Humans have always used other animals harshly.  The maltreatment of animals in hauling carriages, vivisection, fox-hunting, bull-baiting and cock fighting were among matters debated by social reformers in the early nineteenth century, and that led to the formation of the RSPCA in London in 1824.[5] 

 

Since then, the SPCA has been established in many places in the world including here in New Zealand, in 1872.

 

In this country, as elsewhere, the SPCA has been criticised for concentrating on domestic ‘pets’ and ignoring the plight of the millions of equally sentient animals suffering in factory farms. 

 

In an exciting development RSPCA members in the UK have called for a major cut in meat and dairy consumption.   Simultaneously, a legal case is being launched by the organisation Humane Being to force government ministers to address the cruelties and injustices of intensive animal agriculture.

 

In June last year, New Zealand’s animal rights organisation SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation) partnered with the New Zealand Animal Law Association to challenge the use of cruel farrowing crates in the High Court.  This was the first time in New Zealand history that such a challenge had taken place, and resulted in a decision that farrowing crates to house mother pigs is a violation of the Animal Welfare Act.   

 

Hopefully mounting legal challenges to our governments to address these injustices will be increasingly common in 2021, and the RSPCA UK will have set a precedent for other SPCAs to start campaigning for all animals.  

 

Read the Independent article here 

‘WE WILL NOT STOP!’

Guest speaker Ilan Goldberg impressed listeners at the Wellington (NZ) Animal Rights March on 28th November with his original poem, an abridged version we reprint here.  

Ilan talks about the hypocrisies of a small and beautiful land that punches above its weight in many ways, and cares about some animals, yet turns a blind eye to the sufferings of animals raised for food.

‘For Megan the Brave, and her
fellow teen-aged heroes’.

 

Blessed, this fair land of ours

Kissed by cloud, wind and sea

100 per cent pure beauty

God’s own for you and me

We count our stars now daily

So lucky here to be

Here we prance so gayly

From foreign lands we flee

 

 

We’re pioneers, this side of Earth

Care and fairness we admire

To nuclear physics we gave birth

Then fixed it with eight wire

We care for sick and wounded

Thank you ACC

‘Woke’ to slang we added

We’re slightly less racey

We also care for our dumb beasts

For in victory we’re gracious

But rights for them will ruin feasts

Please vegans, don’t be precious

 

Eating them is natural

As natural as Ebola

Circle of life means all is fine

Geometry is moral

Killing is normal just right now

Majorities are never wrong

To add to death we must avow

Kill, and you’ll belong

 

And don’t forget, they want to die

To feed us is their purpose

We breed them so; it’s not a lie

For us, their life is surplus

 

And anyway, their life is joy

So good we’ve put up fences

Humane death does not annoy

We’ve taken all their senses

Or so at least I’ve heard it said

Meat experts never lie

I’ve never looked at how they’re bled

I couldn’t bear to cry

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m tough as nails

As manly as my meat

I’m so strong I could eat whales

Cows cower at my feet

 

Without my bacon I will squeal

But otherwise I’m daring

Even Achilles had his heal

And mine it seems is caring

 

But I do care about you folks

I’m killing them to save you all

If I don’t, that’s not a hoax

They’ll rise up and we will fall

Our mother’s milk, cows will drink

Pigs will smoke us tender

Chicks will then their role rethink

And mash us in a blender

 

 

Now if you think I’m slightly mad

Consider this hard proof

Without a living we’d be had

Economy is truth

 

It is good for purchase price

To cut parts off with a device

To keep a mum from baby

To kill a world for gravy

 

Our law is also not untrue

Best welfare law; that’s lucky

The best among a choice of poo

Will still end up quite funky

 

Our welfare law is not for them

They wouldn’t write such evil phlegm

It was written by rich white men

Between their fangs were parts of hen

 

So full of holes, so unenforced

Its toothless gums from good divorced

What it allows should make us see

Its purpose is to set harm free

 

Welfare experts, aren’t they great

If they approve, why hesitate

They say the harm’s our fantasy

Or else the best we’ll ever see

 

To cheat the science for money’s sake

Tobacco taught to any snake

Their welfare expert is pure bull

Welfare committees are a stool

 

Ignore as well our heart disease

Our colon cancer’s high

Diabetes is a breeze

The superbugs, Just fry

 

And plants will suffer if you feed

Prick a plant; does it not bleed?

