This issue is clearly not going to go away so long as NAWAC are allowed to sit on their hands and use ever more delaying tactics. PROFIT RULES and NAWAC have made this plain. As for Minister Carter – only time will tell whether he is sincere or simply saying one thing to appease the public while he says quite different things to the industry. As for elderly Peter O’Hara, the Chairman of NAWAC – he came across on TV as reflecting 19C and early 20C attitudes towards animals. We were truly shocked at his inability to comprehend animal distress. He simply refused to acknowledge it.

While it was useful that TV1 and TV3 pursued this issue for a couple of nights
it was noteworthy that TV1 in particular rounded off their final presentation with a person who very plausibly whitewashed the whole issue, in effect saying to the public ‘There’s really nothing to worry about here’, keep buying pork and there’s no need to concern yourselves’. After that there was a step-up in pork advertising and it was also pushed through foodie presenters and others in the media, none of whom showed anything but pleasure in buying and promoting NZ pork. Such messages have a placating and soothing effect on the public, and the industry well-knows that it’s only a matter of time and an increased promotion of pork thru the media, and the public will have forgotten the whole sorry business.

I’d like to say to commenter Rosalind Dalefield that there is little value in comparing NZ to the lowest common denominator – the US. We have no cause to feel smug. We should be looking to our own backyard, working to improve our own standards and do it fast. There is far too much animal cruelty in NZ, even one case of it is too much and from what I know and have seen the media reports only the tip of the iceberg. NZ is a surprisingly violent society and our children, our animals and all who are perceived as weaker and more vulnerable need strong legal protection against such abuses.

I endorse commenter Sue’s statement “I believe the best way to help pigs is simply to not eat them”. This is one very important way. I’d urge folk to try this and also to follow the suggestions in ‘What you can do’ in this article.

If each person makes a small effort, change will happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwBNpHpc-ck&feature=channel_page

And it is now claimed that the variance between genetic code( most of which is not understood and so in our humanist arrogance just called ‘Junk’)of humans and chimps is the same difference as human to human.
Humans are like animals, humans have used their different adapted brains to devise Power Play = the torture, abuse, cruelty , and exploitation of those viewed as weaker “lower beings”.
Why you believe humans are so much better than animals?We excel at denial and delusions.
The wheel?
Arms trading and constant wars?
Being unsustainable?
Funding the development and production of weapons instead of trying to end our reliance on fossil fuels.

Please spare me the delusions. Unless we start using our frequency amplifiers for the greater good, not for profits(power)- we will just continue to see the increasing wide spread abuse of humans (and animals) alike.

‘Although the bulk of Not a Chimp focuses on the case for our genetic uniqueness, Taylor does recognise that biology alone cannot explain our exceptional abilities. Like a number of groundbreaking developmental and comparative psychologists, he recognises the powerful role of social learning – such as true imitation – in human development. The difference between emulation (which other animals are clearly capable of) and true imitation ‘is crucial to an understanding of how we, as a species, have amassed such a variety and complexity of material culture’. He writes:

‘Understanding that a demonstrator intends his actions to make something, allied to detailed copying of every move he makes, allied to the reciprocal understanding in the demonstrator’s mind that he knows something you don’t and therefore has to teach you it, produces a potent ratchet effect.’

Unlike any other animal ‘we build on very modest foundations and blow them up to extraordinary dimensions of power and complexity’, which has ‘led from the invention of the wheel, less than six thousand years ago, to the wheeling out of the latest passenger jet’.’

I don’t think that pretending that animals are more than they are will ultimately improve their treatment. Cruelty to animals should be tackled as being simply repugnant, full stop. But also it should be tackled on the basis of the oft demonstrated association between cruelty to animals and cruelty to vulnerable people; women children and the disabled. Cruelty is the realm of cowardly dysfunctional people, serves no purpose, and society should allow it no quarter. But having said that, I think I can already feel the heat of animal rights responses that ‘animals should be protected in their own right, not just because of the implications for the treatment of other people.’ I’m afraid I make no apology for that; it is the legitimate trait of the humanist. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

Profits or People.

It is some perversion of human nature that delights in forcing subject species into ever more unnatural confinement, in an effort to screw the last ounce of profit out of them. It is high time we had a new NAWAC code of animal welfare. I am ashamed of my country.