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Recently, the inhumane practices associated with the pork and layer hen industry have been exposed in the media, thanks largely to a very successful campaign by the RNZSPCA and SAFE.  As a result, most New Zealand consumers are now aware of the suffering experienced by pigs and layer hens, and a call to ban these practices has been very effective .  The way in which our export driven beef and dairy industry impacts on animal welfare is less well known.  One of the purposes of this article is to bring these to the public attention.

Mutilations
A surprisingly large number of painful mutilations can be performed quite legally on New Zealand cattle.  For example, the New Zealand government  code of conduct  allows bulls to be castrated without anaesthetic before the age of 6 months, presumably because operations on younger animals are not supposed to hurt as much.  Experimental evidence suggests however that even younger bulls castrated without anaesthetic experience chronic pain for a week after the operation .  Some New Zealand bulls are castrated after puberty .  Castration of older bulls causes pain for 14 days, even when a general anaesthetic is used .

Cattle in New Zealand are routinely dehorned without an anaesthetic until the age of around 20 weeks.  The purpose is to reduce injury to cattle and stock handlers.  Measurements of cortisol responses and observations of behaviour revealed that the cows are in pain for up to 48 hours after the operation .  Injection of local anaesthetic reduces pain immediately after the operation, but such relief is only temporary .

Tail docking is not so common in cattle as it is in sheep, though many farmers now remove the cows' tails for convenience – it makes it easier for the farmer to milk them. Cattle tail-docked with rubber rings show actions indicating pain, including tail swishing and bellowing (euphemistically described as "vocalisation" in the scientific literature) .   It is also quite possible that amputation could also cause chronic long-term pain as has been found in docked sheep .  Tail docking is not a permitted operation , but recently a judge has ruled that removing parts of a cow's anatomy for profit does not constitute an offence under animal welfare legislation .

Physical and mental stress
The modern dairy cow undergoes a continuous cycle of pregnancy and lactation.  The calves are removed from the cow shortly after birth, causing emotional stress to both the calf and its mother.  In addition, the continuous milking cycle results in the dairy cow being spent after about 3-5 years of grueling metabolic activity.  It has been estimated that the modern dairy cow works as hard as a cyclist in the Tour de France

Experiments
The purpose of keeping beef and dairy cattle in New Zealand is not to feed the world's starving millions, but to maximise profits by selling beef and dairy products to nations already so sated with animal protein that their health is suffering as a result .  Production of cattle in sufficient quantity to achieve this aim requires finding ways of treating the inevitable disorders and infectious diseases that result from keeping stressed production machines in overcrowded conditions.  This in turn requires intrusive experimentation to test treatments .

One example of this is bovine tuberculosis (Tb), which is endemic in New Zealand, and threatens our export earnings.  Control of this disease is made harder by the presence of a reservoir of disease in wildlife, especially possums and ferrets .  Bovine Tb however is specifically a problem of intensive farming, not cattle rearing as such.  If New Zealanders were to reduce their consumption and export of beef and dairy products, the disease could be controlled by rearing in less crowded conditions , or by restricting cattle to Tb free areas.  As it is however, reducing Tb incidence to acceptable levels requires intrusive experimentation on both cattle and possums to find a vaccine, and quite extensive and often ruthless culling of possums and ferrets in areas where the ecological impact of these pests would be minimal .

Welfare concerns related to cloning and transgenic manipulation of cattle have already been discussed n a previous issue .  Although the proponents of such technology make much of its application to curing illness, a recent BBC news report reveals that one of the first applications of such technology was the commercial production of cheese .

The role of organics
A shift in our economic emphasis from mass scale production, to less intensive production of quality organic produce would do much to improve animal health and welfare.  Nevertheless, such a switch by itself is not sufficient.  While organic standards do insist on a higher level of animal welfare than the government codes, they still allow some mutilations.  IFOAM standards for example allow castration and dehorning of cattle , and cows in Swiss organic farms are not allowed to live out any more of their life that conventionally reared ones .

This is in spite of the fact that organic farmers do not need to continue with mutilations in order to maintain production.   European studies have revealed for example that with skillful herd management it is possible to keep cows with their horns, and keep uncastrated bulls in cow pastures with no significant injuries or management problems . Chemical castration is also a less intrusive alternative that could be explored .

Organic producers who are serious about animal welfare therefore need to train stock handlers to eliminate unnecessary mutilations.  A closer look at organic standards to include animal welfare concerns is also desirable.