All ye stoners; replant that weed

All fashionistas; drop that thneed

 

Animals; their mind’s a joke

Only people are so woke

For there is nothing it is like

 

To be a cow tied in the rack

Or a layer that’s pecked raw

To be a sow locked in a crack

Or a fish that’s crushed like straw

 

 

To be a prawn, eyestalks ablated

Or a broiler, limbs ill-fated

A new-born calf when separated

Or a piglet when castrated

 

 

All these harms do not exist

By God I swear to love them

And on this point I must insist

Like my own kids I love them

 

Like my own kids I lock, I tie

And let them live in faeces

I feed them drugs or else they’ll die

Then chop them into pieces

 

Inseminate with mutant DNA

To fill my golden pot

They don’t need to walk each day

They’re free to range right on the spot

But I’ve a right to choose to kill

O liberty: you’re such a thrill

Their liberty? No don’t be daft

Use your brain, you vegan shaft

We’re no monsters; too civilised

We delegate; don’t criticize

The killing’s done far far away

Hidden from us who choose to pay

 

,

Thank heavens then, that we’ve a brain

So big it gives us moral reign

By that I mean to kill in vain

As many killed as drops of rain

Pray tell, could this get any madder

Could our brains just make us badder

We are gods, and they are nothing

Perhaps its sentience we’re lacking

 

But even God said meat is ours

It’s not just my opinion

In love he gave us special powers

Just don’t look up ‘dominion’

 

 

Does God so clearly love his meat

His gift for us to kill and eat?

Without a spleen, God is like Megan

If He can’t eat, He’s just as vegan

 

Oh yes my friends, our nation’s great

A land of plenty fills our plate

But there is something we forget

We’re not Kiwis; not just yet

 

We can teach ourselves some morals

We can evolve from flesh to florals

Thou shalt not kill; our books do say

A right to life; to love; to play

 

 

Ilan Goldberg reading his poem at the Wellington Animal Rights March

Fellow marchers;

You’ve seen the light

You’ve heard their scream

You’ve felt their fright

You are their dream

 

Our mission vast; but we will cope

Fight to the last. We’ll never drop

We are heroes. We are hope

Hear us O world: WE WILL NOT STOP!

 

More than 500 people walked through the streets of Wellington on Saturday November 28th to demand justice for New Zealand animals.

 

Ban the cruel and worthless ‘Forced Swim’ experiment

The ‘Forced Swim’ or ‘Near Drowning’ test was supposedly designed to gauge the antidepressant qualities of drugs.    It is not only completely inhumane, it is completely hopeless.  Since the 1970s not one antidepressant drug developed as a result of the test is still in use.

And yet it is still being funded and carried out all over the world, including two New Zealand Universities.

 

Read about the test in this NZAVS article, and sign the petition here

 

Read the PETA article here

 

 

 

SIX REASONS YOU SHOULD GIVE UP DAIRY

End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch advocates for bobby calves through her group Starfish Bobby Calf Project.     In this blog she outlines six reasons why we should give up eating dairy products. 

 

This is a photo of a bobby calf taken just the other day in New Zealand by animal rights activist Sandra Kyle. It is an animal cruelty issue for the following six reasons:-

 

ONE

This calf will die traumatized. He is legally allowed to be transported for up to 8 hours, before being killed. He will find it difficult to balance on the truck floor, which is hard and caked in calf urine and feces. He may slip and fall over. He may drown in the urine as it puddles on the truck floor – I have heard first hand accounts of this from bobby calf truck drivers.

 

TWO

This calf will die hungry. He can legally go for 24 hours without being fed milk before being killed. He is a neonate – a mammal with a strong desire to suckle. Normally he would suckle from his mother at least 8 times in 24 hours. This natural instinct to suckle is frustrated when he needs it most.

 

THREE

This calf will die alone and frightened. He will die without his mother. He is programmed to stick closely to his mother’s side for safety and food. She is his lifeline. Without her, he will be stressed and anxious.

 

FOUR

This calf will die unloved. He will be regarded in his final hours as nothing more than a waste product that needs to be disposed of. He will not be seen as a unique individual who has a personality. Instead he will join the tens of thousands of bobby calves who end their lives on concrete killing floors every week in New Zealand. Around 2 million bobby calves a year are murdered.

 

FIVE

This calf will die for nothing. He will be mutilated in a disrespectful way when dead. He will be skinned, dismembered, and rendered into a product for human use. Those long eyelashes, the soft coat, the delicate body will become a gruesome pile of bits.

