Comprehensive Review of the Animal Welfare Act?
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…
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.
I 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…
Some 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