New Zealand Open Rescue

From Animal Freedom Aotearoa's website www.animalfreedom.org.nz

It was before first light on Sunday 20th February. After careful planning the Coalition to End Factory Farming (New Zealand Open Rescue, Animal Freedom Aotearoa and the Wellington Animal Rights Network) set off for a battery hen farm in Tuakau. Around 6am Coalition members, corporate media and our own team of camera toting documenters converged at the entrance to the factory farm.

By around 6:35am two well prepared protesters from the Coalition were atop two 7 metre high feed silos, holding up banners that read 'ban cages', and 'battery hens suffer' to highlight the plight of the birds in the sheds below. Another larger banner was attached high to the front of the silos. The sickening stench of the farm permeated our nostrils in waves.

As the day progressed more caring people came to join us in opposition to Factory Farming. Tasty vegan foods kept us well sustained and in good cheer.The Tuakau farm is situated on a high traffic rural road and we recieved an overwhelmingly positive response from countless motorists, many stopped to express their disgust with the cruel ways the hens are kept and factory farming in general, showing a keen awareness of many issues.Locals joined us, taking up placards and banners. Some local children even baked us biscuits to help keep up energy levels, amazing!

Overall, we received a lot of media coverage from a broad section of corporate media, as well as our own media who were uploading images and messages from the demo throughout the day, we received a lot of positive feedback and some people even responded directly by coming out and joining the protest.

Coalition media spokespeople appeared on television news shows making clear, well backed arguments in favour of abolishing factory farming and when possible against farming in general. 

There was a fluctuating number of police throughout the day with little impact on our activities other than trespassing protesters from the farm.

Overall we had a strong presence and a good turn out. We wish to say a big thanks to all who got involved! 

New Zealand Open Rescue recently investigated a North Island intensive piggery where we documented disgusting conditions inside farrowing and fattening buildings. Sadly these conditions are nothing out of the ordinary - in fact they are the norm. The problem is not with isolated farms but with systems that treat animals as units of production - animal machines.  

Piglets in the fattening rooms were filthy and covered in flies. They were confined to pens in decrepit rooms inside a building that looked like it should be condemned.  

The sows confined to farrowing crates were clearly suffering. They all looked like they'd lost the will to live and were merely existing. They too were covered in flies and many had contact wounds on their backs from where they constantly rubbed against the crate bars confining them. Again they were imprisoned in a series of rooms that could only be described as miserable. Years worth of cobwebs and filth hung from the ceilings.  

We spent two hours inside this farm and felt a heavy sense of years and years worth of suffering and misery as we walked from room to room documenting everything.  

While it is a victory that sow stalls will be banned in five years, absolutely nothing has been done about farrowing crates which are just as cruel. The photographs of sows in crates from this investigation speak for themselves. The suffering of the sows is apparent in their eyes. To look at them up close and in the flesh, we felt it was like they'd given up all hope, felt no joy and knew they never would.  

Its up to the public of New Zealand to make real change for animals imprisoned on factory farms across our country. It was the public that forced a ban on sow stalls and it will be the public that sees an end to all factory farming. Its time for the people of New Zealand to say enough is enough! People power is the only thing that will force these cruel industries to change!  

Join us at the March to End Factory Farming, 5 March 2011, Wellington www.endfactoryfarming.org.nz