A man covers his mouth and nose due to the smell while protesting on a road outside Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford, B.C., on April 28, 2019.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance journalist and animal advocate based in Winnipeg.
Many Canadians may assume that our judicial system, especially in the typically liberal province of British Columbia, would be more likely to err on the side of care and compassion for animals than a conservative U.S. state such as Utah.
But that’s not what happened this month in similar court cases involving animal activists in those two jurisdictions – exposing how Canada is very much failing farmed animals and those who bravely speak up for them.
On Oct. 12, two Canadian animal activists, Amy Soranno and Nick Schafer, were each sentenced to 30 days in jail and one year of probation after being criminally convicted for break-and-enter and mischief. Their deed: a non-violent occupation of a B.C. pig factory farm in 2019 – a protest that was sparked by shocking undercover footage released by PETA of what appeared to be the same farm. The video showed mother pigs trapped in gestation crates alongside their dead and dying piglets, other pigs with injuries and further disturbing conditions.
“This is the first known Canadian case in which peaceful animal advocates have been jailed for an act of non-violent civil disobedience,” according to Animal Justice, a Canadian advocacy group. On the other hand, the owners of that farm received no charges.
Meanwhile, on Oct. 8, a Utah jury found two other animal activists not guilty of felony theft and burglary in a precedent-setting case concerning two injured piglets rescued from a factory farm.
“This is a resounding message about accountability and transparency,” one of the accused Direct Action Everywhere activists, Wayne Hsiung, told The New York Times. “Every company that is mistreating its animals and expecting that government and local elected officials will just go along with them because they have them in their pockets will now realize that the public will hold them accountable, even in places like Southern Utah.”
This juxtaposition of recent events is echoed in the corporate animal-welfare policies of food companies operating in Canada and the U.S. The global animal-protection organization, Mercy for Animals, or MFA, released its annual Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard on Oct. 13 – ranking 55 companies in Canada and including information on how the country is falling behind on the welfare of farmed animals.
According to the report, the percentage of egg-laying hens in Canada still confined to small battery cages – considered inhumane by advocates – was 83 per cent last year (as reported by industry). By contrast, industry in the U.S. reported 71 per cent, the European Union 45 per cent and Britain only 35 per cent.
There were also zero Canadian retailers signed on to the Better Chicken Commitment in 2021, while the U.S. had 12, the EU had 42 and Britain had four. BCC requires companies to have policies in place that give birds more room and enrichment than typical industry standards and requires a slaughter method (CO2 gas) considered less cruel than standard practice (electrified water for stunning).
“With oversight of animal welfare in this country concentrated in the hands of industry groups and the taxpayer-funded National Farm Animal Care Council made up of these same groups, Canada is falling behind,” MFA spokesperson PJ Nyman said in a statement. While countries in the EU and states in the U.S. have banned cruel intensive confinement outright, he added, “Canada still hasn’t banned cages. Industry needs to catch up to meet Canadians’ expectations.”
Those consumer expectations are for more transparency and higher animal welfare in our food system, according to various surveys and studies cited in the MFA report. Yet Canadian lawmakers and the agricultural industry appear to be acting against that.
Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Prince Edward Island have all enacted legislation that works to deter whistle-blowers, activists and journalists from exposing the hidden treatment of animals and conditions within agricultural spaces.
In Quebec, another group of non-violent animal activists that entered a pig farm in 2019 to expose what was inside will soon learn their legal fate. They have been found guilty of break-and-enter and obstruction of a peace officer, and will be sentenced in December. One of the activists, Jenny McQueen, recalls the space as being thick with dust and ammonia, where pigs were living in their own filth: “In the gestation area, the mother pigs screamed in unison when we walked in,” she said.
Though the farm was later visited by inspectors who found troubling conditions that did not comply with standards, the farm was never charged.
In his New York Times op-ed regarding the Utah case, Mr. Hsiung concluded: “Our rescue in March 2017 revealed the tension between slaughtering animals for food and having compassion for them. The jury made the right choice. Our society eventually will, too.”
The question is: What choice will Canada make?