Veterinary Voices

Changing the Fate of Animals: Advocacy, Ethics, and the Future of Live Exports with Dr. Helen Beattie

• Julie South of VetStaff & VetClinicJobs • Episode 215

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What if you could change the fate of thousands of animals with just your voice?

Join Julie South this week as she chats with Dr Helen Beattie, the pioneering founder of Veterinarians for Animal Welfare Aotearoa (VAWA). 

Today Dr Helen she shares her compelling journey in challenging the norms of live animal exports. Through her expert lens, Dr Beattie brings to light the ethical dilemmas and dire conditions faced during these inhumane journeys.

Dr Helen and Julie catch up on what she's been doing since her last guest appearance (back in ep. 069).   They talk about VAWAs mission through to grappling with the pressing need for sustainable financial models to keep such critical advocacy alive.

As we confront the harsh realities of live exports, the episode also unravels the tragic story of Gulf Livestock 1, serving as a stark warning of the perils involved.

Dr Helen and Julie talk about the political maelstrom surrounding New Zealand's anticipated repeal of the live export ban and they explore the global movement towards stricter regulations.

This conversation isn't just about the challenges—it’s about taking action. They discuss how public engagement can influence decision-making and shape policies that prioritise animal welfare.

Tune in to discover the power of advocacy and the potential for meaningful change in the realm of animal rights.

Links Mentioned Today
Dr Helen Beattie - Episode 069
Dr Helen Beattie - Episode 070
Dr Helen Beattie - Episode 071
Email Prime Minister Christopher Luxon
Veterinarians for Animal Welfare Aotearoa website

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Julie South:

As a veterinary professional, where do you stand when it comes to live exports? Do you think it's okay to expose animals to the stressed and inhumane conditions that go with getting, say, heifers from New Zealand to China? And then what about the quality of their lives once they reach their destination? Where do you stand on those conditions? Join me today as I catch up with Dr Helen Beattie to hear her views when it comes to live exports. Welcome to Veterinary Voices. This is episode 215 and I'm your host, julie South. With listeners tuning in from over 1,400 cities worldwide, veterinary Voices celebrates all that's great about working in New Zealand's veterinary industry. I'd love to hear where you're listening from right now, so please feel free to share your location with me at veterinaryvoicesnz, and it's also at veterinaryvoicesnz where you can find back copies as well. Veterinary Voices is brought to you by VetStaff, new Zealand's only recruitment agency, specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs that they're excited about going to on Monday mornings in Kiwi Vet Clinics, vetstaffconz. It's been a while since Dr Helen Beattie has been a guest on this podcast. It was back in February 2022 for the first time, and that was episode 69. As you'll hear today, she's not one to let the grass grow under her feet and she's achieved a lot, all on behalf of animals, in those last 30 months or so.

Julie South:

Dr Helen Beattie grew up on a South Island Central High Country station before going to Massey University. Her veterinary career started off in a mixed animal clinic in North Otago. Helen's OE included working on the UK's foot and mouth response in the UK. From there she came home to God's Own and bought a companion animal clinic in Dunedin. From clinic ownership, helen ventured into teaching vet nurses at Otago Polytechnic. Not standing still on the education front, she picked up the books herself to become a warranted animal welfare inspector. Whilst employed as the Director of Animal Welfare at SPCA Otago. Burning the candle at both ends at the beginning of the pandemic, as the New Zealand Veterinary Association's Chief Veterinary Officer, dr Helen was instrumental in helping Kiwi vet clinics navigate the ins and outs of staying open and safe whilst New Zealand was declared a state of emergency. At the NZVA, helen's role was one of national level advocacy, leadership and politicking on behalf of the veterinary profession and for animal welfare. Helen left the NZVA in late 2021 and in February 2022, launched the charitable organisation that provides a unique new voice for animal welfare Veterinarians for Animal Welfare Ōtiroa. The organisation was the brainchild of several veterinary colleagues and provides a veterinary-led, science-backed, independent advocacy voice on animal welfare.

