Keiller
MacDuff, Senior reporter
The
Green Party is welcoming news that the government has
backtracked on plans to reinstate live animal
exports.
Animal Welfare Minister Andrew Hoggard told
1 News he could not get Cabinet agreement on overturning
the ban, which formed part of coalition agreements with both
ACT and NZ First.
Green Party spokesperson Steve Abel
said the news was a win for animals, the public and the
groups campaigning against the move.
He said there had
been backlash
to the proposal right from the start.
“From the
outset, there was overwhelming outrage from veterinary
experts who expressed there was no way to maintain animal
welfare standards and herd cattle onto ships where they
spend weeks at sea wallowing in their own waste. It’s
fundamentally cruel and there’s no way to uphold the barest
animal standards while exporting at sea,” Abel
said.
“They couldn’t get it across the line because
New Zealanders didn’t want to see animals suffering in that
way.”
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A 57,000-strong
petition calling for the ban to stay in place was
presented to parliament in 2024.
At the time, Hoggard
said he wanted the ban overturned by 2025.
In April
2025, Hoggard told RNZ he expected the legislation to go to
Cabinet within months, but that a backlog
had slowed the work of the Parliamentary Counsel Office
in drafting the amendment.
Last month, Livestock
Exports NZ chief executive Glen Neal said uncertainty around
the bill was unhelpful, but the industry remained hopeful
the ban would be overturned.
Parliamentary
questions revealed the minister had not received any advice
on the plan since mid-2025, despite telling scrutiny week
committees the amendment had gone before cabinet in December
last year, Abel said.
If the coalition intended to
make it an election issue, it needed to tell the public
immediately, but Abel believed “the handbrake had been
pulled” at the Cabinet level because of the unpopularity of
the move.
The
Ministry for Primary Industries initiated an independent
review of live exports in 2020, after the sinking
of Gulf Livestock 1, which resulted in the deaths of 41
crew and nearly 6000 cattle.
The vessel, registered to
Panama and owned by a UAE shipping company, left Napier in
August 2020 bound for China, but sank off the coast of Japan
in a typhoon.
In 2022, the previous government passed
a bill
banning live exports, beginning in April 2023.
At
the time, National’s animal welfare spokesperson Nicola
Grigg said the ban was disproportionate
and ideological, and would hurt farmers and
consumers.
The National Party had campaigned
on overturning the ban, with a proposal it said would
require greater regulation to protect animal welfare and
safety, such as purpose-built ships and a certification
regime for importers.
Hoggard, who is a former
president of Federated Farmers, had previously said
reintroducing the trade was one of his top
priorities in the portfolio and he wanted to “progress
with some haste”.
A 2024, an RNZ
investigation revealed industry group Livestock Export
New Zealand planned to spend $1 million to ensure the ban
was dismantled, including on political lobbying, a “social
media counter offensive”, a “trust and understanding”
campaign, media training and creating the “gold standard”
for animal welfare.
RNZ has approached Minister
Hoggard for
comment.
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