Animal welfare

LIC’s business is dependent on the good health and welfare of its animals to enable them to perform at high levels. All LIC animals are valuable and are treated as such with a high level of care in compliance with related regulatory controls as a minimum.

The company meets and maintains high welfare standards in all business areas involving interactions with animals, and these are continuously reviewed to ensure they meet and/or exceed New Zealand’s legislative requirements and international best practice.

Interactions with animals play a key part of LIC’s business in operational, research and development areas. Within these areas the company places particular emphasis on ensuring that it, at all times, meets the obligations of owners and persons in charge of animals under the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and associated Codes of Welfare.

LIC supports our farmers’ desire to maximise the productive life of their animals, including:

  • a dairy sire breeding programme that delivers dairy replacement animals with increasing genetic longevity and health
  • semen product options that support farmers using targeted mating to enhance the value of calves born on farm, including sexed semen and specialised beef semen
  • a beef genetics breeding programme to identify high value beef sires which present low risk to the dairy cow
  • our ongoing commitment to research and development, such as Resilient Dairy, a 7-year LIC led research programme to improve dairy cow resilience

LIC UK strongly supports good practice for calf care and handling for all calves, both on and off the dairy farm and condemns any actions that do not meet the minimum legislative requirements. LIC encourages farmers to pursue best practice, treating all calves humanely.

For further information on the best practice standards LIC and the New Zealand dairy industry strive to achieve please refer to LIC’s Calf Club page and DairyNZ’s Calves page.

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