Luxury cars, dying animals

PETER

Top salaries, luxury cars for DPIW managers … but are they doing their job? Animal welfare – DPIW-style – is a joke. Remember the salmonella outbreak traced to Pitt’s Poultry at Margate? Same old story: RSPCA / DPIW inspections not working, denial by the minister.

Download: Tasmanian_Animal_Welfare_Legislation.pdf

TOP SALARIES salaries, luxury cars for DPIW managers … but are they doing their job?

Animal welfare – DPIW-style – is a joke. Remember the salmonella outbreak traced to Pitt’s Poultry at Margate? Same old story: RSPCA / DPIW inspections not working, denial by the minister.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/07/2182787.htm

An animal activist has taken footage inside the farm of stressed, moribund and dying chickens, while a Government assessment described the farm as having entirely appropriate welfare standards.

Tasmania’s Primary Industries Minister, David Llewellyn, was asked during question time yesterday about the discrepancies in accounts of the hens’ living conditions.

“I am still at a loss to understand these two accounts can be so different, frankly,” he said.

What a department!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/08/2565046.htm

Activist raid finds pigs ‘eaten alive’ by maggots

By Tasmanian Stateline presenter Airlie Ward

Posted 5pm Friday 8 May 2009

A piggery operator in Tasmania has been charged with cruelty offences after animals were found in squalid conditions and infested with maggots.

The farm in northern Tasmania was raided and filmed by an animal welfare activist earlier this year. Emma Haswell reported her concerns to the RSPCA which told her it would not inspect the farm. Ms Haswell then called the police and told them she had trespassed.

Police charged the owner of the piggery with several animal cruelty offences and he will appear in court in Scottsdale next week.

The piggery is one of Tasmania’s biggest and is also a supplier to the self-proclaimed Fresh Food People, supermarket giant Woolworths.

Ms Haswell said she was appalled at what she saw, including a sow infested with maggots.

“She can’t move, she’s lying in faeces, mud and maggots,” she said.

“There were emaciated sows in stalls that couldn’t move, they had wounds on them, they had enormous abscesses that meant their legs were two or three times the normal size, she said.

The activist called the RSPCA’s chief executive Greg Tredinnick who told her to ring police because the organisation did not operate on weekends.

A statement released by Woolworths said:

“Woolworths responded immediately upon being informed with our head livestock buyer arriving in Tasmania within 48 hours to investigate the allegations.”

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Responsibility for Animal Welfare in Tasmania rests with the Department of Primary Industries and Water (DPIW). David Llewellyn is the Minister in charge of this department.

http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/Attachments/SSKA-7K984Y/$FILE/DPIW_AR0708_OG6.pdf

DPIW in turn outsources its duty of care to the state branch of the RSPCA, itself a deeply troubled organisation.

http://www.examiner.com.au/news/local/news/today/rspca-tasmania-calls-for-unconditional-support/1506436.aspx

“The Department of Primary Industries operates an animal welfare inspectorate, comprising staff from DPIW and the RSPCA with strong support from Tasmania Police.

Public animal welfare complaints are received and processed by the RSPCA under an agreement with the Department. RSPCA inspectors undertake most investigations, referring a small number to the Police and DPIW.

The RSPCA inspectorate also routinely inspects facilities holding animals, such as pig and poultry farms, saleyards, boarding kennels, pet shops, racetracks, rodeos and circuses.”

What the Greens reckon:

CALL FOR SOW STALLS BAN
As ‘Horrific & Gut-wrenching” Piggery Footage Aired
Nick McKim MP
Greens Leader
Saturday, 9 May 2009

www.tas.greens.org.au
The Tasmanian Greens today called for a ban on sow stalls following the airing of recent footage on Stateline of a northern Tasmanian piggery that revealed emaciated sows kept in undersized stalls and conditions so squalid that there were animals lying in faeces, mud and maggots.

Greens Leader Nick McKim MP, who described the footage as “horrific and gut-wrenching”, said that the conditions on this farm were an indictment on the government’s willingness to rely upon industry self-regulation, and its failure to yet introduce the random inspections which were promised in 2007.

“We do not want a Tasmania based on cruelty and suffering. We should be proud of the way we farm, but this footage shames us all, and should finally embarrass the government into banning sow stalls and battery hen faming,” Mr McKim said.

“The government’s systems are clearly failing when a brave activist has to bring these horrors to our attention.”

“I was sickened when I saw the appalling conditions these sows were being forced to endure. It’s just unacceptable that such a situation could occur in Premier Bartlett’s supposedly ‘clever and kind’ Tasmania.”

“There must be an immediate ban on sow stalls, and a state commercial farms operations register must be introduced, along with a rigorous inspection regime, as it is clear that reliance upon industry self-regulation failed both these animals and the farm’s customers.”

“These sows were infected with maggots to the extent that one was described as being ‘eaten alive’, with others so emaciated and inflicted with wounds and abscesses they could only lie in the mud and faeces.”

“Mr Bartlett has staked his reputation on turning Tasmania into the nation’s food bowl, and he must now explain why this shocking situation was left undetected, and demand to know what has happened to the random inspections promised by Primary Industries Minister David Llewellyn back in 2007.”

“It will not be good enough for the government to just say that the matter is now before the courts. What is needed is an end to the practice of sow stalls, and a properly funded animal welfare inspection regime.”

http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/EGIL-535VVF?open

Sunday:

ABC TV and radio news is still running the pig cruelty story, Saturday night & Sunday morning, this time quoting the RSPCA boss:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/10/2565657.htm

“The RSPCA says it does not have enough inspectors to properly monitor animal welfare conditions at intensive farms.

The chief executive Glen Tredinnick says he wasn’t aware there were any problems at the piggery.

He says his organisation gets 4,000 animal cruelty complaints a year and has only six inspectors for the whole state.

“Divide that by close to 4,000 jobs, of those 4,000 jobs there are probably 2,000 jobs we’ll have to revisit more than once and there are only so many hours in the day and days in the week,” said Mr Tredinnick.”

Which is no excuse at all.

Kim Peart:

Coincidentally, there is an article in The Age web site featuring Michael Kirby on animal law and intensive farming practices:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/kirby-speaks-out-against-animal-
cruelty-20090509-ayp7.html

Over the years I have observed how people focus on one issue or another and often they do not see relating issues. Only when we have a vision of care that is across the whole society, will the individual issues be better dealt with. Principle and Realpolitik appear to be at opposite poles and our political culture tends to favour compromise and therefor the watering-down of principle. David Spratt and Philip Sutton speak of this problem in ‘Climate Code Red’
on page 157: “Reticence on the part of activists to push for serious action also stems from the pervasive view in politics that everything is subject to compromise,” (more). Thus, Realpolitik with local issues, such as fiddling with the size of Battery Hen cages, or International deals, such as selling the West Papuans into slavery under the Indonesian dictatorship, promising a vote on independence and then allowing the Indonesians to run it (in July 1969 when the World was focused on the Moon landing and the United States president was in Jakarta, drawing nearly all interested journalists away from West Papua). The dark underbelly of democracy.

Sincerely,

Kim Peart