Jail dirty farmers

Jail call for farmers who pollute
Polluting farmers should be jailed, says Environment Minister Trevor Mallard. He told the Water and Wastes Association conference in Christchurch this week that he supported tougher sentences and even jail for serious water polluters. Exporters who continued to pollute or mismanage water and broke the rules were undermining their own products and the "valuable New Zealand brand". "Regional councils in particular need to be a lot tougher as far as the standards are concerned, and more importantly the enforcement of the standards," Mallard said. "Far too often these days, farmers not always farmers treat fines under the Resource Management Act as a cost of the business. We should prosecute individuals rather than companies change the focus from a fine-based system to the possibility of imprisonment."

The Federated Farmers President has called Mallard’s view on polluting farmers as ‘extreme’ – this coming from an organization who was headed by Charlie Pederson who only a couple of years ago described the environmental movement as a war against humanity, yes the Federated Farmers know all about ‘extreme’ views. Mallard is right but misplaced, it isn’t your humble Framer who is the problem it is the mass production intensive industrial farming companies (usually Fonteera’s biggest suppliers) who are the polluters who constantly get let off the hook for their pollution because of their financial clout.