I went leafleting to raise awareness about pig farming again today with the SAFE crew in Ponsonby (it was cool because I got to visit Nikki Kaye’s office and have a nice chat to her staff about it and then we went into a lot of the stores who were happy to let us have space on their displays). Anyhow, my friend pointed out to me that I had my letter to the editor of the NZ Herald published so I went and brought a copy – unfortunately they changed it a lot but here is the full version:
Thank you for your editorial on pork farming in New Zealand on 25 May 2009. I had the privilege of bumping into Save Animals From Exploitation’s campaign director Hans Kriek the other day and he informed me that in their natural habitat pigs would not eat and excrement in the same area, yet they are forced to do this in the factories. Seeing the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee’s chairman Peter O’Hara justify such cruel conditions on TV One’s Sunday programme by saying that “there is no reason to think that the animals are not happy” made me so angry. It is incredulous that this is the man the government is relying on to make recommendations on reviewing the animal welfare code. If only he could experience the same suffering they go through – perhaps he could have his dinner inside a toilet bowl and keep his wife inside a crate with no room to move during her pregnancies?
It’s distressing how much pain pigs have to go through just to end up on our plates. Please have a read of these extracts from Liberate Magazine, it’s so sad (right click on the pictures and then select “view image” to view the whole page – note that there are three separate files):
