MP angry over animal-cruelty case
Fonterra accused of making prosecution its first priority COVID-19 Alert level: 1
A National MP whose son was convicted of animal cruelty offences believes there was “a political element” to the way the case was handled by staff of dairy giant Fonterra.
Taranaki-King Country MP Barbara Kuriger — whose family are Fonterra shareholders and have a lengthy history in dairy farming — claimed employees of the dairy cooperative appeared more interested in a conviction than resolving a longrunning animal welfare issue her son had raised.
She has indicated a law change may be needed to remove a power imbalance between sharemilkers and landowners.
Tony Kuriger pleaded guilty to animal cruelty offences in the Palmerston North District Court in January, midway through a trial. Charges against his father Louis Kuriger were dropped.
This month Tony Kuriger failed in his bid to be discharged without conviction, but his only punishment beyond the conviction was to pay vet and other expert costs of just over $4000. He is allowed to continue farming.
Oxbow Dairies Ltd, a company part-owned by the Kurigers, was fined $30,000.
The charges date back to 2016 and 2017, when Tony Kuriger was a sharemilker on a farm in Hukanui, north of Eketahuna.
As a result of an investigation involving the Ministry for Primary Industries, a number of cows were euthanised or had amputations as a result of lameness.
Tony Kuriger was convicted for not removing bandages from cows, some of which led to maggot infestations, the court heard.
Barbara Kuriger, an MP since 2014, said her son contacted Fonterra’s animal welfare early response service to raise the concerns, which he blamed on the condition of farm lanes which the farm owner refused to remedy.
Kuriger said her son had accepted responsibility and was in “a bad place” at the time. As well as suffering from anxiety, he was going through a marriage break-up.
The unit she referred to is actually part of industry body DairyNZ, but Fonterra describes itself as an “active participant” and Fonterra employees were involved in the case.
Barbara Kuriger claims the animal welfare problems on the farm dated back to 2008 and continued after Tony Kuriger left the farm midway through the contract with the landowner.
“My greatest disappointment is that Tony asked for the problem to be solved,” Kuriger told The Muster, in her first public comments on the case.
“He stood up and reported this problem and now he’s the one who’s been hitting the news when actually, the problem never got solved.”
She claims the company appeared to take a “prosecutorial” approach to the case rather than support her son to solve the issues.
“Tony ended up in a court process and the problem wasn’t fixed, so to me the people who came in to deal with this did not deal with the welfare of their animals, which is so disappointing,” Kuriger said.
“That kind of leads me, and with the evidence I have around emails and stuff, to believe there’s a political element to this, definitely.”
Emails released as part of the court process show a Fonterra employee expressed “hope” that Tony Kuriger was “going to jail” as a result of the investigation.
Elsewhere, one sent a text message to another describing the Kurigers as “typical entitled politicians” and said they would not vote for Barbara Kuriger.
In a statement, Fonterra did not refer directly to the case involving the Kurigers, but said supporting high standards of animal welfare and supporting farmers were important to the company.
“We’ve always had systems in place to provide support and more recently, have implemented improvements in the framework to ensure a fair and consistent approach is taken wherever our terms and conditions of supply are not met,” said the co-operative.
Earlier in his career Tony Kuriger won a regional sharemilking award. Barbara Kuriger was the inaugural dairy woman of the year in 2012 and has won awards along with her husband.