SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation) – a registered charity & its “political advocacy”

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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]

 

Promoting Charity Events – Rooting for Piggies, Poultry & Political Advocacy

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From the Archives. Understanding SAFE Charitable “Political Advocacy”

“SAFEs awareness campaign For The Love Of Pigs offers an evening of wine, music and local celebrities and comedians this Thursday.

“The event Pigs, Kiwis And A King will take place at the Auckland Museum, and is hosted by comedian Mike King, speaking out against animal cruelty. Like battery hens, factory-farmed pigs are often kept in cruel and claustrophobic crates, and the animal-activists at SAFE [Save Animals From Exploitation] demand healthy and humane conditions for the animals.

[See: http://www.lovepigs.org.nz/Home/]

“The fun begins at 7pm, when the SAFE [a registered charity] awareness campaign unites all those of us who love pigs, hate animal cruelty, and have watched Babe too many times.”

Published by “Admin” JollyPeople.com June 19, 2009

Promoting Charity Events Around the World

Source: http://auckland.jollypeople.com/safe-awareness-love-pigs-campaign/4365/

[Report on Charity Event: “The evening went so late that we finished at breakfast with bacon & eggs supplied to us by a local pen & battery-cage farmer! Most delightful.” Ally ‘N Good-Humor, Auckland  :-) ].

“Real moral jihad” & SAFE charitable “advocacy” for piggies and poultry

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A good number of charites registered with the Charities Commision are determined to get their grievances with law-makers into the public spotlight. They do so by investing considerable financial resources they have obtained from donors and/or government sponsorship etc, into provocative campaigns seeking public support for their “political advocacy” crusades – all aimed at trying to get the law changed and/or upheld to serve those they claim to advocate on behalf of.

United Future leader, the Hon. Peter Dunne, has today in a Dominion Post report, pointed to “a whole suite of agenda items”, promoted by allegedly “seriously extreme and nutty” campaigners, that in his view constitute “a real moral jihad”. He has highlighted two of his former party members as “extreme”  jihadists possessing “little tolerance” in their alleged “fanaticism over smacking” laws, opposition to the reform of prostitution laws and desire to tighten the abortion laws. [Read more…]

“Animal rights” protestors guilty of bullying – Letter to Editor

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Protestors guilty of bullying (Letter, Dominion Post 15 May)

The standover tactics employed by the noisy rabble outside Wellington’s Le Canard restaurant (May 12-13) are repellent in the extreme.

As self-styled “professional people with sensible jobs”, they should know that the concerns they have with the production of foie gras lie with producers in France, not with a restauranteur going about his legitimate and “sensible” business.

They are not only creating a public nuisance but are also guilty of bullying, an action that shows a lack of probity greater than that involved in over-feeding a farmyard bird. [Read more…]

SAFE sensible “animal rights activists” vow to continue protest against foie gras

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A SAFE (Save Animals from Exploitation) Board member, zoologist Dr Michael Morris, who is one of the leaders of the anti-foie gras campaign directed at the Wellington French restaurant Le Canard, is reported today by The Dominion Post (p. A21) as saying that his five fellow-campaigners, like himself, are “professionals with sensible jobs”. The group has vowed to carry on its protests outside Le Canard restaurant until its foie gras dish is taken off the menu.

SAFE is a registered charity with the Charities Commission headed by Mr Trevor Garrett. Its finanancial accounts (available on line on the 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; all presumably in sensible professional charity jobs funded from the charitable donations SAFE received from charitable New Zealanders, many holding down sensible professionsal jobs.

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 – the latter derived no doubt from donations given by many New Zealanders employed in sensible professional jobs. [Read more…]