 

SIX

This calf will die because no one cared. He will die because people choose to produce and consume products made from the milk of his mother.   You have the choice. He doesn’t.

This calf has already been killed. He was likely a male calf, and he was killed between 4-10 days of age. He was a jersey, a common breed used for the high production of milk. His mother will be in the milking shed, and the milk her body produces for her calf is being siphoned for human consumption and profit.

Choose compassion and not cruelty.  Ditch Dairy Now.

 

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and Lecturer in Education.

Fish Are Way Smarter Than We Think

Seventy percent of the planet is covered with water.  Trillions of fish live within our oceans, and many of them display rich and complex behaviours.   Fish are smart.

They are also sentient, according to the broad consensus from the scientific community. ‘Sentient’ means they feel physical and emotional pain.

Given the trillions of intelligent, sentient beings we torture and slaughter annually for human consumption, and the likelihood that overfishing will wipe out ocean life before the end of the century, it is high time that governments display enough courage to put an end to the carnage.  

Listen to the Radio New Zealand interview with Australian fish expert Professor Calum Brown here

 

 

Fishing Is Torture For Sentient Beings

This week three teenage boys reeled in a 700lb Tuna, who they tortured for 7 hours. We can only imagine the pain the fish went through as it bravely fought for its life.

Fish are not vegetables.  They feel pain and distress in analogous ways to other animals.

Fishing is one of the cruellest pastimes there is, and it is unfathomable that we teach it to our children.

All methods of fishing are cruel to fishes, and overfishing harms many other creatures in the marine environment. 

It is time to give up eating fish.  

 

Try the vegan challenge at challenge22.com

 

Read about the tuna catch here

 

Find out more about fishing here

 

 

 

 

 

Viscous soup should be Vicious soup. The horror of shark finning.

Key Points

 

– Hong Kong is the largest shark fin importer in the world, and responsible for about half of the global trade.

 

– The fins are often cut from sharks while they are still alive, and they are then thrown back into the ocean to die an agonising death.

 

– In May, customs officials made the biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history: 26 tonnes of fins, contained  in two shipping containers from Ecuador, cut from the bodies of 38,500 endangered sharks.

 

– Shark fin soup is a feature at wedding banquets and other feasts in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, as because they are expensive and prized as a status symbol.

 

– 100 million sharks are being mutilated and killed every year for this gluggy soup.  The fins themselves don’t have much taste.

 

– When the demand for shark fin soup stops, so will the carnage.

Read the Guardian article here:

 

 

 

Malia’s Story

This is a mother, being dragged inside a slaughterhouse to have her throat slit.

Look at her poor, humped body, marked in indelible pen by the farmer who decreed her no longer profitable. She has spent her life in Hell from the moment she was born, but she is still afraid of death, and drags her feet desperately as she tries to resist her fate.
Inside her heart is pounding and the blood is rushing to her head. In mere moments, that blood  will be spilled on a filthy slaughterhouse floor, and splashed upon the aprons of those paid to murder her.
She was selectively bred to produce as many piglets as possible, and she has given birth to dozens of babies.   She was first impregnated when she was only eight months old. 
She spent her entire life in cages, lined up with hundreds of other sows in an enormous, barren, foul smelling shed. Bars separated her from her sisters. She could never seek comfort or security from pressing against the flesh of her kind. She could not escape. She could not retreat. She could not turn around.
All day every day this naturally clean girl lay in her own excrement on the hard concrete floor.  Her muscles ached and drew tight, and she developed sores from rubbing against the steel bars. In the pain and intense stress that this confinement caused her, she bit the bars of the steel cage that surrounded her, and her mouth filled with white foam that spat from her mouth when she cried out her distress.
All day every day this naturally clean girl lay in her own excrement on the hard concrete floor.  Her muscles ached and drew tight, and she developed sores from rubbing against the steel bars. In the pain and intense stress that this confinement caused her, she bit the bars of the steel cage that surrounded her, and her mouth filled with white foam that spat from her mouth when she cried out her distress.
After enduring her pregnancy in this prison the size of a household fridge, she was moved to yet another cage – a birthing cage, or ‘farrowing crate’, in preparation for having her babies. Prompted by her natural instincts, she immediately looked around for something to build a nest with – but could find nothing.
She was so stressed and tense that the birth was all the more painful for her. When her piglets arrived, the steel bars prevented her from interacting with them. Her babies latched onto her teets as she lay motionless on her side, sinking ever deeper into despair. She longed to satisfy her natural yearning to care for her babies properly, but she never could, and a normal mother-piglet bond was never formed.
When her babies were just three weeks old, they were forcibly weaned and taken from her. She was then returned to another cage to be made pregnant again, and the painful cycle repeated a number of times until she was ‘spent’ and no longer any use to the farmer. She was then sent to the slaughterhouse.
Which is where you see her now.
This girl never had a name, just a number.
So I will call her Malia, which means ‘Beloved’

