More than 20,000 people in about ten days have signed the manifesto of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA de Montréal) which calls for a better legal framework for the living conditions of farm animals in Quebec.
Unlike pets, food animals are not protected by the main provisions of the Animal Welfare and Safety Act, adopted in 2015 by the Quebec government.
“Quebec society, although recognized for its progressive values, is lagging far behind the many nations around the world that have for decades adopted laws or regulations dictating mandatory standards of care for animals intended for consumption”, can -we read in the manifesto which had been signed, when it was launched, by around thirty public figures, including director Xavier Dolan, host Christiane Charette, cardiologist Martin Juneau and law professor Frédéric Bérard.
The Animal Welfare and Safety Act states that agricultural activities — if conducted according to “generally accepted rules” — are exempt from sections 5 and 6 of the legislation. These sections prohibit anyone from causing distress to an animal and jeopardizing its well-being and safety by not providing it with “the care appropriate to its biological imperatives”.
“We have a two-speed system, denounces in an interview Me Sophie Gaillard, Acting Executive Director of the Montreal SPCA and Director of Animal Advocacy and Legal Affairs for the organization. On the one hand, we have our pets, which are relatively well protected, and on the other, we have farm animals, which are completely ignored by the law. »
The “generally accepted rules” referred to in the Act are determined by codes of practice developed by the National Farm Animal Care Council, a Canadian organization. Representatives of the livestock industry generally occupy more than half of the seats on the committees responsible for developing these codes of practice.
“All the power to legislate is given as a blank check to industry, which can determine what is standard or not, and therefore what is legal or not under the law,” says Ms.e Gaillard, who recalls that animals are “sentient beings” that have “complex emotional and cognitive capacities”.
Little known practices
Thus, under the legislation in force, a producer can dock the tails of his pigs, since this is an intervention accepted by the code of practice which governs the raising of pigs. But an individual who cuts off the tail of his pet pig or a cat or a dog could be prosecuted since he would be in violation of the law.
A series of articles published in January in The duty lifted the veil on certain practices of the breeding industry little known to the public, in particular the castration of piglets without anesthesia, the rearing of pregnant sows in individual cages preventing them from moving, the separation of the calf from the dairy cow from birth or the rearing of laying hens in conventional cages which have been banned in Europe since 2012.
According to Sophie Gaillard, it is “high time” for the Quebec government to adopt a law or regulation to determine for itself what constitutes acceptable living conditions for farmed animals.
“We have the impression that we have the support of the population behind us,” she adds, brandishing a survey conducted at the end of March by Léger on behalf of the SPCA. As part of this survey of 1,062 Quebecers, 92% of respondents said they “completely agree” or “somewhat agree” with the idea that the Government of Quebec adopt a law or regulation to supervise the conditions of rearing of animals intended for consumption.
Sufficient protection
But according to the director general of the Union des producteurs agricole (UPA), Charles-Félix Ross, farm animals already have sufficient legal protection in Quebec.
“I think the SPCA campaign is exaggerated,” he says. It is wrong to say that animals are not legally protected. In addition to the codes of practice, which govern the breeding of farm animals, the codes of ethics of veterinarians and agronomists who work on the farm require them to denounce any unacceptable situation, he mentions.
“But could practices be reviewed? Maybe,” he adds. Science evolves and so do “social expectations”, says Charles-Félix Ross. For example, cows’ tails were previously docked on dairy farms, a practice that later became banned, he recalls.
“The system can be improved,” says Ross. But is the system as terrible as what [la SPCA] describe ? No way. »