MPI response to skinny cows “unacceptable” – SAFE
SAFE is urgently renewing calls for a Commissioner for Animals, following MPI’s lacklustre response to images of thin to emaciated cows, taken on two separate farms in recent weeks.
SAFE received images via its 0800 EXPOSE programme, which showed thin cattle on a farm near Palmerston.
The images were passed on to the Ministry for Primary Industries, who said an inspector who had visited the farm found no offences and the farm had sufficient supplies of supplementary feed on hand.
SAFE soon after received photos from another farm near Whangamatā, again showing thin cattle. These were also passed on to MPI, who said after an inspection that all the animals are at or above the minimum standard, and no offences were detected.
SAFE Head of Investigations Will Appelbe said questions remain about how the cattle could have gotten so thin.
“The state of these cows indicates they have not had sufficient nutrition for some time,” said Appelbe.
“If MPI considers the condition of these cattle as acceptable, then there are fundamental issues with the minimum standards used to assess animal welfare on farms. We think most people would consider the state of these cattle as unacceptable.”
Animal welfare in Aotearoa is currently regulated by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) – the same government body responsible for improving agricultural productivity. This is a clear conflict of interest.
“Aotearoa has Government bodies to represent the most vulnerable populations in society, including the environment. Animals, however, are not represented by an independent voice.”
“A Commissioner for Animals would bring independence to animal welfare, which, as evidenced by these photographs, is sorely needed in New Zealand.”
It would help to know if these are dairy cows or beef cows. There is absolutely no excuse for beef cows to be skinny and it is counter productive as the aim is to get them to a certain weight as soon as possible so that they can be killed and we can eat them.
Today’s dairy cows are bred so that they will produce as much milk as possible. Usually this means that they have to use their body fat to help produce the milk because they can not or do not get enough energy from their food intake to do so. This is a fine line for farmers. You want them to be in good condition when they calve so that they deplete their body weight while milking but not too much because you also want them to resume their menstrual cycle as soon as possible so that you can get them pregnant quickly to ensure a long milking season next year. This also explains why it is important for dairy farmers to support deforestation and the planting of large palm oil plantations. Farmers need to import the cheap byproducts of palm oil, the vegetation bit, to feed their cows. This is because farmers need to put more cows on their farm then they can feed using what is grown on their farm. The main reason for this is that they have paid too much for their land and their cows and owe the banks too much money. So in order to make some owner of a financial institution in some part of the world richer a NZ farmer has borrowed money from his local branch of an Aussie bank but still needs to have skinny cows in a constant state of diarrhea (that’s another story)