Julie South:

As well as holding a Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree from Massey University, dr Helen also holds a Certificate in Animal Welfare Investigations. She has a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching and a Certificate in Mata e Ao Maori. I'll put all links Helen mentions today in the show notes of this episode, which you'll be able to find at veterinaryvoices. nz. Dr Helen Beattie, it's been a while two and a half three years since we last chatted. It's been a while two and a half three years since we last chatted. Vawa was a baby and lots of things have happened in that time, so can you share please with me listeners in New Zealand and overseas just give a brief overview of Vawa and then some of the successes that have happened in those two and a half three years.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Sure, great to be back having a chat to you. Yeah, so Vawa Veterinarians for Animal Welfare, aotearoa, which seems to be a name that people really struggle with, so I often think I should have chosen a shorter name, but it says what we are and we are becoming increasingly known just as VWA. So that makes it a bit easier. And I should say, just to clarify, we're led by veterinarians. Constitution requires that our executive committee is a majority of veterinarians. Decisions on our constitution have to be made by a majority of veterinarians, but we are open to everybody, so anyone who likes the work that we're doing is able to join. So it's meant to be a collective voice of people led by veterinarians to champion the cause of animal welfare.

Dr Helen Beattie:

The byline, if you like, we're about a good life for all.

Dr Helen Beattie:

So in the animal welfare world, a good life is, you know, full of positive welfare opportunities and not just, you know, minimizing suffering, and the for all piece speaks to the fact that not only all animals, but actually people and the environment within which we all live and you know, papa Tuānuku, who supports us all, also needs to have a good life, because if she doesn't, then frankly, it's not going to work out well for any of us.

Dr Helen Beattie:

So that's our tagline and I guess the nuts and bolts are around being an independent expert animal welfare advocacy organization. So most people kind of know that I'm reasonably passionate about animal welfare and and have you have developed some skills in that area not where I thought my career was going to take me, but you know the interesting twists and turns over 28 years, yeah, and so we are involved in masses of projects and from zoo welfare to like cows on mud, which again people know it's something I've been a champion of, trying to get some better outcomes for the cattle and the environment for a number of years. Cat management, pain relief yeah, there's a wide range of things and of course live exports, which we will talk about in a minute.

Julie South:

Just looking back over the last couple of years, what are you most proud of? Excited because of.

Dr Helen Beattie:

I guess when VAWA was set up, the first big question was would we, could we succeed? Was there a space for this vehicle? Could I survive financially, make a living out of it? That piece is a bit tenuous, to be honest. I'm waiting for a philanthropic donor to fall out of the ether. So that was a big question, right, was there longevity in this? Was there going to be work? Would people look to us for advice and what we had to say and think that we had a place in the advocacy sandpit? So I think that's probably the single biggest win, if you like, is that we're still here. And now I guess, feel like we have definitely stamped our mark and people come to us regularly for advice from other organisations to media to hear what we have to say. So a very high level sort of what's the thing that? That's probably it. We're here and we, and we're still here.

Julie South:

So you're still here, yeah, because you know being self-employed it's an exciting, scary place to live different kind of stresses to being an employee yeah, yeah, definitely.

Dr Helen Beattie:

I mean I people say to me I don't know how you work from home and all of that. I mean I'm a bit of a workaholic, so the you know, focusing and doing the work is not the problem, and the intention of our was always that we would be able to. I mean, if you look on our website and go to our work and all the stuff that we've done, the vast majority of that is done from a charitable perspective, so people don't pay us for that work. We're here to help. But I have survived off doing consultancy work and which is, you know, it's great because that's I can, you know, put food on the table and I'm still here.

Dr Helen Beattie:

But ideally, what I would like is for VAWA to be able to do everything for nothing like and, as I say that we actually had a significant donor that came forward and said we like what you're doing and prepared to support it, because, I don't know, maybe because I'm a bit of a socialist and I just I would really like our services to be available to everybody and not have to worry about who can and can't afford to to use or hear from us. So that would be my overarching goal. If there was something that I haven't yet achieved, that's it to be able to give everything to everybody all of the time, yeah, which is, you know, that might be a bit lofty, but that's still something I'd like to be able to achieve in the long term For listeners, and have a team of people to help me do that, julie, because I can't do it all myself.

