David Tong

Strange Bedfellows: The Netherlands and NZ; Welfarists and the Far Right

Kosher and halal slaughter are now illegal in the Netherlands:

 Just one week after the acquittal of fiery far-right politician Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliament struck another blow against multiculturalism in the Netherlands yesterday with the passage of a bill banning ritual animal slaughter. The bill requires that all animals be stunned before being slaughtered, a requirement that conflicts with halal and kosher stipulations that animals be fully conscious.

At first glance, this looks like a classic example of the far-right undercurrent that lurks below the surface in much of Europe.  It evokes Switzerland’s controversial minaret ban, for example.  You can easily picture a pale, thin Dutchman with close-cropped chestnut hair apoplectic about immigrants, their funny cuisine, and their sick, sick, sick farming practices.

But there’s something more, and something stranger going on there. 

Foreign Policy continues:

The bill was initially proposed by the Party of the Animals, which holds two seats in the 146-seat Dutch parliament and maintains that ritual methods of slaughter are inhumane.

The Party for Animals?  Here in New Zealand, where only one Party has an animal welfare spokesperson, that seems outlandish, and extraordinarily progressive. 

Of course, the far right are still in the game: 

 It gained support from centrists on similar grounds, but Wilders’s Freedom Party has also been a longtime proponent. In fact, it was Wilders who first raised the issue in 2007 when he objected to halal meat being served at a public school in Amsterdam.

Strange bedfellows.  The Dutch animal welfare movement and the Dutch far right.

All movements, especially single-issue movements such as traditional animal welfarism or animal rights, must be careful with who they align themselves with and take real care to consider the unintended consequences of their actions.  In advancing the cause of animals, we must take care not to alienate natural allies.  Animal liberation should not come at the cost of oppressing human minorities.

New Zealand and the Netherlands are bedfellows also.  Both are in the handful of countries that have banned kosher slaughter.  In New Zealand, however, halal slaughter is legal. 

The process was very different.  No odd alliance of the SPCA and the National Front, but the slow, methodical, industry-backed process of Codes of Welfare.  Without hue or cry, we banned kosher slaughter. 

And then backed down:

Under pressure on human rights grounds the Agriculture Minister David Carter has granted an exemption to the Commercial Slaughter Code of Welfare for the local Jewish community, to be able to slaughter chickens without pre-stunning. He is also under heavy pressure to continue to allow a temporary exemption for sheep and cattle, despite it contravening the code of welfare.

What surprises me about this tale is that the state, without an Act of Parliament, banned a fundamental part of Jewish practice.  As a lawyer, I strongly suspect that this Code of Welfare could be open to legal challenge on the grounds that it is ultra vires, or outside the power that Parliament has given the executive.  But to forestall any such claims, David Carter MP backed down.

SAFE is campaigning for him to stick to his guns – but I’d pick an easier battle.  Campaigning against Jewish religious expression makes you an easy target.

Long Live the Solution

Welcome to the Solution 2.0

When we started this blog two years ago, we did not think we would still be writing for it now.  We hoped that SoLVe would attract new writers to the blog each year.  We hoped that this would become a self-sustaining student initiative.

That did not happen.  The Solution has been in limbo for the last four months.  As some of you no doubt know, the Society of Legal Vegans and Vegetarians was wound up at the end of 2010.  It had a good run, forging strong friendships, and opening a lot of students’ minds to vegan and vegetarian alternatives.  But, unfortunately, we failed to really pass the baton on.  No younger crop of vegan and vegetarian law students seized the reins.

So, we wondered: What about the blog?

We could have let it wither away, or stand as a memorial to a student group that was.

But we decided not to do that.  We took a leave of absence, and now we’re back.  Better looking, faster, cleaner. Welcome to the new Solution.  Of the five original writers, two remain.  The rest have left Auckland, for Canada, Latin America, and Wellington.

Things are a bit different around here.  The new look is the most obvious change.  The Solution has had a makeover.  A more subtle change lies below that though.  Vernon and I are no longer just writing about veganism and animal law.  We are writing about what we want to write about.  From the start, we have both seen veganism and ecology as intimately connected, so expect to see more about the environment here.  This isn’t a blog about animal law anymore – if it ever was.

This is the blog we want to write.  And we want to write about a finer world and the practical ways we can make that happen – like veganism.

To Catch a Falling Star…

I’m currently reading John Brunner‘s Catch a Falling Star.  The setting is surreal, fantastic even.  It comes across as a simple, dream-like tale, set many millennia hence, after the rise and fall of countless human empires and civilisations.  Ideas abound.  Big ideas.

As I write this, Tom Morello, the Nightwatchman, sings: The sky is falling, the sky is falling…

I’m not mad yet.  This is about animals, ecology, and veganism.  Bear with me for a moment.

The novel is one of Brunner’s earlier works, revised from one of his earliest novels.  But still.  Brunner is an author of tremendous vision.  His big novels – Stand on Zanzibar, about corporate control of an African state, AI, and the brutal military deconstruction of one man; The Sheep Look Up, about ecological collapse and the solution (the death of America); the Shockwave Rider, in which he coined the term ‘worm’ for a computer virus (in 1975);

But Catch a Falling Star is not really science fiction or fantasy.  Catch a Falling Star is a simple parable.  Every night, the Meat arrives in town.  Sometime, between now and the hundredth millenium in which the book is set, someone bred a bipedal species: the Meat.  And they run laughing to their deaths, joyously dying so that the people of the town can eat.

