TOP STORY: Cruelty penalties too light - SPCA

13th September 2006

SPCA officers who first encountered the dying and distressed stock at a Te Pohue farm are upset at the outcome of a cruelty case which has taken two years to come to court.

Farm manager Phillip William Peacock, 35, was yesterday sentenced on 56 charges laid by the Ministry of Agriculture after dozens of dead and dying cows were found on a Te Pohue farm in September 2004.

Peacock was sentenced in the Napier District Court to 300 hours' community work and ordered to pay $750 toward the cost of one of the ministry's biggest investigations. He was also was barred from having anything to do with farm animals for five years.

Warranted SPCA inspector Mike Wallace, of Napier, said it was quickly apparent the case involving livestock on Te Pohue Ltd's farm was "too big" and the Ministry of Agriculture was called in. But he also believes the case highlighted the fact that farm-ownership companies may also be getting too big.

With the maximum penalty $125,000 per offence, Mr Wallace said the company and its directors, who included Fonterra shareholders council member Allan Crafar, of Reporoa, should have been hit with penalties bigger than the $200 imposed when the company was sentenced last month.

He said he was "deflated" by both that outcome and by yesterday's sentencing of its manager. But most of all he was upset by the revelation yesterday by Peacock's lawyer, Jodie Garrett, that the company had trucked in poorly conditioned extra stock soon after buying the property, to hide them from the gaze of the MAF.

The SPCA's gruesome find resulted in 49 of the charges being laid. The other seven charges came after more stock died when a herd of bull calves was left in a paddock without water or shade for four days as temperatures soared to 40degC during the following January.

Peacock had pleaded guilty on August 1 to the charges, among a total of more than 800 laid against himself, farm owner Te Pohue Ltd, directors Allan and Frank Crafar and off-site farm operations manager David Wiltshire, over the Berry Road farm debacle.

Charges against the other individuals were withdrawn at that time. A trial held after the company pleaded not guilty came to a sudden end when it changed its plea and admitted 49 charges. It was fined $9800 and ordered to pay $750 court costs.

The company, a part of the Crafarms Group, was formed after the purchase of the 340ha farm in June 2004, after the previous owner got into financial difficulties. It had an effective grazing area of 280ha.

Ms Garrett said Te Pohue Ltd overstocked the property after its takeover on June 25, 2004, to the point where there were 936 mature animals on the farm, but staffing was less than when it had half that number.

It brought in 266 empty cows, which Mr Peacock believed were weak with hunger and emaciation, and they were put into a forest block. By the time MAF was alerted, 35 had died, and 14 had to be put down.

Peacock however accepted fuller culpability for the January 2005 offences, but Mr Garrett said that at that time his client was under considerable stress. He was an undischarged bankrupt, working long hours without time off.