 

–    Sandra Kyle

 

Sandra Kyle is the owner of End Animal Slaughter, website, which she started in 2018

with the goal of closing all slaughterhouses in the Western World by 2025. 

‘Not Your Feathers, Not Your Food’

In this article End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch agrees that chicken feathers do not belong in KFC packets.  Neither does the chicken.  (All photos accompanying this article were taken in 2018 when activists from Direct Animal Action entered a Tegel (New Zealand) Broiler Chicken factory).

 

An anonymous UK mother from Blackpool who served her son KFC with feathers in it has complained to the KFC branch concerned. She also posted pictures on Facebook with the offending feathers (feature photo).

This customer was so appalled that she wrote ‘I won’t ever eat KFC again’.

I don’t get it. Chicken is a bird. Last time I looked they came complete with feathers.

A healthy ‘Cobb’ chicken, the same breed commonly used as chickens reared for meat on factory farms.

 

If you think your chicken should have the feathers removed before you consume them then perhaps consider what you are eating. Which, to be fair, she has – but it took the presence of the bird’s feathers to engender such outright disgust.

I’m offended as well. I’m offended for the chicken. What, seriously, do you think the chicken felt when his life was brutally ended in a medieval assembly line torture chamber?

In the UK chickens bred for their meat are killed though electrical systems or gas systems. Electrical systems involve hanging the chickens upside down on metal shackles and stunning them using electrified water. They then have their throats slit with an automated knife.

Due to individual variation in resistance to the stunning process, some birds are inevitably only electro-immobilized (paralyzed but fully conscious). They are then bled out and plunged into a tub of scalding water to remove their feathers. I guess the poor chicken in the KFC box of the UK woman just didn’t get all his feathers removed.

Chickens in New Zealand are also killed by this system of electrical stunning and throat slitting. It is notoriously inhumane, considering that many birds are not unconscious during the process and get their necks cut while paralyzed. They also may break their legs while being shackled.

If you are happy to gamble on which bird you are eating (the stunned or electro – immobilized) then hands – up I am offended. I’d write a letter, for all the good it would do me, to complain to the factories that raise (and I use that term very loosely) these birds to be killed and send them to slaughter.

And that is the problem isn’t it? Consumers get heard, they get listened to and apologies and refunds.

Thrown onto the barn floor at a few days old, the little chicks at first have some room to run around.   However, as they are bred to grow rapidly to reach slaughter week at just 6 weeks old they become so cramped that they can barely move.  

 

Animal activists, on the other hand, have to actually twist themselves inside out to get footage of animal suffering, document it, analyse it to see if it breaches welfare standards – before they even complain. And they have to use their own money. And then more often than not, it does not get taken seriously. They definitely don’t get a refund.

Walk into any ‘broiler’ factory farm and you will find a percentage of dead birds.  The overburdening of the birds’ underdeveloped cardiopulmonary systems often causes congestive heart failure before they reach slaughter weight.

 

Take for example, Direct Animal Action who investigated a chicken factory farm owned by Tegal in 2018. This farm was a KFC supplier. The investigators found countless lame chickens unable to reach water, slowly dying. Ammonia in the shed from chicken waste was so strong the activists had to wear masks. The crowded sheds housed dead and live birds together.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.

Basically, the suffering of chickens is a necessary evil if you want your KFC. You simply cannot raise that many animals, that quickly without factory farming them.

So yes, I am offended. Every chicken in that shed is quite literally a dead chicken walking (if they are not lame). They all have a target on their feathered backs, and live a life of misery while they wait. Well, when I say a life, I mean six weeks. These birds are bred to reach slaughter weight fast – too fast for their legs which collapse under them.

A chicken unable to right him or herself will die from dehydration, because they are physically unable to even reach the water nozzles in their sheds. 

