New Zealand Open Rescue

Today I appeared in the Hamilton District Court as a result of a protest earlier this year. A few months ago I locked myself to a silo on a pig farm to draw attention to cruel nature of pig farming. I was hoping that through actions like mine we would see a phase out of the factory farming of pigs through the new Code of Welfare for Pigs. The protest which received national media attention ended with the police cutting me from the silo and charging me with Trespass. As a result today I and around ten supporters travelled to Hamilton for my court case and to hold an awareness raising protest outside the court.

Before court started we held an hour long picket, displaying photos taken recently inside pig farms and holding a banner reading “Factory Farmed Pigs Suffer”. We received a lot of support from passers by with many stopping and talking to us about what we were doing. Several people going into the court mentioned they had worked on pig farms, of these most supported our protest. We later heard our protest was the talk of the court with many lawyers highly interested in who we were and what we were doing.

At ten am we headed into court for what was supposed to be my trial. We quickly found out that far too many cases had been booked for our court room and after a considerable delay my trial was postponed. This was a considerable disappointment and an inconvenience for my supporters, family and wonderful lawyer who had all travelled for the trial. After some negotiation we managed to get another date on September the 10th in the Hamilton District court. Once again supporters are welcome to attend on this date.

While I am proud of my action I am deeply saddened that little progress has been made over the past few months. Over the past 18 months there has been widespread consumer opposition and disgust at current pig farming practices. Despite this the final draft Code of Welfare for Pigs before Agriculture Minister David Carter in October looks like it will do little for the pigs suffering and dying in farms across New Zealand. Open Rescue and groups like us will continue to work to expose conditions in these farms and rescue animals from a lifetime of misery. Regardless of the eventual outcome of this trial I am committed to taking action on behalf of these animals which cannot speak for themselves.

John Darroch

New Zealand Open Rescue activist John Darroch, will appear in Hamilton District Court at 10am tomorrow defending charges after chaining himself to a piggery in Roto-O-Rangi near Cambridge earlier this year.  Darroch is charged with trespass and unlawfully being in a building.

Darroch chained himself to a 6-m tall silo on the Roto-O-Rangi piggery in protest against legalised cruelty within the New Zealand pork industry. Darroch was prepared to occupy the farm for up to two days and nights but was cut free by police after a day’s occupation.

The action was timed with a government review of the Code of Welfare that regulates how pigs are farmed. A Colmar Brunton Survey carried out late last year showed that 77% of New Zealanders want a ban on sow stalls and farrowing crates, yet the Pork Board has consistently refused to change cruel farming practices.

Darroch says, “A Levin piggery owned by ex-Pork Board member Colin Kay was recently exposed for the third time by New Zealand Open Rescue. This is the same farm that shocked former pork industry frontman Mike King. We couldn’t believe that despite the public outrage, conditions at this piggery were actually worse.

“We have since inspected other piggeries across the country, including a facility at Hawera, and we have found consistently horrific conditions”.

New Zealand Open Rescue would like to follow up at the Roto-O-Rangi piggery and see if conditions there have changed, however the Pork Board is working to ensure that doesn't happen.

Darroch says, “A private investigation firm was used to track down the homes and workplaces of a number of our members and serve them trespass notices to prevent them from re-entering the Roto-O-Rangi piggery. Clearly the Pork Board prefers to have their farms hidden behind closed doors.

“Our legislation is failing these animals. What will it take to change this industry? How much more legalised cruelty do we need to expose before the Pork Board and the government finally act to clean up their mess?”

Recently the Tasmanian government announced a ban on sow stalls. Australia’s largest pork producer, Riverlea, has banned the use of sow stalls and the Australian supermarket chain Coles will no longer sell pork from pigs raised in sow stalls. Open Rescue questions why the New Zealand pork industry is falling so far behind.

“The final draft Code of Welfare for Pigs will be before the Minister of Agriculture David Carter in October. We would like to see some concrete changes for pigs in the new Code but we are not hopeful. The Pork Board puts economics first and refuses to change despite public outrage.

“We will continue to expose the pork industry and carry out non-violent civil disobedience as long as our animal welfare legislation is nothing more than a regulatory facade” concludes Darroch.

Recently New Zealand Open Rescue inspected a free range egg production facility located in the lower North Island. This facility was a small scale commercial operation but we were shocked at what we uncovered. From the outside, the facility looked like a typical battery hen unit; ominous, industrial scale warehouse sheds with large feed silos. Inside the units, things looked quite different but the callous treatment of animals as mere units of production was exactly the same as on any other type of factory farm.

Several thousand egg laying hens were crammed inside the sheds which were sectioned in half. The hens were panicked and hysterical, terrified of humans. As we moved slowly through the crowds of hens documenting their living conditions, we noticed several of them suffered from prolapses and many had rubbed red raw skin. All the hens in this facility were de-beaked.  Free range hens are still often de-beaked as living in flocks of several thousand is highly un-natural. Hens can’t find any sort of meaningful social order in such large flocks, so fighting is constant in order to establish hierarchy.

Following our visit to this facility, we were shocked to learn that there are no regulations around how often supposed ‘free range’ hens are meant to be allowed access to the outdoors. A local in the area told us that they had seen the hens at the facility we visited outside only once in over a year!  We felt that the many people who purchase free range eggs in good faith that conditions for animals are better in this type of production system, would be shocked if they had seen what we witnessed. The idyllic scene of happy free range hens scratching in the earth and basking in the sunshine that comes to mind when people purchase free range eggs was certainly not what we experienced during our investigation at this typical free range facility.

View photographs from our investigation here