Archive for

Animal Abuser Registry?

California State Senator Dean Florez has proposed creating an ‘abuser registry’ for serious crimes involving animal cruelty. If it becomes law, this bill would place animal abusers on par with sex offenders and require the publication of abusers’ names, photographs, addresses, and other information. A draft copy of the proposed bill can be found here.

Continue reading →

New Animal Welfare Act Amendment Bill Introduced in Parliament

With surprisingly little fanfare or attention, the new Animal Welfare Act Amendment Bill has been introduced into Parliament.  You can download a copy of the Bill and read the government’s statement behind it here.

As promised, it’s got more than just an increase in penalty for wilful ill-treatment.

Watch this space to read my review of the Bill in a few days time…

Links Roundup: ‘Quick, let’s do some research!’ Edition

Let’s just start with something that isn’t totally about animal rights.  Some of you might remember me linking to GreenIsTheNewRed articles about non-violent activists being labelled terrorists.  Well, things are at a bit of the 180 now.  An English member of the European Parliament, Godfrey Bloom, has congratulated the French spies who bombed the Rainbow Warrior in the Waitemata Harbour. John Key PM refused to comment.

And we expect the government to get ‘tough‘ on animal welfare?  John, I’m appalled.

• Meanwhile, as Bloom celebrates the sinking of a Greenpeace vessel and Key dithers, Japanese whalers have again rammed a Sea Shepherd vessel in the Southern Ocean.
• Oh, and whaling isn’t the only animal-based ‘research’ that doesn’t really…work.
• For example, Iran has launched ‘a rodent, turtles and worms to 500 kilometres above the Earth‘.  Apparently, this will either help Iran launch astronauts into space, or…launch ballistic missiles.  I’m not entirely sure how orbital animals could be weaponised…
• But we need ‘research’, or else we wouldn’t have worked out all the great things we can do to meat before it hits the supermarket.
• Gary Francione has posted numerous excellent pieces recently.  He has: Continue reading →

Garth George and the Confused Culture

It’s not often I’m moved to comment on Garth George – for those who are blissfully unfamiliar with his work, he’s a longtime conservative critic for the Herald, who in the past has railed against the decriminalisation of both abortion and homosexuality. Thursday’s Herald included a fascinating editorial in which Mr George commented on the recent 33-dog slaughter in Wellsford, demonstrating a poignant knot that braces much of the globalised Western legal and social culture.

Garth begins his post by enumerating the three things he still cannot get his head around. In his own words:

The first is child abuse, paedophilia and cruelty to domestic animals; the second is male homosexuality; and the third is vegetarianism.

I will refrain from commenting on the second point since this is not the appropriate forum (although I do find the specific phraseology ‘male homosexuality’ fascinating), the first and third of Garth’s big confusions reveal a fascinating contradiction. Interestingly, he spends little time actually commenting on the relative merits or otherwise of vegetarianism or veganism (a distinction he admits ignorance of), and when he meets a member of this strange breed, he, ‘..simply shake[s his] …head in wonder.’ The rest of the editorial is devoted to shaming the perpetrators of some of the more heinous instances of animal cruelty over the recent past. Throughout the post, George makes it clear that he has no practical or comprehensible ethical or philosophical grounding from which this set of arbitrary rules are derived. Continue reading →

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…