 

A chicken is a sentient being – meaning they have feelings including fear, joy, and pain. We may associate such emotions with humans, but our emotional repertoire is not unique to us. We have more in common with animals than we don’t. In fact, the emotional make-up of animals is very similar to that of humans.

I can’t begin to think what they are going through during their time incarcerated in a factory and the slaughter process. It’s a horror film.

So back to the UK scenario of the fried feathers. Reading further in the article it says: ‘It doesn’t meet the Colonel’s usual high standards, and it’s certainly not the reunion we want people to have with their favourite fried chicken after some time apart!’

Say, what? A reunion with fried chicken after some time apart because of lockdown? Seriously?

KFC is using this Covid-19 situation to continue their marketing line that the Colonel (who is now dead along with the chickens in the boxes) has high standards. High standards for who? Not for the chicken who hobbles around, lame from the excess weight his legs cannot support the plump juicy breasts of your favourite meal.

I remain incredulous that people can consider meat of chicken as something they have grown emotionally attached to. In reality, they are attached to the fried batter, the oils and herbs and spices. Give them a plain chicken breast and they would not be so excited.

There is nothing wrong with the enjoyment of herbs, spices, oils and so forth. This can be wrapped around a fake meat if you like. Just please leave the chickens, and their feathers out of it.

As well as lameness and heart failure, other common causes of death pre-slaughter are heat prostration, cancer—in an animal less than seven weeks old—and infectious diseases.  Ammonia blindness and ammonia conjunctivitis are eye conditions the birds can suffer from.

 

Not your feathers, not your body, not your food.

So to the ‘angry Mum’ in this article – get angry about the suffering of the chicken and the destruction of our planet caused by fast food outlets like KFC. Don’t be angry at the feathers. They are poignant and sad reminder that someone once lived.

They belonged to somebody. Just not you.

 

 

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and a Lecturer in Education

‘Your Pain Is Mine’ Q&A: Indian Politician and Animal Activist, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi

When End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle visited India in 2018 as the recipient of the Philip Wollen Animal Welfare Award, she was presented with her certificate by Maneka Gandhi, then Minister for Women and Child Development in the Narendra Modi government.  Her brief meeting with the formidable Mrs Gandhi left a lasting impression on her:-  

“At the back of her office was an enormous whiteboard filled up with animal campaigns she was currently working on, a ‘to-do’ list that covered every aspect of animal rights and welfare in India.  Of this long list, only a few had been marked as completed, reflecting the difficulty of the work she grapples with every day.  I was so impressed that this one individual, through force of character and hard work, and despite her enormous governmental responsibilities, had achieved so much for animals in India, earning her an international reputation.  Maneka no doubt has a brilliant mind, but what she does also requires vision, imagination, patience and determination.    For much of our meeting she was businesslike, even a bit brusque, but every now and then the sweetest smile broke through.   In her presence I could feel the breadth of her intelligence, but also her compassion.  As Eileen Weintraub, founder of Help Animals India, describes her:  ‘Maneka has a golden heart”. 

 

1. Have you always loved animals?  

I don’t know whether what I felt or feel was love . It is respect and compassion and a sense of oneness and a desire for fairness that drives me. I feel each animal/insect/bird  stuck in this man-made world, bewildered, grappling to survive, is part of my soul. I simply cannot see the difference between me, a leaf, a crow, a goat, or an elephant. I cannot understand how the human species can create so much pain around them and expect to be happy.

2. When did you start actively campaigning for animal rights and welfare in India?

I made the first animal shelter in India with the money that my husband, who died when I was 23, left me. I ran the shelter first and then because I was in politics, used that platform always to change things for animals.

3 You have enormous responsibilities, and have achieved much in your political career.  And yet you also manage to be so productive for animals, through the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre, and in your writing and other activist platforms.  You are the longest serving Member of Parliament in India, having won 8 times.    How do you manage to do so much?

I don’t stop for a minute. And I do everything that I can.  I study very hard every day to improve my knowledge of animal issues so that I can speak/do with correct information.

I feel the heart is a door. When it opens, it opens for every being. My heart and energy is open for all kinds of pain, and I endeavour to lessen it for as many beings as I can. That is what gives me the ability to work hard.

4 What is the hardest thing about your work advocating for animals? What are the main obstacles you face?

Ignorance, the ignorance of politicians and bureaucrats especially. When I started, it was considered the domain of “little old ladies”. Now fortunately the movement is coming into its own, with groups starting everywhere.

