NBR Radio head-to-head: Fed Farmers and SAFE on abused bobby calves
Lobby groups agree footage was unacceptable, diverge on appropriate response - with special feature audio.
Click the NBR Radio box for on-demand special feature audio: Federated Farmers and SAFE discuss abused calves
Farming lobby group Federated Farmers has condemned the actions of dairy workers caught on video abusing and then killing bobby calves.
Animal rights group SAFE provided the unsettling footage to TVNZ’s Sunday programme, which screened it this weekend, and has condemned the treatment of the bobby calves across New Zealand.
“Activists with hidden cameras filmed on 10 separate occasions trucks collecting the bobby cows and they were throwing the animals around as if they were sacks of potatoes,” SAFE executive director Hans Kriek tells NBR Radio.
He says the abuse the calves suffered is not the only animal welfare issue at play in the New Zealand dairy and is calling for a structural overhaul.
However, Federated Farmers board member Katie Milne insists that although the footage was disturbing and the treatment of the calves deserved condemnation, such practices are not an industry norm.
“The footage we saw was horrific, and some of the incidents that Mr Kriek has talked about is something that has been phased out of the industry over a number of years,” she says.
Ms Milne and Mr Kriek also weigh in on recent developments in the Saudi sheep farm saga.
After 900 pregnant ewes were flown to a ‘demonstration farm’ in Saudi Arabia last year, some of the sheep and most if not all of the lambs died. But the reason for the deaths has been suppressed by the government, on the basis of “commercial sensitivity.”
Despite this, the government has recently acknowledged it’s possible more sheep may be sent to the Saudi farm.
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NBR Radio
Mon, 30 Nov 2015
Mon, 30 Nov 2015
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NBR Radio head-to-head: Fed Farmers and SAFE on abused bobby calves
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