The Green Party has organised a public meeting at the Grey Lynn Hall on Wednesday, November 28 at 7.30pm to highlight the cruel practice of using sow crates in pig farming.

Green MP Sue Kedgley, SPCA national campaign coordinator Hans Kriek and SAFE activist Glen Real will urge the public to tell the Government to ban the crates. As part of the campaign, the SPCA has produced 200,000 submission postcards.

New Zealanders will be asked to sign the postcards to help outlaw the use of sow crates as soon as possible. Ms Kedgley said the use of the sow crate - a small metal crate in which a pig cannot even turn around - in pig farming was incredibly cruel and the time had come to ban it.

"Factory farming and the use of the battery cage for hens and the sow crate for pigs are this country's dark farming secret and the more consumers find out there more appalled they are.

"The Greens are joining a major SPCA and SAFE campaign to end the use of the sow crate and we are starting by letting people know exactly what goes on in factory farms up and down this country."

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>