5 What are some of the campaigns you are currently working on?

I work on 50-100 things at the same time . At this exact moment we are getting pet shops and dog/cat breeders banned.

6 At the beginning of the Covid-19 Lockdown you issued a press release saying that people should continue to feed stray dogs and cows, and even gave your personal number out all over India to help people get special passes to feed animals without the police hassling them.   Can you put into words what drives you to work so hard to fight animal cruelty and injustice?  

The fear of pain. Your pain is mine, so I need to get rid of it.

7 Are things beginning to change for animals in India?  If so, why?

Some things change. But for every good thing, some politicians will make sure three more policies are made that are bad. But last year I made the government give money for the scientific exploration of making clean meat (meat by cell multiplication). We are the first government to do so . That is going on now, and if we can do this, it will change the world as we know it.

8  What would you like to see happen in the future?

Clean meat, clean milk – milk/meat made without animals.  The banning of any meat exports until we get there. A sharp rise in veganism.  Compulsory training in animal welfare in schools… I have a booklet in which I have listed 170 things I want to do or I want to see happen before I die.

Of course they will not be all done but even if I can get half, I shall die happy and not have to come back!

Duck Shooting Season A Licence To Kill Endangered Native Species

On the Eve of the New Zealand duck shooting season opening, End Animal Slaughter contributor Paul Judge calls for an end to the carnage.

 

As I write, the murderous mayhem of duck-shooting season has been given the go-ahead by the government during New Zealand’s level-2 Covid-19 lockdown.

I walk down to my favourite spot on the Waikato River most evenings. I hear the ducks as I approach, quacking away and going about their duck business. And there they are, on the river’s edge sitting calmly in their flock, or sometimes, led by a brave duck, waddling up the bank to look for food. Something will suddenly spook them and they all take off into the air as one, swooping past me with flapping wings, circling way out over the river before settling again on the sandy beach. These are the lucky ones, I think to myself. As long as they stay here they will escape the horrors of the hunters’ guns.

How I loathe duck shooting. It is so obviously cruel I cannot understand how it is still legal. Australian studies show that around one in four ducks are not killed outright, but instead fall to the ground mortally wounded, dying an agonising, lingering death. While a good percentage of geese and swans are monogamous, ducks can also pair bond for extended periods.   If a single duck manages to survive the carnage duckshooting causes, then they will ‘mourn’ the partner they bonded with.

The mayhem and murder is not only normalised by the media but is celebrated. Blokey, camouflaged duck-shooters are shown stocking their maimais (concealment huts) with beer and talking about how it’s the best thing since Christmas. Small children are dressed up in identical camouflage to their proud dad’s and declare on camera that they have shot their first duck. Often the children will speak with trepidation in their voice, not understanding fully why they have killed a beautiful living bird.

Duckshooting family.  Teaching our children violence from an early age. (Photo credit: TVNZ)

When it comes to duck shooting, the law is truly an idiot. The large numbers of maimed, wounded ducks flies in the face of humane slaughter laws in the Animal Welfare Act. Duck-shooting should be banned on these grounds alone. I know it will be a long battle, given the powerful enculturation of the practice, and I will never give up the fight to see it happen. But there is another Act of Parliament that can and should be properly updated – the Wildlife Act 1953.

When it comes to duck shooting, the law is truly an idiot. The large numbers of maimed, wounded ducks flies in the face of humane slaughter laws in the Animal Welfare Act. Duck-shooting should be banned on these grounds alone.

All New Zealanders should know that some species of native duck, which are in decline or classified as endangered, are allowed to be shot under the Law.

Notwithstanding the regional variations regarding bag limits, the hypocrisy of killing our native species is absurd. We spend millions of tax-payer’s dollars – expensive aerial poison drops, hours upon hours of both government paid work and unpaid volunteer work – protecting our precious native birds. To allow our native species to be slaughtered makes absolutely no sense.

The only ducks that are legally protected in New Zealand are the Brown and Grey Teals, (Patekeke and Tete Moroiti respectively),  NZ Scaup (Papango), and Blue Duck (Whio).  Native species so recklessly assigned to the carnage are the Grey Duck (Parera), the Shoveler (Kuruwhengi) and the Paradise Shelduck (Putangitangi).  

The Grey Duck is in rapid decline and has been declared “critically endangered”.  It is thought to be extensively hybridised with the mallard, and this hybrid is allowed to be hunted.  Good luck with telling the difference!   The true Grey Duck is in danger from being shot by hunters as both sexes look similar to the female mallard.   The Grey Duck has a pattern of stripes from the bill and over the head.  The general similarity of appearance to the mallard is one very good reason to ban all duck-shooting.

