So here we go into Christmas again, the season of peace and goodwill to all men. Well, what about all critters. For those of you who insist that this is a Christian festival, indeed the birthday of one Jesus Christ, I want to make the point the Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter, not a butcher, and that he shared his birthing room with donkeys, cows, sheep and goats, not with men.

Yet, at the supermarket yesterday I noted a gaggle of shoppers enthusiastically browsing a pile of cut price hams for their particular celebration of Jesus Birthday feasts. A bit rude, really, when you consider that Jesus was a Jew for whom pork was unclean, shameful when those shoppers were giving no consideration to the prison farm conditions most of the pigs involved in their hammed up Christmas suffered throughout their lives.

The least that a Christian could do at this time of the year should be to ensure their ham came from a pig that lived a happy, contented life until the moment of its slaughter. And perhaps we should also consider all critters while we are in the midst of this season of goodwill that began with the attempted murder of a policeman.

Maybe the greedy seeking cheap ham and the society where murder is normal are linked in some way. It is often claimed by psychologists that children who abuse animals grow into adults who abuse children and other adults. Could there be a connection between the institutionalised cruelty of New Zealand farms and the violence that racks our society throughout the year and right into the Happy Season?

It may be worth noting that in 1915, when battery chicken farming was first introduced in New Zealand, less than 2% of non traffic crimes committed in this country were against people. In 2005 12% of all crime recorded was violent crime, a 600% increase in a period when battery chicken farming became the standard method of farming chickens. Currently 17% of recorded crime is violent.

Alongside chicken farming, the most dramatic example of animal cruelty, we must also add the increasing pressure on cows being pumped for milk, pig stall farming, the long distance trucking of meat animals to slaughter purely for reasons of economy, and live sheep shipments to distant markets, and our shabby record of animal welfare in this country is obvious.

Could this season of goodwill be the perfect time to reconsider our responsibility to the welfare of animals that sustain us, and give them a better deal than the one we presently foist on them?