SPCA wants Government backup

By CLAIRE TREVETT

If the Government wants animal welfare standards lifted, organisations like the SPCA need help, say animal crusaders.

Jim and Gail Boyd, who head the Bay of Islands SPCA branch, were commenting on the first case where people in New Zealand were convicted on dog fighting charges.

Melissa Berryman and Johnson Murphy were sentenced to community work, forfeiture of their eight dogs, a three-year ban on owning animals and $1000 costs each.

The case was the most recent in a string of high-profile prosecutions taken by the Boyds under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.

The cost of that conviction left the charitable organisation, the only non-Government body charged with enforcing the act, $35,000 out of pocket.

There was no hope of recovering any of that from the convicted couple, who were ordered to pay "token" costs of $1000 each which Mr Boyd did not expect to receive.

"I think a lot of inspectors would probably think 'what is the point'? But what do we do? We will do the ground work, we'll do the investigation but the financial burdens of prosecuting, they just bleed us dry."

Other high-profile cases taken by the Boyds were Mangamuka horse trader George Albert and the Kaitaia Rodeo Association.

Judge Thomas Everitt spoke out strongly about the cost of prosecutions in his judgment.

"It seems to me the law should be changed here as the SPCA is an organisation charged with enforcing an act and when it does it is penalised with huge costs because they cannot dispose of the animals while it is before the courts.

"That cannot have been the expectation of Parliament in my view."

Auckland University lecturer Peter Sankoff, an animal rights advocate, said the Government should take over the costs of prosecuting such cases.

"The dog fighting prosecutions are not exactly leaping out of the woodwork, even though the SPCA says there are lots of them.

"And the reason is they are expensive and they are difficult to investigate.

"Essentially the Government dumps this problem on the backs of a charitable organisation.

"That is not the way it should be, especially with dog fighting, which is a major serious organised crime and is treated as such in other countries."

RNZSPCA chief executive Peter Blomkamp said good will was not enough to overcome economic reality.

The costs put many SPCA branches off prosecuting.

The national branch took the Bay of Islands branch under its funding wing for the dog fighting case because it was one of national importance. But it could not keep doing it.

What he saw as a lenient sentence imposed by the judge was even more discouraging.

"It was certainly no deterrent. It was a mockery. So we have to look at other cases very carefully."

He said the SPCA did not want to be reimbursed for every prosecution.

But "we are doing this job for the Government" and should get reimbursed for the cases won, especially the major ones.