The female Grey Duck (Photo credit: NZ Birds Online)

The introduced Mallard is, of course, the most common duck. We see them almost everywhere, the female with her uniform, dull brown feathers, the male with his handsome, dark green, iridescent head and neck feathers. These ducks are considered pests. They apparently disturb the replanting programmes along the waterways and they overcrowd the wetlands for native species. What? Hang on a minute. We are shooting the native species! And as for overcrowding, wetland habitats have been devastated in this country, largely due to intensive agriculture. 90% of our original wetlands have been destroyed. And it’s the duck’s fault?

Male and female Mallard ducks  (Photo credit: NZ Birds Online)

Conservation of remaining wetlands is a contentious issue in the duck-shooting debate. The hunters become ‘greenies’ in regard to wetlands, but only in order so there will be plenty of game next year to carry out their blood-sport.

The native Shoveler duck also deserves immediate protection.  It is estimated about 30,000 of these birds are killed every hunting season. That’s around 20% of their total population. That is not sustainable and certainly not acceptable. Once again, the females look quite similar to the plainly embellished female mallard. The male Shoveler, however, must be New Zealand’s most handsome waterfowl, with his blue-grey head with white vertical stripe between eye and bill, his striking reddish-brown breast and blue wings.  It is inconceivable that such a bird, endemic to New Zealand, can be legally shot.

The Shoveler duck (Kuruwhengi) (Photo credit: NZ Birds Online)

The Paradise Shelduck is sometimes mistaken for a goose, possibly due to the male’s goose-like honk or the female’s white head. The male Shelduck is a uniform black or dark grey with green iridescent head feathers, while the female is a chestnut brown with a distinctive pure white head and neck. After the mallard the Paradise Shelduck are the most abundant waterfowl in New Zealand. Ironically, they have increased their numbers since colonisation due primarily to their ability to adapt to feeding on grassland. Thus farmers see them as a pest and shoot these beautiful creatures relentlessly.

Of an estimated population of 700,000 about 200,000 are shot annually. And this is a native bird! Under this logic, Will we see the hunting of kiwi if the conservation programmes are hugely successful and their numbers increase?

Male and female Paradise Shellducks  (Putangiangi) (Photo credit: NZ Birds Online)

The Paradise Shelduck was listed in 2008 as “not threatened”. That, of course, seems an absurdity given the overall decline of all waterfowl species since that date. Habitat loss, predation, overhunting and extreme weather events due to climate change are taking their toll on even the abundant mallard, so much so that the 2015 season was shortened to one month, with bag limits for all duck species reduced.

And why is the beautiful, iconic Pukeko, another native to Aotearoa, allowed to be killed en masse? Large numbers of these stunning birds are killed ‘for fun’ by duck-shooters. Conservation groups have estimated 50,000 are killed each season. But Fish & Game say this is wrong, and that only 20,000 are killed. Hold on a minute. That’s a bit like saying the use of napalm in the Vietnam War was not so bad because the civilian death count was over-estimated.

Pukeko and chick

The Pukeko is almost as iconic a bird as the kiwi. Check out any tourist trinket shop and there they will be, adorning ceramic tiles, headscarves, countless prints and paintings. Killing the Pukeko is as dumb as the Australians killing the kangaroo, an animal that adorns the tail of the Qantas aeroplanes, the national symbol. Shhh! Keep quiet, we don’t tell the tourists anything about this.

All duck shooting is unacceptable, but native birds still being shot in this country is a total outrage and simply beggars belief. The Wildlife Act of 1953 is in urgent need of extensive revision.

The most well-known of our protected ducks, thanks to the media coverage of conservation efforts, is the Blue Duck (Whio). But here’s an idea; let’s protect all the native ducks shall we? Or better yet, all the ducks, native or otherwise.

But here’s an idea; let’s protect all the native ducks shall we? Or better yet, all the ducks, native or otherwise.

Blue duck (Whio)  (Photo Credit: NZ Birds Online)

COVID-19

With the Covid-19 pandemic the world is in crisis, but are we learning anything? Are we looking at the root causes of this catastrophe? Are we examining our relationship to our evolutionary partners who we exploit and maim and kill in the most horrendous ways?