Julie South:

Yeah, I get that. Yeah, wearing many hats For listeners. I will put links for you to be able to find out more about Vawa in the show notes and where to go to support Helen Helen live exports. Talk to me about that, please, because I thought we had this sussed in New Zealand.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Oh, we did yeah, we did yeah again. So my involvement in this has run back a number of years and, to be honest, when I first kind of came across live exports and well, actually going back a lot of years my dad I mean many people know that I grew up in the high country and dad actually exported some sheep and did it once and then didn't do it again, because we know that the sheep story going up to the Middle East was particularly challenging from a welfare perspective and there were some terrible stories that happened around our sheep exports. So that was when I was a, you know, a babe essentially. So then roll forward to the advocacy work I'd. So I kind of knew that and had that in the back of my mind, but I think a lot of us don't.

Dr Helen Beattie:

It's really hard to kind of understand exactly what's going on on the vessels and during the voyages. And then, through a set of weird circumstances as is wont to be the case in New Zealand, where it's two degrees of separation I ended up meeting someone who kind of opened my eyes, I suppose, to what was going on. They hadn't been on a voyage, but were able to connect me to Dr Lynn Simpson, who's pretty famous in this space. So she's sailed 57 voyages and there's stuff on our website you can go and see what she has to say about that. But I mean, lynn's a pretty blunt, you know, straight up, pretty doesn't pull any punches, and you spend some time talking to her and go.

Dr Helen Beattie:

There's just yeah, there's just massive, massive challenges around putting animals on vessels and getting them safely from one side of well, from New Zealand to China. So that kind of led my whole. Actually this is something that if people knew and understood what happens on these vessels so no effluent management system, for example. You know heat and humidity challenges, significant and serious heat stress, really cramped conditions, challenges around the actual infrastructure, making sure the animals get fed and there's enough fodder reserves if things go wrong so that they can afford to wait for three or five days if things go wrong. But all of these things are really significant vulnerabilities during a voyage.

Dr Helen Beattie:

And I just don't think that prior to the advocacy that happened when MPI started their review and then Gulf Livestock One sank, I just don't think a lot of people really understood self-included, to be fair, until about 2017, maybe, yeah, didn't really understand kind of the challenges that were there. And once you've seen it, you're kind of like there's just no way we should be doing this, it's too risky, we've got other ways we could be doing this. It's a tiny amount of money in the big picture yes, it's been lucrative for a small number of people, but in the big picture it's actually. It's highly risky, bad for our reputation, terrible experience for the animals, and these vessels sink more often than other vessels. So that led me to where we are, which is, you know, with Vahwa saying like there's no way to do this safely. I'm absolutely clear about that. There is no way.

Julie South:

One of the things I didn't realise that for. I presume it's for all bovine, not just dairy cows that stress, hate stress kicks in at about 20 degrees Celsius. That's not very, that's not very high. It doesn't take much to reach that and I dread to think what those temperatures would be like below deck.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Yeah, absolutely. And on that we have a significant challenge here onshore because we have tens of thousands of dairy cows in Canterbury who have no shade all summer, who are also experiencing significant heat stress which reduces their milk production. So it's it's nonsensical and and unacceptable. But obviously you know, changing that system when we've got center pivots that don't go well with trees and and shade is another whole thing. But yes to to your point, that's correct. So 22, 23 degrees plus a bit of humidity, and dairy cattle start to experience heat stress. And on these vessels when they cross the equator we're talking about temperatures upwards of 30, 32, 33 degrees plus really high humidity.

