The Peco Incident by Des Hunt Read Free Book Online Page B

shrugged. ‘Probably not,’ I replied, wishing I hadn’t said anything in the first place. ‘Even if he did, who’s going to believe him?’

    The biosecurity emergency was the main story on NetNews that night. They’d dubbed it ‘The Peco Incident’. One of the reporters was live on the scene, filmed standing on a hillside with the Peco compound as a backdrop. While she said a lot, there was little information.
    Only slightly more informative was a recorded piece showing Colin Saxton reading a formal statement. It said that the Biosecurity Incident Response Team was investigating the deaths of a significant number of birds at the Peninsula Egg Company farm near Portobello. The cause of death was, as yet, unknown, and it would be at least two days before a definite identification was possible. In the meantime, the area surrounding the farm would be quarantined. He took questions, but fudged the answers in a way that revealed nothing new.
    Next we learnt about the fire that had occurred just as the biosecurity team was entering the compound. It was in one of the smaller buildings. The coverage showed the fire engine rushing through Portobello, followed by some aerial shots of the burnt-out building, which the voice-over said was thought tocontain incubators. There was then some archive film of Bryce Shreeves behaving the way a successful businessman and public figure should. You would have thought it was a different person to the one we had witnessed bullying Cathy earlier that day.
    We had to wait until Jim Black’s segment to see Nick’s interview. It started with a history of Peco. They had some archive footage recorded when the farm was the target of animal-rights activists: shots taken inside the sheds showing chooks cramped in cages, many with feathers missing, including a couple of dead ones.
    Dad and I looked at each other grimly. The images they were showing were bad, but nothing like what we had seen. I suspected he was thinking much the same as me: the photos Nick had taken were dynamite. I glanced over to Nick and saw a big, knowing grin on his face. If he didn’t understand how valuable his photos were before, he certainly did now.
    More old film of Bryce Shreeves followed. This time he was justifying battery farming.
    ‘Peco is consistently one of the biggest-selling brands in local supermarkets,’ he said, looking directly at the camera. ‘That’s because our eggs are the best and the cheapest. People want cheap, fresh eggs, and the only way to do that is by intensive farming. But it is not cruel farming. If the birds were not contented, they would not lay eggs. Yes, birds do die. All living things do. The two dead birds illegally filmed by those trespassers were two amongst fifty thousand living birds. Believe me, there is nothing happening at Peco that is either inhumane or cruel. You have my word on that.’
    ‘Yeah, right!’ said Jim Black, when the clip finished. ‘Then why is the place now getting such close attention from BIRT? We asked them that question, only to be referred back to the official press release. So, we decided to go out and ask the people on the Otago Peninsula what they thought was happening at the Peco farm.’
    Several short interviews followed. Some spoke about the dead sparrows they’d seen; others said they always knew there was something wrong with Peco; a few were worried about the effect any disease might have on the local wildlife.
    Then Brio and Roost were on the screen, wearing their most colourful clothes. They were standing at the back of their van.
    ‘Hey!’ yelled Nick, jumping out of his seat. ‘Just as well I cleaned it, eh?’
    ‘Shut up!’ I screamed, leaning forward to push him out of the way. I didn’t want to miss a single word of what these two might say.
    ‘We are so disgusted,’ said Brio, in her Scottish accent. ‘We came to New Zealand because it has an image of being clean, green and pure. Now we find there is battery farming here.