Waikato dairy farmer Walt Cavendish<\/a> was about to transition his 65-hectare Matamata farm into a free-range pork system.<\/p>\nHe signed the letter addressed to the government and said farmers, consumers and pigs deserved high welfare standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made quite a clear decision as a country that animal welfare matters, and we seem to have gone down the road of insisting on that for our farmers, but not insisting that for our imports.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor these farming families, they\u2019re trying to compete with product that would just not be allowed to be farmed here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cavendish said New Zealand could legally enforce what was called a public morals exemption on importers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest argument that\u2019s put is the trade implications.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re just so nervous about it… Everyone keeps using the trade argument.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moral exemption in trade policy allowed countries to bypass usual trade rules due to animal welfare, health or ethical standards of concern, but protectionism was not tolerated.<\/p>\n
Cavendish said it would be unlikely that those exporting nations would take retaliatory action in response to ending imports, considering the New Zealand market\u2019s small scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just an argument to try and stop this going further, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m quite firm that the public morals exemption is our best way forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd realistically, with such a low amount of the export from these countries, they\u2019re hardly going to worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon\u2019s office confirmed the letter had been received.<\/p>\n
Trade and Investment Minister, Todd McClay, said New Zealand was a global leader in farmed animal welfare standards, which underpinned our trade reputation.<\/p>\n
But he said New Zealand was making efforts to prevent other countries from applying rules that could negatively affect our own exports.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf New Zealand introduced requirements based on our methods of production, this could potentially undermine our efforts to prevent other countries from applying unjustified measures that could impact negatively on our agricultural exports,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, animal product exports worth $42 billion reached plates around the globe, making up more than half of our total goods exports.\u201d<\/p>\n
McClay said New Zealand worked with other countries to improve animal welfare standards through membership in the World Organisation for Animal Health and through bilateral collaboration.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to recognise that different countries have different production systems. <\/p>\n
\u201cApproaches to caring for animals are adapted to local conditions, and applying the same standard can sometimes result in different welfare outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cavendish believed people\u2019s fears that pork prices would go up even further if we ditched imports were a \u201cfalse narrative\u201d, as the national pig herd would likely increase to meet demand.<\/p>\n
But he acknowledged it was a significant concern for cash-strapped consumers, though many of them were passionate about animal welfare.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the big things I get from people that comment to me is their fear of the price going up, because they can\u2019t even now afford a lot of the meat products on the shelf.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause ultimately, you would be able to produce more, so the cost of production would go down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food and Agriculture Organisation\u2019s latest statistics show New Zealand imported more than 47,000 tonnes of pork in 2023.<\/p>\n
The \u201cFair for Farmers\u201d campaign was launched at the Northland Fieldays in Dargaville yesterday, which runs into Saturday.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In some of these countries, farmers still use sow stalls (cages for pregnant pigs), which New Zealand banned,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,3648,5842,12967,2082,45613,440,28205,111,43,139,69,90,44408,4514,11422,28206,2443],"class_list":{"0":"post-303793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-animal","10":"tag-calling","11":"tag-farmers","12":"tag-for","13":"tag-imported","14":"tag-local","15":"tag-monique","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-on","21":"tag-pork","22":"tag-same","23":"tag-standards","24":"tag-steele","25":"tag-welfare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}