Cow basher takes hit from MPI
MPI has filed charges against an individual after receiving a video in June this year of a Northland sharemilker hitting cows with a pipe and other objects.
Animal rights group Farmwatch sent media photographs of dead, rotting cows lying in an open paddock near a stream behind the farm. The cow carcases photographed by Farmwatch appear to have been tipped over a bank into a gully — not an offal pit, said spokesman John Darroch..
Darroch claims that when the activists arrived at the scene, rats were running over the carcases. He says the gully was about 10m from a stream and 20m from a swamp.
NRC’s group manager regulatory services, Colin Dall, told Rural News the so-called offal pit did not comply with its regulations requiring pits to meet certain standards, one of which is that animals must be covered.
He also says the pit on the Mangapai dairy farm did not have a consent and so is illegal.
Dall says the council told the farm owners last week that dumping dead stock in the open near a stream is illegal. The owners then removed the stock and buried them at a site which met council rules.
The council has not yet decided whether the farm owners will be prosecuted.