Dr Helen Beattie:

And some of the vets because I've worked with whistleblowers who have been on these vessels that have chosen to remain anonymous but have provided a lot of intel and photographs and stuff to me these animals die from heat stress sometimes and I get frustrated because I hear MPI talking about the low death rates and that actually there might be more animals dying on farm than what die on these vessels. It is such a ridiculous way to look at animal welfare. You know you can suffer without dying and in fact I would say the morbidity, the number of animals that are affected by heat stress on these vessels is is probably 100 percent for that period of time, particularly going over the equator, in relation to heat stress, but from a cramped conditions, having an inappropriate lying surface, rough flooring, standing in their own effluent. That's for the duration of the voyage. And you know, we, we, yeah, I mean again, if, if there's so much good stuff happening on these vessels, then please show me the evidence, because we're just not seeing that falling out.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Julie, we're providing a lot of saying. Here's what we understand it to look like. So what is the other side? And we just don't see it. Now, you read into that what you will, but I'm left in no doubt, having spoken to people, that the images that we see, even if they are coming off Australian voyages, are absolutely relevant to what happens to our animals and in fact we have an affidavit from an anonymous vet saying as much. That might be Australian footage, but that's exactly what I experienced when I was on a voyage out of New Zealand.

Julie South:

When I first started with vet staff which was 2019, I was kind of oblivious to this whole export live export thing and I remember one locum coming to me, or a vet who was a locum, wanting to know whether locum work would be financially more rewarding than the live export work that he was doing, because the live export work was very, very lucrative.

Dr Helen Beattie:

It paid extremely well for short periods of time yeah, and I don't have up-to-date figures on that, but I understand that is still the case like it's. There's certainly some money to be made in there, but it also, you know that then comes down to. You know what are your priorities in life and what's your value set and you know what do you want to be remembered for. And I mean, it's probably pretty clear where my values lie around that stuff. And it's that we should be doing the right thing for these animals who have no agency about whether or not they choose to walk onto that boat or not, at least the people who are going. You know they're making a choice for themselves. But we're loading up those animals and giving them no choice. And you know which we do and a whole bunch of know how we farm them and all the rest of it. But when we're knowingly sending them into 18 to 21 days of pretty horrendous conditions and with the additional risk of sinking, like I know, you know we might say, well, there's only been Gulf Livestock 1, you know, ex-new Zealand, sure, I accept that. But if you actually look at the data, these vessels, they do seem to be more singable than your average in the fleet. Most of them are really old. A lot of them are converted car container boats and so they're not designed with animal welfare in mind.

Dr Helen Beattie:

And, overarchingly, all of that stuff aside, transport's inherently stressful for animals, irrespective of whether you're putting them on a ship and sending them to China or whether you're putting them on a transport truck and sending them to the works. We know transport is stressful. You get mixing and confinement and it smells weird in the movement and there's any number of things that are challenging for animals, let alone putting them to sea and the temperature, humidity and standing in their own effluent. Just circling back, I don't want to gloss over what I said about golf livestock one. It was an absolute tragedy and it just, it just about reduces me to tears still to think about how terrifying it must have been for not just the 41 or the 43, but the 41 people that died and the two people that survived and the you know what was it? 5678 heifers. It's just awful to think about their last moments, you know, being thrown around and just terrible, terrible.

Julie South:

Let's move on to see whether we can not, to see whether to take steps to help you, support you, so that they're we don't have to have this conversation again. Where are you at right now and what can we do to support you? What would you like us to do? A super quick pause here. I just want to share something that could be a game changer for vet clinics that are struggling to attract your dream team members, regardless of where you are in the world. Here's the thing If you're still posting the same old job ads and wondering what needs to change, it's time for a fresh approach.

Julie South:

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Dr Helen Beattie:

There's every chance, I think that this repeal is going to happen. The government's been pretty clear about that and so far there's been a bunch of things they've said they'll do that many of us might find egregious, like the smoking legislation or whatever and they've done it anyway. So I'm not convinced that we're necessarily going to be any more successful in managing to change their minds. I would say like, in the long term we will win this because Labour and the Greens have promised to put the ban back in place. So even if it does get repealed, there's massive uncertainty for the industry because in the short term so either in the next 18 months or the next four and a half years it's going to be banned again. So to my mind you'd be a bit of an idiot to start to invest in it when you know that this is going to happen again. And I think internationally that vulnerability and uncertainty from an international perspective will make people really question whether or not they should bother to start investing back here in New Zealand. So that's kind of the long picture. In the end we will win this, julie. I'm very clear about that. It's just whether we have to go through this major setback in the meantime and submit a whole bunch more animals to a bunch of suffering they shouldn't need to experience.

