever she eats meats or any dairy products.
“I know how important it is for the environment to at least be vegetarian if not vegan, but I can’t help it because it so difficult to find cheap and easy vegetarian options while I’m studying and living in the city,” she says.
“A lot of vegan food needs to be cooked and my flat doesn’t have all the facilities for it,” she adds.
Summer says it’s really easy to forget animal suffering and how bad meat farming is for the environment if it’s “not in your face reminding you all the time”.
“It’s one of those things that’s really easy to forget about if it’s not in front of you, kind of like you shouldn’t bitch and moan about stuff when there are people living in war and poverty, but it’s easy to forget,” she says.
Michele Ong, another student living in the city, says she wouldn’t ever like to be a vegetarian.
“I find them a little cult-ish but if someone wants to, I can respect that,” she says.
When asked what she thinks of the animal farming, she says “cows were bred for eating. I can’t live without a big Mac.
“You can think of the poor veges too, you know,” she says.
She says people have been eating meat since the beginning of time and the farmers need an income.
“What are the cow farmers going to do should everyone go vegetarian?” she asks.
Throughout New Zealand and across the world, animals are held captive at factory farms for meat, fur, leather, cosmetics, scientific study and so on.
In New Zealand, approximately 800,000 pigs are farmed and slaughtered each year. About 22,000 sows are kept in cramped stalls with bare concrete floors. Pregnant sows spend most or all their 16 weeks of pregnancy in such conditions. They can only stand up or lie down. Kept in semi darkness, the sows start displaying abnormal behaviour such as biting at the metal bars after merely a few days.
During the final days of pregnancy, the sows are moved to a farrowing crate where in the absence of straws, they are unable to build a nesting place for the piglets they will give birth to in a few days. At the tender age of four weeks, the piglets are separated from the sows. The sows are impregnated again and returned to their cramped stalls. And thus the gruelling 16-week cycle of pain and extreme frustration starts all over again. Meanwhile, the little piglets spend their time in dark and overcrowded fattening pens, awaiting death.
Hens too endure harsh living conditions. The ‘farm fresh’ eggs we consume come from highly frustrated hens, who spend the most of their 18 months – the age at which they are killed for stock or pet food – in cages the size of an A4 paper.
Innocent animals in New Zealand are also made victims of science. The drugs that are tested on them can cause discomfort, pain and even death. Toxicity tests usually induce vomiting, extreme salivation or cause organ damage.
According to SAFE over 300,000 animals used in experiments each year in New Zealand, half are killed.
“Despite the intention of Animal Welfare Act 1999 to protect animals, the Act permits cruel, invasive and even lethal experiments to be conducted on animals,” the SAFE website says.
Smith says it’s the resistance to change and/or laziness which drives the apathetic behaviour towards animal. She however adds that not every one is ready to sit down and wait for things to change on their own.
“There are people who go out of their way. For instance, there is a young woman volunteer at SAFE who gave up her lunch hour today to help out. She was dressed as a pig in her high heel shoes. She’s now gone back to work. She had been to our store on another occasion, found out about it and got involved.
“I met several people today who said they want to become volunteers.”
Smith has been a vegetarian for 29 years.
“My husband and I went vegetarian together when we had out first child. She was brought up a vegetarian for three years and then we went vegan,” she says.
She says even if people don’t want to give up eating meat, it is easy to care by making small changes in what we spend our money on.
“It is very easy to be apathetic and not do anything, just carry on doing things the way the way we have been doing them. But the biggest thing that people can do is make changes in their own lives. A lot of their money is going into the pockets of people who carry out these cruel practices against animals, who keep animals in this way.
“All people have to do is change their spending and not buy factory farm produce or cut down on the amount of meat that they eat.
“Rather than going for your breakfast at the café round the corner without even thinking where that bacon or ham or eggs came from, find out if it’s free range. People can also opt for a vegetarian alternative occasionally,” she says.
“That will help the animals.”
SAFE also has a store on K’Road in Central Auckland from where people can buy vegetarian alternatives for meat products such as veggie sausages, ham and mince.
Simple ways in which you can help the animals:
Don’t buy factory farm produced bacon, ham or pork products
Don’t buy caged eggs
Write to your MP demanding an end to the use of companion animals in scientific research.
Cut down on meat consumption
Try vegetarian alternatives to meat
Say no to leather and fur
Safe.org.nz