How animal agriculture runs New Zealand
Since 2014, the Chinese government has been confining a minority group of Muslim people - mostly Uyghur people - in so-called “re-education camps” in Xinjiang China. People were being sent to these camps against their will and suffered serious human rights violations and as a result, in January 2021, the US accused China of committing genocide.
Since then, many countries have joined them in doing so. However, others, despite overwhelming evidence, have opted not to declare this genocide a genocide. And among those countries, is New Zealand.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, had at that time become a symbol of strength in the face of discrimination in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings. However, when it came to the genocide of the Uyghur people, she said: “There are some things on which China and New Zealand do not, cannot and will not agree. This need not derail our relationship. It is simply, a reality.”
This need not derail our relationship. She makes it seem like there is, in fact, a place for racism, even a genocide. But why? What is going on? Well, it turns out that to understand her response, we have to look into New Zealand’s animal agriculture industry.
It turns out that even though New Zealand is ranked 127th when it comes to the most populated countries in the world, it is the eighth biggest producer of dairy and the third biggest sheep producer in the world. In fact, there are six sheep for every person in New Zealand.
So why is a country so small producing such a high quantity of animal products? The answer is found in the exports. New Zealand is the seventh biggest exporter of beef, the third biggest exporter of wool, the second biggest exporter of sheep flesh and the number one exporter of dairy products in the world with more than 95 per cent of milk produced in New Zealand being exported.
This small country - home to nearly four million fewer people than London - just so happens to be one of the largest global producers of animal products, making up nearly 50 per cent of its total exports. This brings us back to China, which turns out to be New Zealand’s largest trading partner.
In fact, in the months leading up to Jacinda Arden’s speech, exports to China steadily increased and at times even exceeded the value of exports to New Zealand’s next four largest trading partners – Australia, the US, the UK and Japan – combined.
This could go some way in explaining why in response to the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China, Jacinda Ardern responded by saying “This need not derail our relationship.”
But how did New Zealand become so dependent on animal farming? The story begins 250 years ago.
The first sheep were brought to New Zealand in the 1770s by the British navigator James Cook and the first dairy cows were then introduced in the early 1800s.
“Animal agriculture didn’t exist before colonisation. For people who don’t know the history here in Aotearoa [New Zealand] there were two treaties that were signed between British settlers and indigenous people of Aotearoa - Maori,” said Chris Huriwai, co-producer of the documentary MILKED. “Maori signed the treaty that they could read, which they believed maintained their rights and sovereignty over Aotearoa, for example, but then through the translation to a separate treaty, the British Crown was able to confiscate and take land and make laws that enabled this industry to have free land.”
The story of animal agriculture in New Zealand parallels the story of colonisation. So these British people as they were coming over and taking over the land, were trying to set up animal farms. But there was a problem. Trees. You see, trees are nice and all, but not great if you want to graze animals.
Before humans lived in New Zealand, around 80 per cent of the landmass was native forests, now only 24 per cent is native forests. Not to mention that 90 per cent of New Zealand’s wetlands have also been drained or filled as well - and in the place of a lot of these native forests and wetlands, there are now pastures for animal farms. In fact, according to this report from the New Zealand government, 40 per cent of the total land area of New Zealand is exotic grassland, which means land covered with non-native grasses used for pasture including dairy, sheep and beef farming. Compare that to the two per cent that is used for horticulture and crop farming.
In effect, animal farmers have taken deforested land and created a manufactured environment using non-native grasses, and then claimed that “New Zealand’s climate, soil and abundant water create the perfect environment for growing grass,” conveniently overlooking the fact the land is perfectly suited to be covered in forests and native vegetation even more. This had a devastating impact on the environment.
“So our industry is perceived as being a clean, green industry because that's what our country is known for, but none of the externalities are being paid for. The damage to our waterways is being externalised for the taxpayers and we produce more methane than any other country of our size,” said Huriwa.
To see the impact this has had, have a look at the two graphs below. The first is greenhouse gas emissions produced by each sector in New Zealand in 2018. As you can see, agriculture is by far the largest emitter in New Zealand and according to the New Zealand government, three-quarters of those agricultural emissions are from methane produced by farmed animals alone, with a staggering 94.5 per cent of all agricultural emissions coming from dairy, beef and sheep farming.
So that brings us to methane emissions. The second graph here shows methane emissions produced by each sector in that same year. Agriculture produces over seven times more methane than the second-largest emitter, waste. And emissions from New Zealand dairy farms have only continued to increase since 2018 as well.