Dr Helen Beattie:

So the select committee process we haven't got dates for that yet. For those people who are not following closely, the first reading has happened in the bill. It's been in the House. Sorry, it's been now. No, it hasn't. Sorry, they're telling us that that's going to happen and then it's going to go to select committee. We don't have dates for that yet, but they were talking about in the first quarter or early 2025. And there's some targeted consultation going on November, december apparently, about setting up and looking at the details under the repeal. So the repeal itself was one bit of the Act that says at the moment it's banned. They obviously need to just strike that out and reinstate it, but there has to be a bunch of things underneath that that the government has promised around how they intend to improve welfare standards, and so those details, as we understand it, are being consulted with some of the interested parties at the moment and there will be some opportunity to feedback on that in 2025.

Dr Helen Beattie:

To be honest, we're not really clear about what's going on. It's one of the most confusing consultation processes that I've come across and I've been doing this for a while. So what we can do in the meantime? We would love everybody to make Christopher Luxon's inbox quite full of emails so he can hear from the general public around their objection to this move, and that can happen any time. So I say, get amongst it. His email was on the website. Email him and tell him what you think. We're staying focused on Luxon. Ultimately, he is the opportunity to change this decision.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Hoggard's obviously very determined to put it through, but Luxon could, the national part of the government could axe that. So pile in. I say, send him an email and the more the merrier spread the word. If we could make it viral in some sort of pyramid emailing scheme, that would be great. And then when the actual consultation happens through the select committee plus or minus this MPI consultation like I say, we're not very clear about what's going on around that Then it would be great to get people feeding back on that too.

Dr Helen Beattie:

And I think the easiest way to do that is to you know like follow our website or say for whoever your favourite party is, so you can stay up to date with what's happening and we'll all be letting you know like here's what's happening, here's what you need to do, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, and then you know, either 18 months or four and a half years time we repeat the process again. You know, at this time going yes, please ban it again. So you know I'm focused on the long game, we will win. But yeah, it's going to be a bit rocky getting there?

Julie South:

are there countries that have already banned or are going through this process, or have never done it to start with?

Dr Helen Beattie:

yeah, all of the above. So Australia's just legislated their ban on live sheep exports for 2028, I think it is the EU has. It's a bit confusing in the EU, right, because it's big and they have cross-border transport and things as well, but they have made moves in their direction of travellers around banning exports to countries that, for example, have lower welfare standards. So that would be a reason why we shouldn't be doing this and I don't mean to be making assumptions about things that I can't necessarily validate every single farm in Chia where our cows have ended up. But we also know that our animal welfare laws written law is very good and some of the best in the world. Implementation is sometimes a challenge, but it's pretty fair to say that, generally speaking, exporting animals from New Zealand to China, they're going into a lower welfare situation, Certainly less legislation to support their welfare anyway or to protect their welfare. So that leaves us out of step with what's going on in the EU. Who are making exactly the opposite decision? Ireland and maybe Britain. I'm not 100% clear about exactly what the coverage is, but there's been moves made of stopping the export by sea of their bobby calves, for example. So, yeah, I mean we're absolutely swimming against the tide here.

Dr Helen Beattie:

The direction of travel for every other country who does this in some way, shape or form is to move, to put in more restrictions on transport. And, as I said before, fundamentally that comes down to the fact that we understand that transport for animals is stressful there's no question about that, apart from some dogs who love to get in the car and go for a trip. But for farmed animals, and actually often for horses too, transport is stressful, and especially long transport. So hence the direction of travel for all these other countries. So, after we put our ban in Brazil, came out and made a statement about banning it as well. There's been some. There was a political statement versus the reality of what's going on, but again they followed our lead and went. Actually, this is something we need to consider too. That one's a bit contentious. But again, direction of travel is what we did when we banned it, not what we're doing, repealing it.

