Cruelty to Animals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 5

Cruelty to Animals

ECAUSE we expressed regret B that a correspondent who wrote about cruelty to animals had not written with more restraint a second correspondent wrote saying that we were not very observant, two more that we lacked taste, a fifth that our lordly manner was offensive, and a sixth that the facts were far worse than our first correspondent had said they were. What was said about ourselves may all have been true, but what was said about New Zealand :was that it is "known overseas as having a greater per- . centage of cruelty to animals than any other English-speaking country ... that whereas in England and Scotland an owner of an animal attends to its wants before his own, in New Zealand the reverse is the rule .. . that horses are starved to death, dogs chained up year in year out without being released . . . cats mutilated, dumped, or tied up in sacks, and left to die miserably" ... and some other things almost as ridiculous. We printed the letter because the

writer was obviously sincere, had been deeply moved, and: had raised her voice in a good cause. If we refer to it again it is because the cause is still good and the arguments of most of her supporters as extravagant and foolish as her own. Whether we are more or less cruel than the people of other English-speaking countries is something that none of us can know. What’ we can know is that New Zealanders live largely by rearing and then slaughtering animals, and that if the percentage so situated is greater than in other Englishspeaking countries the need for guarding against callousness must be greater too. It is necessary to keep this fact continually in our minds, and good to be reminded of it if we seem to be forgetting it. But it is neither helpful, nor sensible, nor sane to suggest, when some callous scoundrel starves a horse or ill-uses a dog that all New Zealanders do such things, or any appreciable number of them. It is hysterical nonsense which gets in ‘the way of more sensible pleadings.