Possums mutilated on camera. A puppy with a puncture wound to the head. A kitten tied up in a plastic bag. A pig, beaten with a metal pole and run over with a quad bike. Each made the SPCA’s ‘list of shame’, of the year’s worst cases of animal abuse.
Fewer than 0.5 per cent of complaints to the SPCA lead to prosecutions last year. Photo: Supplied
Chief executive Ric Odom told the Herald he hoped the list would open people’s eyes to the treatment of some animals. “It’s not about making people feel sick with what they read, it’s about saying ‘this is what goes on, this is what happens to animals’.”
But the SPCA’s list of shame comes out every year, and the people who are shocked by it typically aren’t perpetrators themselves. Awareness-raising only goes so far when, as with poverty or domestic violence, there’s no case in favour of animal abuse, no debate to be had (and New Zealand has a horrific track record for all three).
The grim reality is the cases that make the SPCA’s list, while shocking, are not representative. Most of the harms committed against animals here happen on a massive, commercial scale – like in party pill testing, or factory farming – or one that’s domestic, even mundane: a dog left without water, a horse without food.
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Animal welfare is the one area of New Zealand law where the Government has made a private charity, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, responsible for enforcing a criminal law, the Animal Welfare Act 1999. (The welfare of farm animals is the dominion of the Ministry for Primary Industries.)
SPCA Auckland executive director Bob Kerridge says there’s a double standard enshrined in law, where the pain and suffering of animals is denounced only if it’s not understood to be in the interests of the national economy. With our export industry so reliant on agriculture and animal products, that’s a huge caveat.
“It’s probably the bigger issues that concern us, the things that are allowed either because the act doesn’t stop them, or because it makes an exception for them – that’s what really gets up our noses,” he says. “We say ‘causes pain and suffering’ but then we have the exception being battery farming. Until that goes, we’re obviously going to be concerned.”
With the lower-level cases of neglect, though, the issue is with enforcement. The SPCA does the best it can with limited funding and resources, but it takes both to pursue a complaint through to prosecution, and though the perpetrators of many of the most serious offences receive severe sentences, the vast majority of cases of neglect go unpunished – if they’re even reported at all.
New Zealand Animal Law Association president Danielle Duffield, 25 Photo: Supplied
Auckland-based commercial lawyer Danielle Duffield, 25, says the fact that the SPCA funds its own investigations and prosecutions “ultimately limits how much animal abuse is detected”. “When you think about it, most perpetrators of animal abuse are the owners, who don’t self-report. It’s only when somebody actually spots a neighbour abusing an animal and so forth that anything will happen.”
Last year the SPCA received close to 13,550 complaints [pdf] from the public about mistreated animals, but only 67 – less than 0.5 per cent – led to prosecutions. “That in itself sends up a real red flag signalling the need for a new enforcement regime,” says Duffield. “So many offences aren’t detected to begin with, but even when they are, there aren’t enough resources to prosecute them, so nothing happens. There’s no effective deterrent.”
She set up the New Zealand Animal Law Association earlier this year, with the aim of bringing together lawyers who want to improve the lives of animals through the legal system. The coalition is now about 150 individuals strong, and provides free advice and holds seminars and meetings on issues that relate to animal welfare. Last month, Otago University law lecturer Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere presented to NZALA in Auckland and Wellington on the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill.
WATCH: Otago University law lecturer Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere’s assessment of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill.
The bill just passed its seconding reading in the House, and looks likely to pass into law next year. It proposes reforms to the Animal Welfare Act 1999 that will make it more clear and transparent, and allow the creation of enforceable regulations. Duffield says these will give animal welfare inspectors more power and options to penalise wrongdoers, such as the ability to issue compliance and infringement notices and fines.
“At the moment, if an inspector comes across an animal that’s suffering, they can either give (the person responsible) a warning or, in very few instances, they prosecute. It’s basically the extreme ends of the spectrum, so there need to be more remedies in the middle, and that’s essentially what the bill proposes.” (She clarifies that, as it’s currently set out, the law does allow for infringement offences, but it does not have the administration infrastructure in place to manage fine recovery or appeals. The amendment bill addresses this.)
SPCA Auckland executive director Bob Kerridge with his dog Photo: Supplied
The bill also recognises that animals are sentient, capable of feeling pain – an important distinction that the SPCA has wanted made for years, says Bob Kerridge. “But having made that declaration acknowledging that animals feel pain and suffering, the bill doesn’t stop things like battery farming, sow stalls, leg-hold traps. We submitted on a number of issues and few of those have been heard. But I suppose any progress is progress and you have to be grateful for small mercies.”
He’d like to see a commissioner for animals appointed, as there is for race relations and children, who could “ensure that all forms of cruelty are questioned at a higher level”. “It would provide a framework for allowing a better voice for animals and animal welfare, as opposed to being coloured by what the export earnings are worth.”
But with no political interest in the position, it’s gone the way of the rest of the SPCA’s wishlist: necessary measures demoted to nice-to-haves. “At least somebody stood up and said that animals are sentient and capable of feeling,” says Kerridge. “That’s a very good statement, but it needs to be backed up with a law that ensures animals do not have pain and suffering.”
At least somebody stood up and said that animals are sentient and capable of feeling ... but it needs to be backed up with a law
Duffield says the amendment bill is by no means a fix-all solution – the worst cases of animal cruelty are premeditated, and prosecution will still probably apply to those – but the extra powers it grants animal welfare inspectors will help them target those myriad low-level, insidious cases of neglect that don’t make the headlines.
“When an inspector sees that a dog never has water, and they come back time and again and are told the dog knocked the bowl over – the ability to give an infringement fine would be really helpful.”
When the stakes are a dog having access to water, and there are so many other causes in need of funding and resources, some might reasonably say that we should look to make inroads on child poverty or domestic violence before turning our attention to animals. But Duffield points out that they’re not necessarily exclusive when the link between mistreating animals and committing violence against other people is well documented.
A 2012 report found that more than half of Women’s Refuge clients said their abusive partners had threatened to kill their animals; many of these animals were tortured or killed. In recognition of this crossover, the SPCA has a memorandum of understanding with Women’s Refuge for when animal welfare inspectors come across domestic violence while on their rounds, and vice versa.
It’s not that children are suffering at the expense of animals, it’s that both are going to have their situations improve through law reform and better enforcement
Duffield hopes that NZALA will be able to raise awareness of the connection between the abuse of animals and children, and intimate partner violence.
“There is actually a lot of ways that you can help both issues,” she says. “It’s not that children are suffering at the expense of animals, it’s that both are going to have their situations improve through law reform and better enforcement.”
She is optimistic that NZALA will be able to play a part in the development of strategies and protocols to enforce the new and updated law. But part of protecting animals’ rights in the long term is making sure there are people with the skills, opportunities and inclination to look out for them.
Duffield hopes fostering lawyers’ interests in animal law through the NZALA will grow the field in New Zealand; though it’s an established area of specialisation overseas, it’s currently only taught here at Otago University.
“One law school out of six isn’t a great hit rate, and we’d like to get all of them offering courses,” she says. “When you think that law students will become future prosecutors, members of parliament, judges – it’s really important that they engage with these issues and think about them.”
Duffield points to JustSpeak as an example of how young people can lend their advocacy and research skills to affect change. “I think a lot of people go to law school wanting to help save the world, but they find themselves working for government or commercial law firms – that’s the reality of the job market,” she says. “But by getting involved with a group like ours, they can actually use their legal skills to help animals who have no voice in our legal system.”
