Nearly three years ago, the Labour-led government banned the trade worth around $374 million, after a ship en route to China capsized in 2020, killing 41 crew members – including two New Zealanders – and nearly 6000 cattle.<\/p>\n
But during the last election, there was a push for the practice to resume. <\/p>\n
It featured in coalition agreements between National and Act and National and New Zealand First.<\/p>\n
Since then, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has been working with industry to create so-called gold standards for live exports.<\/p>\n
Industry group Livestock Export NZ\u2019s executive director, Glen Neal, said it spent years working closely with MPI on developing the new standards.<\/p>\n
But he said he believed Cabinet did not understand that the sector was also focused on animal welfare.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision leaves us grasping for what the future of the sector really is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t agree more with the SPCA and others that this is about animal welfare, which is why we work so closely with MPI on new standards; on standards that New Zealanders could justifiably be proud of, that lined up with our reputation as a proud trading nation in agricultural products.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the Government went quiet on it last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision announced from Minister Hoggard, unfortunately, comes as no surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t heard much for the last nine months on this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe elected this Government on the back of many promises, but one of them did include reinstating the trade, and so three years of missing $300 million in New Zealand\u2019s rural economies, it does leave you scratching your head about why.<\/p>\n
\u201c$300 million, the minister mentioned last night, that per year. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re leaving on the table in terms of trade with countries like Indonesia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neal said New Zealand helped contribute to growing Indonesia\u2019s domestic dairy herd, and China wanted this, too.<\/p>\n
He said these markets wanted dairy cattle from New Zealand, and may look to countries with lower welfare standards to plug the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cEffectively, this decision just postpones the introduction of those good standards, postpones New Zealand\u2019s re-entry into this market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Industry group Livestock Export New Zealand represented firms involved with the trade, like farmers, stock agents, shipping companies and veterinarians.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly three years ago, the Labour-led government banned the trade worth around $374 million, after a ship en…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3648,46851,3595,25089,45212,29744,266,4960,111,43,139,69,90],"class_list":["post-324988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-animal","tag-backtrack","tag-by","tag-commitment","tag-disappointed","tag-exporters","tag-government","tag-live","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324988","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=324988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}