Bay News: 15 years of dogged defence

Animal campaigner Elly Maynard with Maisey, collecting signatures for the petition against the testing of party pills and legal highs on animals in 2013.

An organisation formed in a Tauranga suburb that now has a voice at the United Nations celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.

The formation of what would become the Sirius Global Animal Trust happened, literally, overnight. Founder and animal- (especially dog-) lover Elly Maynard was galvanised into action after reading about the breeding of St Bernard dogs for food in China.

She went global with a petition to stop the practice, and such was the strength of feeling about what she was trying to do that the petition eventually secured 4.75 million signatures.

Elly delivered the petition to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome in 2001.

Fifteen years later, the organisation's expertise is in demand and Elly was contacted earlier this year by the Humane Society of United States, Hawaii. The organisation is presenting a bill that, if passed, would make it illegal to kill cats and dogs for food in the state.

Should the proposal go further than a pre-meeting of the state's legislative committee, she has been invited to travel to Hawaii to make presentations in support of it.

In the West, the only other such ban has existed in South Australia since 2002.

"Apart from South Australia, no other Western country has come anywhere near to doing anything, apart from Hawaii," she says.

"To be invited by the Humane Society is huge, as it is such a powerful organisation."

In the years since she first read about dog farms, Elly has had high level meetings with leaders in the Philippines, has a network of advisers and advocates around the world and accompanied investigators on raids on illegal breeders which have featured on TV3's Campbell Live and 60 Minutes. Footage included a fiery confrontation with a dog breeder in the Philippines.

Elly has some stomach-churning tales and photographs of the grim treatment of dogs, including them being crammed into containers and skinned alive.

In 2004 Sirius was granted non-government organisation (NGO) status within the UN.
Elly says her commitment and enthusiasm has not waned over the years.

"We get contacted by so many people wanting information and assistance. We are one of the foremost experts, politically, in the world.

"In 2000 I wanted to do something about getting a voice at the UN for domestic companion animals. The fact that the UN was prepared to accept our submission at ECOSOC shows that the UN takes us seriously."