Ageing farmers left to run properties alone has been raised as a possible reason for the upward trend in older landowners being convicted for mistreating animals. Photo / 123rf
He’d been a farmer all his life, but Michael Vette committed a crime when he fed his starving calves eggs and water.
It was the 65-year-old’s foray into calf-rearing on his Hawkes Bay plot of land, at a time when his life was falling apart, which led to his
The crisis lasted six weeks, which Judge John McDonald described as “a long time in the life of a calf”.
Vette told NZME in an interview afterwards that despite claims the calves were starving and in some cases showed signs of neglect, he didn’t agree.
“I’m 65, I’ve farmed all my life and I know what I’m doing but behind this is a marriage break-up,” he said of the struggles he’s had.
He claimed to have put the eggs in the calves’ milk - not water - because the “little jersey boys need as much care as a premature baby”.
Vette, who remains convinced he did nothing wrong, had a few things to say about the justice system, and the delay in the hearing, which wasn’t helped by lawyers for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) failing to make court on the same day Cyclone Gabrielle hit Hawke’s Bay.
He fits a profile that Christchurch barrister Grant Fletcher has seen a number of times.
Fletcher says animal welfare cases are often a slow-moving disaster, sometimes obvious to everyone but the farmer involved, but usually the result of a number of factors beyond the control of the individual.
“You can have drought issues, cashflow issues, and sometimes sadly you can have grief issues, or mental health challenges.”
Fletcher has a foot in both camps, having grown up on a Canterbury farm, and has handled hundreds of animal welfare cases, both as a prosecutor and as defence counsel.
“I’ve had situations where livestock have been in very poor condition and the farmers have been told this and they literally cannot see it - they cannot see a difficulty. Why? Because it’s been an ongoing, unfolding, slowly-developing situation.”
Vette, who was sentenced to 175 hours of community work and ordered to pay $10,553 in reparation to MPI for the milk replacement feed it spent on helping the calves, was one of three farmers sentenced on animal welfare charges in May alone this year.
Just weeks before, Levin farmer Daniel Kilsby-Halliday was sentenced for letting 29 cows in his care starve to death.
He came from a long line of farmers, had a degree in the field, held leadership roles within the farming community and had entered the Young Farmer of the Year competition multiple times.
And in the same month, Southland farmer Neville Stuart Harper was fined $7500 after more than 30 of his sheep were found to be lacking sufficient feed, with several having to be euthanised.
They’re among the 152 individuals and organisations convicted for offences linked to the harm of farm animals, after prosecutions brought by the Ministry for Primary Industries’ animal welfare compliance team, from January 2018 until the end of May this year.
Over the past five years, the MPI has laid charges under the Animal Welfare Act against 199 individuals and nine entities. Most were in Northland (56), followed by Waikato (39), Canterbury (19) and Manawatū-Whanganui (17).
In 2018, there were 25 convictions, with 10 more the following year - the most in the past five years, before a dip in numbers.
So far this year, there have been 16 convictions, to the end of May.
Animal rights charity Save Animals from Exploitation (Safe) believes the problem is worse than what the figures show.
Campaigns manager Emma Brodie says there are more than 160 million farmed animals in New Zealand, but only around 30 MPI inspectors to monitor compliance and respond to complaints.
“That’s one inspector per five million animals. This inevitability leads to under-reporting,” Brodie says.
She says Safe has noticed an increase in cases of farmers allowing animals to starve to death and has “significant concerns that an unknown amount of criminal offending against animals is slipping through the cracks”.
It has raised questions about what’s driving it.
While the figures don’t show the problem is getting worse, neither is it getting better, and the number of ageing farmers who end up in court for failing to care for their animals is slowly creeping up.
Vette, for example, at age 65, belongs to the demographic which scored highest for convictions against the ill-treatment of production (farm) animals.
He was among 132 men convicted between January 1, 2018, and the end of May this year, of whom almost half (64) were aged 50 to 69. Thirteen women were convicted over the same time, with seven in the 50- to 69-year age group.
Fletcher says conversations have started around the emerging issue of ageing farmers and their lack of succession planning.
Simply put, the prospect of farming is becoming less attractive to younger generations, for a number of reasons.
Federated Farmers agrees some of the offending could be linked to ageing farmers, but also declining mental health in others, hastened by the effects of Covid, cyclones, droughts and other natural disasters.
Federated Farmers board member and chair of the Meat and Wool Industry Group, Toby Williams, says it might also be that the older generation of farmers are from an era where they didn’t talk about mental health or ask for help.
“I know a lot of them really struggle with it. They’ve been through some hard times in the past, and they’ve always just tried to get on with it.”
However, Williams is heartened by the huge amount of work being done by individuals and organisations with a rural focus to break down barriers to farmers talking about their problems.
He says there’s no denying that the average age of farmers is increasing every year, “and that’s a serious concern”.
“There’s an old saying that behind most animal welfare issues, there is a human welfare issue,” Williams says.
“I think there’s probably a bit of truth in that - but it certainly won’t be in every case.”
He says Federated Farmers takes animal welfare concerns seriously and is disappointed when it hears about breaches of the rules, but stresses it’s a relatively small group of people charged and convicted over the last five years out of a workforce of around 65,000 people.
“The vast majority of farmers are doing the right thing, [they] follow all the rules, and have a very high standard of animal care.”
Owners of animals, either on the farm or at home, are bound by law to care for their physical, health, and behavioural needs, and to alleviate pain or distress.
The MPI and the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) jointly enforce the Animal Welfare Act - set up to be a clear statement to New Zealanders, and to the rest of the world, that animals in New Zealand have a right to proper and sufficient care.
