The Victorian Government is proposing changes to animal welfare laws through its Animal Care and Protection draft Bill.
The draft Bill is currently out for public consultation and can be viewed on the Engage Victoria website. We’ve created a submission template for farmers that backs up the VFF’s position that you can send to the government. This can be downloaded by CLICKING HERE.
Overall, the new laws will allow farmers to continue to produce food and fibre for our community and export markets as normal.
However, the VFF has identified three key areas where the draft Bill creates unnecessary and unfair risks for farmers:
- First, the government wants to give itself discretionary powers to create licencing and compliance regimes. We are concerned government will abuse this power to crack-down on necessary on-farm practices for short term political goals. Government must not have the power to create licences whenever it feels and any licences should be defined in the legislation.
- Another concern is the new Bill would encourage animal activists to mount unnecessary legal challenges against the government and farmers. That’s because it uses vague, subjective and ambiguous language to define animal care requirements. We think the Bill can be improved by ensuring care requirements are set out in the specific regulations and guidelines for different animals.
- The Bill creates new offences targeting farm businesses that operate in intensive animal environments, or those which transport or show animals. These offences are not necessary as general care and protection requirements are already provided in the rest of the Bill. All farm businesses should be treated equally under the law.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
The VFF is putting forward an extensive submission to the government outlining all concerns with the draft Bill and areas for improvement. We need your help to outline our key concerns with the new laws.
As mentioned above, the VFF has created a submission template for farmers to back up this position that you can send to the government. This can be downloaded via the above link and needs to be sent to the government by the 25 March 2024. You can click here to access the submission page and have your say by lodging a submission.
If you need more information, please listen to VFF Vice President Danyel Cucinotta below, to learn more.