Julie South:

Which is a bit sad when you think about how New Zealand is usually so good at leading the way.

Dr Helen Beattie:

Yeah, this is entirely regressive. I mean this is and it is 100% about a small number of people who make some money and I know the numbers get flung around and it sounds like a lot, but in the big picture it's like 0.2% of our export market. It's tiny. I accept for the people who lost that business that that would have been difficult. By the time this gets repealed we'll be a couple of years down the track and presumably those businesses have not all failed. They've pivoted and they've found other things to do with their animals. So you know, again, bringing it back in when we know it's going to get banned again just actually creates uncertainty. It's also stupid because the maritime union just came out and said we don't want to load these animals, we're not in. We think we oppose the repeal. These are the people who put these animals on these vessels. That's a really significant statement. The Meat Industry Association you know they were talking about the impacts of not with respect to live exports specifically, but Smithfields recently closed down right because of lack of numbers going to the meatworks and you know this is another 120,000 animals that we're bypassing and sending offshore. So that has an impact on our local communities and, as I keep saying to people, because I get so sick of hearing about the fact that this is a bobby calf solution.

Dr Helen Beattie:

This is not a bobby calf solution. We export dairy heifers. They're not our best genetic stock. That's the other thing I get frustrated about. If you were to look at what gets exported versus what's kept, there's no way any farmer in their right mind is going to send their best heifer on a vessel, right Like they keep them for their own herd. We are exporting still some pretty good genetics. We've got good genetics.

Dr Helen Beattie:

But as far as what goes on these vessels, some of these are purpose-bred heifers. So that's not a bobby cuff. That doesn't impact the bobby cuff situation. Some of them are beef animals, steers. So it's not all about the wastage bobby calf and for those of you who can't see me, I've got inverted commas around that terrible term wastage but also it's 120,000 animals. At peak it was just over 120,000. We kill 1.8 million bobby calves every year. This doesn't even touch the sides of that and that bobby calf challenge needs the industry to sit down and actually have a proper conversation about what we're going to do about that, because it's losing social license rapidly and everybody knows that right when we think about 1.8 million bobbies, it's a no-brainer that there has to be a big, hard conversation had around what we do about that. Certainly, sending 120,000 animals on a vessel yearly is not a solution to 1.8 million bobbies.

Dr Helen Beattie:

So I get really frustrated when I hear that from federated farmers.

Dr Helen Beattie:

It's just, it's a rubbish argument.

Dr Helen Beattie:

I think if there was one additional comment that I could make, I get frustrated that. You know, when we look at the commentators coming out supporting the reinstatement, it's all of the people who have vested interests, people who are making money out of this, and whether that's directly making money out of it or supporting the farmers who make money out of it, that is not independence, that is a biased view that is contributing to their advocacy. And when you take a step back and look at the likes of V, who are completely independent from this we've looked at all the evidence and the science and everything that's been published and gone, this can't be done safely then surely those two views are worth something different. You know, being a completely independent person who makes no money out of it whatsoever, and I I do get frustrated that that doesn't seem to count for anything. It's like. Well, that doesn't seem fair and just in a world that should be fair and just, which I'm very aware it most generally is. It most often isn't, julie, but that does seem a bit crazy to me.

Julie South:

If you're not a member of vawaconz, that's V-A-W. Vawaconz, that's v-a-w-aconz. Then check out the different membership options, starting at just $50 per annum. There are membership categories for both registered veterinarians and non-registered veterinarians. If you want to get behind New Zealand's continued ban of live exports, you can email our Right Honourable Prime Minister at christopherluxin at parliamentgovtnz and email him like Helen suggested. I'll put that in the show notes for you as well. Tune back in next week, because Helen and I talk about things feline and cats, especially cat management. This is Julie South signing off and inviting you to go out there and be your most fantabulous self Until next week. Kakiti anō no.

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