Animal Welfare Act 1999

National MP Simon Bridges has cross party support in seeking to raise the maximum penalty for willful ill-treatment of animals under section 28 of the Animal Welfare Act 1999 from 3 to 5 years imprisonment.

"This Act is about knowingly ill-treating animals in a particularly gruesome way”

"Section 28 creates the most serious offense in relation to animals and prohibits the willful ill-treatment of an animal where the animal is permanently disabled, or dies, or the pain or distress caused to the animal is so great that it is necessary to destroy the animal in order to end its suffering."

This amendment to the Act as well as the Act itself is good for anti 1080 campaigners because DoC are using 1080 poison knowingly inflicting hideously long painful deaths on numerous animals from rodents, rabbits and possums, to pigs, deer, goats and birds by the use of large scale 1080 areal poison drops on DoC and private land around the country including Taranaki's Egmont National Park.

It is surprising that the SPCA prosecutors have not used this Act to date to prosecute DoC and its 1080 program. Surly all welfare of Animals must be dealt with as a societal responsibility and all animals need the same protection from human induced cruelty whether it be at the hands of a small child, psychopathic individual, insensitive farmer or zoo operator, or pest control operators.1080 and several other poisons currently in use are slow and indiscriminate killers which need to be urgently phased out as alternatives to their use exist. To continue to knowingly cause a tortuous death when an alternative's exist. Meet the parameters of section 28 of the Animal Welfare Act. Prosecuting DoC under the Act will send a message to government and government SOEs that they are not immuned to prosecution under the Act and need to set an example to stop this offending that is abhorrent in our society. It's more than not ok, it's an outrage.

Rusty Kane