Can we not even develop a new empathy for those we define as our prey, when we ourselves are experiencing the horrors of becoming prey to a biological enemy out to destroy us?

And before the Covid-19 crisis there was the biodiversity crisis. Well guess what? That is still happening, and overhunting, along with habitat loss, pollution and climate change, is a root cause.

There is so much morally and ethically wrong with duck shooting – the scale of the suffering of the birds, the enculturation of children into violence, the poisoning of the environment with lead (yes, still used, not to be phased out until 2021), the list goes on. But to put endangered native species in harm’s way every duck shooting season is incomprehensible, and cannot be allowed to continue.

 

Paul Judge (seen here with his beloved companion goat, Robert) is a filmmaker and animal rights activist. He taught film production in the tertiary education sector for 17 years.  

It’s Time To Wash The Blood Off Our Hands

We will never find peace within ourselves until we stop treating other animals so appallingly, writes End Animal Slaughter contributor, Paul Stevenson. (Featured art by Lynda Bell (artbylyndabell.com).

 

Although the nature/nurture debate has raged for decades, recent studies have shown convincing evidence that humans are innately moral: we are born with the capacity to care about others.  In fact as far back as 1871 Darwin countered theorists who argued that humans are naturally selfish, identifying components of a ‘moral sense’ throughout the tree of life.  As a product of evolution, we would expect that moral behaviour is within other animals as well, not just humans, and so it appears to be the case.  Primatologists like Frans de Waal, Jill Pruetz, and Christophe Boehm have shown that our closest kin in the animal kingdom, from chimps to bonobos, possess within themselves the building blocks of morality and moral goodness, treating treat each other with empathy, compassion, and self-sacrifice. And it by no means only found in primates, as Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce show in their book ‘Wild Justice.’

As humans, this moral sense culminates in us, and our caring and morality extends beyond people to include other animals, plants and the wider environment.   When we go against our fundamental nature by ignoring our humanity and unnecessarily harming others, we consequently feel bad inside, and cannot experience peace of mind. As we can never know real happiness or contentment when we are not at peace within ourselves, it is the greatest of follies to harm others when there is no need to do so.

The less we care about others the lower our humanity, and the lower the quality of our own lives. The criminal destroys himself for this reason, because the more he takes from others the more he steals from himself, by robbing himself of his own humanity and self-respect. He may have lots of material things – quantity – in his life in the form of money and possessions, but he lacks all quality. That is because our quality of life is almost entirely an inner thing, non-material, the product of our mind, and largely to do with our opinion of ourselves. It depends on our self-esteem and integrity, which in turn is related to how much we care about others.

Killing and eating other creatures not only destroys their entire existence for something as trivial as our food habits, it also subjects them to unspeakable suffering and indescribable horrors.

Killing and eating other creatures not only destroys their entire existence for something as trivial as our food habits, it also subjects them to unspeakable suffering and indescribable horrors.

But unnecessarily causing other animals to suffer and die for our palate also has a direct effect on us.   It is self-sabotage, because such actions are contrary to our fundamental caring nature, and rob us of our humanity as well as all hope of achieving the contentment we crave.  So if we want to be kind to ourselves we must first treat others, including other animals, with kindness and respect.   The natural consequence of this is that we must stop supporting all forms of animal agriculture, as well as fishing.

Our treatment of animals that we raise for food is horrendous.   We treat them as if they were nothing.  They are sensitive, intelligent cousins of ours, but we regard them as no better than lumps of rock, sacks of coal, logs of wood, good only for cutting up, cooking up, and eating up.  For the dead-hearted people involved, these sentient beings represent nothing more than money.

Yet as intelligent creatures with the brains to examine our actions, to self-inspect, and evaluate our behaviour, change is always possible.  Because our nature is fundamentally good, we know in our heart when we see how animals are raised for food, that we are committing terrible crimes that cannot be justified on any grounds.  We can never rest with a clear conscience while we abuse others so terribly.

Because our nature is fundamentally good, we know in our heart when we see how animals are raised for food, that we are committing terrible crimes that cannot be justified on any grounds. 

These days it is easy to adopt a vegan diet, that is just as delicious as any other, and is healthier both for us and the planet.  Covid-19, and all other ‘spillover’ diseases, came from eating animals, not plants.   This is a good time to start transitioning to a cruelty-free vegan diet.   We will discover how much better we feel about ourselves.

Paul Stevenson has a lifestyle block in Northland, New Zealand, and is Dad to a number of kunekune pigs.