Whilst struggling through the enormous overload of end-of-year work, with Christmas 1994 only days away, your editor was telephoned by the editor of Young Country, the Official Magazine of the New Zealand Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (Inc.) to write an article at extremely short notice, to be in the magazine's February 1995 issue. Warning the caller that an article on "animal welfare" written by your editor would be unconventional and perhaps unsuitable for publication in their magazine brought the comment that "we are looking for a fresh point of view and I guarantee if you write an article it will be published". Your editor consequently pushed her other work aside and wrote the following article and arranged its hand-delivery almost by return.

by Bette Overell for NZAVS

"Because the vivisection and animal-farming industries are so closely interwoven as to be indistinguishable one from the other, all over the world those concerned with 'animal welfare' are pursuing a vegan diet and way of life. To do so has never been easier. To do otherwise is hypocritical and contradictory.

The five points on the Prayer heading NZAVS Petition to Abolish Vivisection in New Zealand 1987, signed by over one hundred thousand six hundred and forty New Zealanders, makes no mention of 'animal welfare'. Each point outlines, from a different aspect, the danger to human health ensuing from the inconclusive, erroneous, but extremely lucrative methodology of vivisection, euphemistically known as 'animal research'.

(Continued on next page.)