The MPI deals with production animals - animals on farms and lifestyle blocks, and the SPCA focuses on companion pets, including at times, horses, depending on the number on a property and their use.
Since January 2018, the SPCA has filed charges against 89 individuals, which has led to 58 convictions with 29 still active.
National inspectorate manager Alan Wilson says there’s been an increase in calls for help from pet owners post-Covid, along with higher instances of verbal and physical abuse directed at SPCA inspectors since 2020.
Prosecution is only one of a number of outcomes that the SPCA uses when enforcing compliance with the act.
Wilson says the process of bringing a case to court is not intrinsically difficult, but it’s only used when there’s sufficient evidence and thresholds around public interest are reached.
New regulations introduced in 2018 strengthened New Zealand’s animal welfare system and made it easier for MPI and SPCA inspectors to take action against mid and lower-level offending.
The MPI issues infringement notices that it says provide a “swift, proportionate response to lower-level offending” and which carry an associated $300-$500 fine.
They are used for a range of offences, such as transporting unfit animals, allowing a horn on a cattle beast to become ingrown, or causing an animal to become injured in transit.
Since 2018, the MPI has issued 3097 infringements - the most in Canterbury (658), followed by Southland (424), Waikato (413), and Otago (407).
Then there’s the extreme end of the scale, to which the SPCA is no stranger.
Wilson says the worst case it’s dealt with in the last year was when the Christchurch team was confronted by the “skeletal condition” of several horses, two of which were shot dead by the owner in front of an inspector while waiting for a vet to arrive.
During the subsequent investigation, the SPCA was again called to the property by a member of the public who noticed a horse lying on the ground, which was found to have had its throat cut.
The owner was prosecuted and eventually sentenced to two months of community detention, ordered to pay just over $1000 in reparation and legal fees and was disqualified from owning horses for four years.
Fletcher says true cruelty towards animals is more often an anomaly than the norm.
“It’s important to understand that sadism or true cruelty, particularly in the agri space is extremely rare, to the point I can only think of two or three cases where the person charged was in fact nasty and cruel.”
But it could also be that members of the public are now more willing to raise concerns about what they see and report it, plus the attention some of the more high-profile cases attracted, Fletcher says.
“It would be fair to say some of the higher-profile prosecutions MPI has taken have had an effect on the wider public and the example I’m thinking of is the process called ‘tail jacking’.”
The MPI’s crackdown on the habit of yanking the tails of dairy cows as they were being moved in and out of milking sheds, which in some cases broke the animals’ tails, attracted publicity and had firm results.
The MPI says a $40,000 fine imposed on Taranaki dairy farmer Lane Rodney Wiggins in relation to injuring 136 dairy cows was the largest handed to an individual for an animal welfare offence in the last five years.
In 2020 Wiggins was fined $35,000 for breaking the cows’ tails, and $5000 for docking them.
He was also given two years of intensive supervision and ordered to pay veterinary costs of $1207.
“In my view, it’s that process of prosecuting which has publicised the fact this process is improper and should no longer continue and that’s a good thing,” Fletcher says.
He says Safe also runs well-publicised campaigns in relation to various issues they see.
Safe says along with its concerns that the problem is bigger than what the statistics say, it’s also worried that penalties have been disproportionate, and inconsistent among cases.
The largest penalty imposed on an individual over the past five years after an MPI prosecution was in February this year when one of two brothers convicted for the ill-treatment of sheep was sent to prison for just over two years.
The penalty included his offending against an animal welfare investigator.
Manawatū brothers Richard and Geoffrey Sanson, each in their 60s, were given prison sentences in the Palmerston North District Court in a case the MPI said involved 2900 sheep and five cattle found in poor condition, many of which had to be euthanised.
Geoffrey Sanson was sentenced to one year and 10 months in prison, while Richard Sanson was sentenced to two years and two months after he drove his ute at the investigator.
He was also disqualified indefinitely from owning or being in charge of farm animals.
The MPI says the largest fine imposed on a company for an animal welfare offence in the last five years was related to the ill-treatment of calves that were not provided with adequate shelter, protection from disease or proper nutrition.
Grazing and calf rearing company, VetEnt GC Limited (formerly GrazCare Limited) was fined $63,000 for its actions which led to the deaths of hundreds of calves. The company’s former general manager, Mark James Harrison, was fined $19,000.
Brodie says the varying penalties led Safe to question how penalties for animal welfare sentences are determined.
“For example, a Canterbury farmer who was prosecuted in April for allowing over 600 calves to starve to death was sentenced to seven months’ home detention, disqualified from owning cattle for five years, and received a fine of just under $4000,” she says.
“For such a heinous act of cruelty, we would expect permanent disqualification from owning animals.”
Compare that to the Levin farmer, Brodie says, who allowed 29 cows to starve to death and was fined $32,000 but avoided disqualification.
“Looking at the big picture - the animal welfare enforcement system relies heavily on members of the public to lodge complaints with MPI.”
Federated Farmers says it’s not making excuses for those who commit serious breaches, but asks that farmers are judged by efforts to improve practices and standards across the board, instead of the actions of those who don’t follow the rules.
“The fact that people are still being prosecuted for animal welfare offences shows there’s still work to be done in supporting those who may not be coping,” Williams says.
Fletcher, speaking as a lawyer and a farmer, says the advice he’d give anyone is that there’s plenty of support out there, from vets to farm consultants, neighbours, friends and yes, lawyers.
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
“Ignoring things, or burying these problems, will invariably make things worse.”
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
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