Protest challengers cage egg industry: SAFE – registered charity and political entity: its “perpetual advocacy of a particular view”. TV One 7 AM News reported this morning that animal welfare activists from a registered charity SAFE (Save Animals from Exploitation Inc.) and other animal rights lobbyists have mounted a campaign of civil disobedience by blocking the entrance to the Mainland Poultry complex in Waikouaiti, just north of Dunedin, in order to protest against the farming of poultry in colony battery cages.
SAFE issued its Media release to Voxy News at 4.54 am today that alerted media to the protest (see link below). A TV One News crew was at the protest site reading for filming at the crack of dawn today – thanks to the registered charity SAFE.
The array of lobbyists are demanding that the law be changed to outlaw such farming practices and intend to remain in place infringing the rights of workers and management to enter the complex and go about their lawful business, until they are removed by police. SAFE campaign director Eliot Pryor was part of the ground crew coordinating the blockade of Mainland Poutry, and was supported by other SAFE members present.
Since it was registered as a charity (CC40428) with the Charities Commission headed by Mr Trevor Garrett, on 30 June 2008, SAFE’s vociferous lobbyists have been engaged in the “perpetual advocacy of a particular point of view”, to use the ‘terminology’ of the Charities Commission’s Monitoring and Investigations Team.
SAFE’s financial accounts (available on line on the Charities Commission’s website www.charities.govt.nz), reveal that in the financial year ended 31 March 2011, it employed nine full-time charity workers and 5 part-timers. SAFE records a total annual salary and wages bill of $589,430, for the financial year ended 31 March 2011. This pay-out constituted 61% of the charity’s annual income of $917,315 sourced from donations from the New Zealand public.
Voxy News reports today:
MEDIA RELEASE BY SAFE
Protest challenges cage egg industry
Access to the largest battery cage facility in New Zealand has been blocked today by animal welfare activists protesting against cages for layer hens.
Early this morning eight metre high tripod structures with climbers suspended were set up at the entrance to the Mainland Poultry complex in Waikouaiti and activists from The Coalition to End Factory Farming expect to remain in place until they are forced down.
“The action is being carried out to highlight the continued cruelty of cages,” says SAFE Campaign director Eliot Pryor, “and especially to stop the introduction of the proposed colony battery cage system. Both SAFE and The Coalition to End Factory Farming want to see all cages banned for egg-laying hens. The so-called enriched colony cages are not an acceptable alternative to the existing system as the welfare benefits are so minimal.”
“Mainland Poultry has refused the media access to these new colony battery cages and it is easy to see why,” says Mr Pryor. “They do not want the public to see the abhorrent conditions the animals are forced to live in. They do not want to explain to consumers why hens are crammed inside cages so cramped they have barely any room to move.”
Secretly filmed images of the colony battery cages in the Mainland facility, showing a dark future for New Zealand’s three million battery hens, were revealed by activists on national television earlier this year. The Minister for Primary Industries, David Carter, is considering approving the introduction of colony battery cages as part of the new welfare code for layer hens.
Colony battery cages do not provide the hens with the opportunity to display their normal behaviour as required by the Animal Welfare Act. Both New Zealand and international animal welfare agencies have condemned them, declaring the cages “fail to properly meet the hens’ physical or behavioural needs”.
“The law does not meet the welfare needs of these animals and as the law fails the hens, and producers resist moving to better welfare systems, you will find more reaction from consumers,” says Mr Pryor. “All retailers need to be looking again at their supply chain and asking themselves what their customers would find acceptable.”
Eighty per cent of Kiwis are opposed to battery cages, and SAFE encourages the public not to be fooled into believing that the new colony battery cages are acceptable. Consumers can contact the Minister directly to demand a ban on all cages at nocages.org.nz.
Media Release from Animal rights activist charity SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation).
Voxy News. Monday 25 June 2012
http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/protest-challenges-cage-egg-industry/5/127249
Reference: www.nzopenrescue.org.nz “SAFE campaign director Eliot Pryor was part of the ground crew” [in the blockade of Mainland Poultry]
The activists who have blockaded the entrance to Mainland Poultry are from Open Rescue. Some SAFE supporters are indeed at the site supporting the action but they are not the ones chained to the gate or to the tripods. You and TVNZ need to check your facts.
TV One News never claimed that the “animal rights” protestors who chained themselves to the banner-ladden tripods, were actually SAFE members. If they were not, this does not negate the fact that SAFE, a registered charity with the Charities Commission, was identified in the morning news report as one of the protest organisers, its members having been very involved in the planning and execution of this serenely-poised and slickly-executed gimmicky protest action. It involved coldly-calculated cunning, civil disobedience and as the Charities Commission would no doubt put it with precision: “the perpetual advocacy of a particular point of view” (“Political advocacy”) – by a “political entity” – ‘aided and abetted’ by media outlets throughout the country.
SAFE Campaign Director, Mr Eliot Prior, issued a carefully-crafted Media release to Voxy News early in the morning of the protest day (he is quoted extensively in it), notifying TVNZ and other media, in advance, of the planned early morning political advocacy/blockade; an action that Mainland Poultry’s boss later noted, ironically, had ended up temporarily depriving his many production units (hens) of their food rations.
SAFE campaign strategist, Eliot Pryor, was part of the ground crew – getting the heavy-duty equipment strategically into place for the heavy-duty blockade, supported by other SAFE members. TV One News filmed all these charity workers operating under the cover of the early morning darkness.
SPCS admires the zeal of SAFE lobbyists and applauds all those who creatively exercised their right to “freedom of expression” in order to highlight what they call a “moral crime” carried out by Mainland Poultry bosses against fellow “sentient creatures”. It applauds the NZ Police for managing to tenderly extract the female lobbyists from their protest perches, without ruffling too many of their delicate feathers. (Some squawks of protest were picked up on some sensitive TV One News sound monitors)