With his property targeted last Friday morning, a Werribee South egg farmer has begun calling for the state government to get tough on animal activists who break into farms and endanger people’s livelihood.
Brian Ahmed, who is also the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) egg group president, rushed to his K Avenue farm about 1am on June 27 to find two women on his property.
Mr Ahmed and his brother, who lives on the farm, called police, who caught the intruders with the help of the dog squad.
The women have been released and are expected to be charged on summons.
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Mr Ahmed said the women broke the doors to the farm’s sheds, which house 25,000 caged chickens.
While he was concerned about the damage to his property, Mr Ahmed said he was more worried about the farm’s biosecurity measures being breached.
“There is a high-risk level of the birds catching disease. We keep them locked up in sheds to reduce the risks,” Mr Ahmed said.
“In November, there was a major avian flu breakout in NSW and 500,000 birds had to be culled.”
Mr Ahmed will spend the coming days having his chickens checked by vets to ensure they are disease free.
He said any chickens that had been infected would have to be culled.
“Animal activists say they are trying to rescue the chickens, but they are endangering the lives of the very birds they are trying to free. We do everything by the law and everything in the best interest of our birds.
“We ran a free-range farm, but we changed for a number of reasons, including to reduce disease and parasites.”
Mr Ahmed said the VFF was lobbying the government to toughen the laws around animal activism and breaking into farms. He said the rules needed to be strengthened to protect all farmers and their animals from attacks.
