Guilty plea in West Coast animal welfare case

A South Island West Coast farmer was today sentenced to 350 hours community service in the Christchurch District Court after pleading guilty to two charges of animal cruelty dating back to August 2011.

Tjeerd Visser (24), who was employed as a farm manager at a Lake Brunner farm, was convicted for “failing to meet the physical health needs of the dairy cattle on this farm”, under Sections 10, 12 and 25 of the Animal Welfare Act 1999.

As the farm manager, Mr Visser was in charge of the animals on this farm and had an obligation to ensure they were fed at a level to ensure their health and well-being.

The court heard that as a result of a complaint made by a member of the public, Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Investigators visited the farm. They were confronted with a dairy herd in very poor condition with little or no feed available to them.

Sixty cattle were discovered dead or dying in a very swampy part of the farm. None were able to be saved.

Of the remaining herd of approximately 1300 cattle, animals were found in varying condition. Sixty-five cattle needed to be euthanised, however the majority were saved through MPI efforts including providing extra feed and de-stocking the farm.

A number of significant factors led to this offending including overstocking of the farm; poor farm infrastructure (e.g. a lack of reticulated water and boggy grazing areas around natural water supplies, causing the cattle to become trapped); failure to appreciate the significant extra food requirements of pregnant cows; and poor farm management and financial constraints.

Mr Visser co-operated throughout the investigation and the court heard that he has left the farm. He has since undertaken training so that he has the skills and knowledge to prevent such an incident happening again.

“While it is distressing to encounter such poor farming practices that inevitably led to this offending, MPI is satisfied with the sentence delivered by the court today,” MPI Regional Compliance Manager John Slaughter said.

“It is a shame that Mr Visser was not equipped to deal with the developing disaster at the time. The main lesson to be learnt from this regrettable incident is that when farmers are faced with developing crises and feel isolated, they need to seek external assistance through industry groups or by contacting MPI Animal Welfare staff. Preventing such disasters is a far better strategy than needing to deal with dead and dying animals when it is too late.”

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