Editorial: One bright spot in cruel week

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle

Not a great week for the indigenous inhabitants of the planet.

While the world's leaders gathered in Paris to work out how many people they were prepared to save from rising sea levels and droughts, animal-kind was left to struggle on.

Some rather vicious farming practices in the Waikato were exposed on TV One's Sunday programme. The appalling treatment of bobby calves was as good a clarion call to go vegetarian as you will get and, at the very least, should have had people choking on their milk.

Japan vowed to flaunt international law and resume commercial - sorry ... "scientific" - whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Peter Dunne, with unerring accuracy, called it "blatant slaughter" and described our government's reaction as perfunctory and muted.

He recalled how in the 1970s New Zealand sent the navy to Mururoa in the Pacific as a counter-action against France's nuclear testing, and reckoned either a frigate or the air force should be similarly despatched against the Japanese whalers.

Dunne's not always on the ball but he is right this time - we need to stand strong against this breach of international law or the Japanese, sensing lack of resolve, will simply expand their operation.

A boost of $2.6 million for all those Kiwi sheep sent over to an "agri-hub" development in Saudi Arabia might have seemed like good news at first glance.

The money followed the $11.5 million that we taxpayers donated to set up the "agri-hub" for a couple of Saudi businessmen who apparently threatened legal action because they were miffed when NZ blocked the inhumane export of live livestock.

However, it's not so good for the sheep as we are donating the money so that our Saudi friends can build their own abattoir.

I question whether an abattoir is really needed as most of the 900 sheep we flew over died in the desert. I guess it must be Christmas in Saudi Arabia, too.

Still, there is one bright spot. Sow stalls are now illegal in New Zealand.

The crates of cruelty which constrain pregnant pigs and cause great distress are officially banned, thanks to a campaign by SAFE, an organisation dedicated to eliminating animal abuse. Good on them.