Animal Welfare

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• Not available on their website yet.

• Require all producers to label their animal products according to the methods by which the animals were raised and whether the products contain animal products.
• Encourage the development and use of pest control methods which involve the minimum of suffering.
• Established a separate Commissioner of Animal Welfare, and phase out cruel farming techniques including factory farming and the debeaking of hens.
• Reduce the stress to animals from transportation.
• Commit to minimizing the use of experiments and research on animals. (more here)

• Labour will ensure that no cosmetics sold in New Zealand have been tested on animals.
• Labour will uphold the ban on testing psychoactive substances (recreational drugs) on animals.
• Labour will ban cruel shark finning. (more here)

• Not available on their website yet.

• Not available on their website yet.

• Progressing the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, which will provide more protection for animals.
• Shark finning to be banned from 1 October 2014. (more here)

• All animals subject to human control, under any and all situations and circumstances, are entitled to, and should receive, humane treatment, proper and adequate food, water, and shelter, and veterinary care as necessary, inasmuch as is practicably possible.
• Where animals are required to be killed, including for hunting and pest control, New Zealand First policy is that appropriate methods be used to ensure that death is as painless, swift, humane, and non-degrading as possible. (more here)

• Continue to put dangerous dog breeds on a ban-list and require neutering for dogs on that list as well as placing a ban on new animals. No one will have to give up their current pet, but over time the number of dangerous dogs will decline until such breeds no longer exist in New Zealand.
• Promote mandatory standardised labelling with regard to the use of animals in food production (e.g. to prevent misleading advertising which blurs the distinction between battery and free-range eggs).
• Increase the number of Animal Welfare Inspectors from the current 11.
• Support measures that move us in the direction of outlawing practices in New Zealand such as sow stalls and battery caged hen, farrowing crates, and the like, whilst ensuring that this doesn't result in New Zealanders buying products from offshore markets where the restrictions aren’t the same.
• Support the phasing out of the sale and use of gin traps. (more here)