But not to fear, because in 2019, New Zealand pledged to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, so nothing to worry about, right? Well, there was a loophole to the pledge: biogenic methane emitted by plants and animals.
The largest bar at the top of the methane graph - the amount produced by agriculture - is protected by this loophole. And the largest bar on the other graph, the one showing sector emissions, three-quarters of that is also protected by the loophole.
But don’t be alarmed because New Zealand farmers have an explanation for these figures. You see, New Zealand dairy production is among the most carbon-efficient in the world, which is all well and good except it’s a red herring.
This carbon efficiency is when compared to areas of the world where agricultural sectors are still very much in development, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, meaning their emissions are disproportionately higher. And ultimately this comparison is irrelevant. The real question is whether dairy farming is more carbon-efficient than the alternative?
First, let’s compare plant milks to dairy. Here’s a graph comparing how much land dairy, oat, soy, almond and rice milk use. Here’s a graph for the same plant-based milks but looking at greenhouse gas emissions, and here’s one that looks at freshwater used. As you can see, dairy milk is the worst for all these things, by far.
And when looking at plant-based diets more broadly, a study by researchers at the University of Otago found that if New Zealanders swapped to eating plant-based diets, which also minimised food waste, they would reduce their diet-related emissions by somewhere between 42 and 58 per cent.
But what about the animals?
“We are known for having high welfare standards. But like most countries, the body that looks after animal welfare is also the body that looks after our export products and primary industries,” said Huriwa. “So there's a conflict of interests and although we have a great Animal Welfare Act, there are specific codes that are produced for each animal. The codes set the minimum standards for animals and can be used in defence against any breaches of the Animal Welfare Act. And so we have our lows, just like any other country and our standard practices are the same as any other Western industrialised country.”
In the egg industry, it used to be common practice to house hens in so-called “battery cages”. Hens would spend their entire lives in these cages, barely able to move and laying eggs to the point of exhaustion. It wasn’t uncommon for them to die prematurely in these cages.
However, in 2012, the government ruled that battery cages were cruel, banned them, and made it so that farmers were required to phase them out by 2022. Today, caged hens can be kept in these so-called “colony cages”. They’re slightly bigger, but hens still spend their entire lives here, barely able to move and again laying eggs to exhaustion. It’s still not uncommon for them to die in these cages.
In the chicken meat industry, chickens are crammed into huge barns and bred to grow so fast that their organs fail or they become immobilised and unable to move properly, including even to reach food and water points.
In the pig meat industry, mother pigs typically give birth in cages called farrowing crates. These crates are so small that pigs can’t even turn around, and this leads them to suffer from emotional distress.
Farrowing crates were banned in 2020 and are due to be phased out by 2025. However, following the ban, farmers expressed concern that this ban would increase their cost of producing pig flesh, which would make it increasingly difficult for them to compete with foreign pig farmers, who are not required to follow New Zealand animal welfare laws. Over half of the pig meat consumed in New Zealand is imported, and local farmers worry that this new welfare standard might crush their industry.
In other words, the pig meat in New Zealand produced locally using farrowing crates might soon be replaced with pig meat produced abroad using farrowing crates. In the meantime, the government is working with farmers to find alternatives, but what this means, we still don’t know.
And in the dairy industry, cows are forcibly impregnated in order to make them lactate. Once they give birth, their babies are taken away from them. And as they share a strong bond with their babies, cows have been documented following their babies as they are being dragged away.
If they are male, the calves are considered useless to the industry and are killed. In 2020, two million male calves were killed before they were a week old for this reason. If they are female, they endure the same fate as their mothers and are milked to exhaustion.
These are just some of the standard practices that are common on New Zealand farms, but on top of that, the cruelty doesn’t stop there. Many investigations into farms have revealed workers treating animals like inanimate objects, hitting and throwing them around.
And at the end of the day, every single one of those animals, even those in the dairy and egg industries, ends up in a slaughterhouse and is killed against their will.
To treat someone with fairness, and maintain a sense of ethics and moral consideration, is to take into account their interests, their feelings, and their experiences. However, what we do to animals centres around what we want. We value our desire to make money from their exploitation as being more important than the subjective experiences and feelings of the animals who are being harmed.
And in the case of New Zealand, the profit driven motivation behind their exploitation of animals is so pervasive, that it doesn’t just mean they turn a blind eye to the non-human animals who are suffering, it means they also turn a blind eye to the suffering caused to humans by the country it relies on most when it comes to exporting its animal products.
Ultimately, while thinking of New Zealand may conjure up certain idyllic notions, it should instead make us think of an agricultural system that is out of control and more powerful in shaping the decision making of its government than arguably any other in the world.
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