Displaying items by tag: FARMWATCH

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.

Northland Regional Council (NRC) has inspected an illegal offal pit at a farm in Northland that is also the subject of a separate complaint about animal abuse.

Many dairy farm workers and people in rural communities are too scared to go to MPI or speak out about animal cruelty for fear of being blacklisted in the industry or ostracised by their rural community.

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.

Helping some reporters – and the general public -– understand what was going on with the recently released bobby calf video made by Farmwatch was at times frustrating.

The sooner farmers install walk-on loading ramps for bobby calves the better, says Federated Farmers Dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard.

That’s the message from Federated Farmers dairy section vice-chair Chris Lewis in the light of the latest video showing a new-born calf dragged along a paddock and calves being loaded into a truck.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) is launching an investigation into Farmwatch footage featuring bobby calves being dropped, dragged and thrown.

The 'businessman' who threatened the NZ dairy industry with 1080 contamination in baby formula if use of the pest-killing poison wasn't terminated apparently intended to gain economic advantage for a product of his own.

'Grossly irresponsible' is how New Zealand's special agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen has rightly described animal rights group SAFE's placement of an anti-NZ dairy farming ad in a British newspaper.