I cannot help but wonder how closely this vision parallels most people’s perceptions of the animal industries.  The meat just appears in the supermarket in a flash.  Perhaps, with a little thought, they recall that the animals were killed.  But, of course, sensible, smart, scientific people design cold, clinical slaughterhouses, so the animals die without pain.  And the farmers treat the animals nicely, so the animals live long, happy lives.  If they knew they were dying to make delicious food, they’d be happy, right?

Continue reading »

5 Quick Thoughts on Citizens and Consumers

This post germinated in my mind as I walked home from SoLVe’s screening of Food Inc last night. The SoLVe team did a great job.  After the movie, Vernon Tava (Co-Editor of The Solution and past SoLVe President) facilitated a discussion between the 50-70 students present, with two lecturers – Peter Sankoff and Mohsen Al-Attar – present as expert commentators.

One of the most resounding and repeated themes was: What do we do now?  Naturally, I think we should go vegan – that’s a given.  But more fundamentally we should think more about what we eat – and what we consume in other ways.  When we come to food, we are all consumers.  To claim that is a tautology: We consume food.

Mohsen presented a juxtaposition between the self as consumer and the self as citizen.  I want to make five simple observations. Continue reading »

Closing the Loopholes?

With much fanfare, the government launched an animal welfare amendment bill earlier this year.  You may remember our scepticism.  Now, with much less fanfare, Sue Kedgley MP’s clumsily-titled private members bill, the Animal Welfare Amendment (Treatment of Animals) Bill has been balloted to receive its first reading in September.

So, what does she hope to do? Continue reading »

Guest Post: The Australian Whaling Claim

by William Fotherby

Will is a graduate of the University of Auckland and a solicitor at Bell Gully.  In 2008, he was one of the editors-in-chief of the Auckland University Law Review.

Australia has taken its campaign to end Japanese whaling to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).  The Australian statement of claim, dated 31 May 2010, alleges that Japan is in breach of its obligations under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW).  It seeks an order revoking any permits by which Japan has conducted scientific whaling in the Antarctic and assurances from Japan that it will not conduct similar activities in the future.  New Zealand, among other countries, has indicated that it will look seriously at joining this court action.  This, after attempts to reach a political solution at the IWC’s annual meeting, in Agadir, Morocco, failed. Continue reading »

Links for June 2010

Looking back over the month that was…

• Whaling remains controversial; while some talk compromise, others call for human rights for whales.  Obama is accused of supporting whale slaughter.  Australia heads to the ICJ, and New Zealand struggles to catch up.  Still others criticise the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for, apparently, cutting New Zealander Peter Bethune loose, on trial in Japan.  Is whaling in the balance?
• The Florida Gulf oil spill has put the brown pelican back on the brink of extinction.
• On Human-Nonhuman Relations continues to add new dimensions to the animal rights discourse, now stressing the importance of language.
• Great advances!  Mankind has created the first…mathematical…model…of…cow…behaviour.  Um.
• I couldn’t make it up: ‘Hippopotamus on menu at Beijing zoo‘.
• Crafar Farms is still making news (‘Mr Norman earlier said the top-level visit would add pressure from China to win approval for a bid to buy thousands of hectares of dairy farm land from the Crafar family.’).  Nandor Tanzcos editorialises.  Prime Minister John Key’s blind trust has invested in…the Dairy Investment Fund.
• The link between cruelty to animals and to humans receives more comment.
• Interesting links between veg(etari)anism and empathy.
• Worldwatch criticises food waste (such as omnivorous diets?).
• Another year, another animal law course, another article on the growth of AnimalLaw (via AnimalBlawg).
• Mike King reprises his attack on the NZ pork industry.

Return of the Links Digest

After a long absence, the links roundup is back from the grave.  What can I say?  Life’s been too busy, but now, fortified with six eight shots of espresso ['I could see colors that weren’t in the visible spectrum...'], I give you a summary of animal law and animal rights related links from the last few weeks.

• An orca killed someone again.  The American Family Association blames them godless vegetarians.  Vegan.com extracts the urine.  The Telegraph is half insightful and half inane, and Change.org analyses the gibberish.

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture.

• Orca kills man: Controversy.  Man kills orca species: Who cares? Continue reading »

Regular Transmission Will Resume Shortly

It’s been a quiet few weeks here at the Solution, but we have a few opinion pieces and articles in the pipeline.  Where have we been?

• David and James have been frantically training, fundraising, and walking the Oxfam Trailwalker 2010.  Last weekend, Team Vegan knocked off the 100km in 22 hours and 26 minutes – and, no, it’s not a relay. Team Vegan finished 64th out of 265 teams. Go Team Vegan!
• Vernon has been polishing off his thesis, coming up on the final weeks of his Master’s degree in law.
• Ed has been fighting the (mostly) good fight, buried in work at the Manukau District Court.
• Peter has spent six weeks back home in Canada.

Regular transmisson will resume shortly.  In the meantime – or any time – if you’re interested in writing a guest column for the blog, email us at contribute@thesolution.org.nz.

Guest Post: Christian Vegetarianism: Misconceptions and Common Grounds

by James Morrison

James is a relatively recent graduate of the University of Auckland, who admits to an imprudent admiration of St Francis alongside a prodigious capacity for cognitive dissonance. He is currently researching the history of education law in New Zealand while contemplating matching words with deeds.

I am an amateur rather than a scholar of moral theology and the Bible, but I hope that by commenting on the relation of Christianity to veganism or vegetarianism, I can contribute to a more reasoned discussion of this topic than comes from some quarters whose enthusiasm can obscure accuracy.

The first point that I want to make has to do with ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal welfare’.  Christianity does not support animal rights.  It does support animal welfare.  This may well disappoint the more hardcore vegans and vegetarians. Continue reading »