There’s a lot going on at factory farms that the owners don’t want us to see — and they’ve just won the right to keep it all secret.
That’s the sad result of a ruling last week by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which no doubt has executives in the pork and poultry industry celebrating. They can rest assured that the public won’t get even a glimpse of what they’re doing to the hundreds of millions of animals in their captivity.
The ruling will have the effect of preventing clandestine investigators — including journalists and animal advocates — from making false statements in order to go undercover on factory farms. It overturns a lower-court ruling that found a provincial law preventing such exposés violated free speech guarantees in the Charter.
So, as a result of the upper court ruling, there will likely be no more undercover exposés. Secrecy will prevail.
That secrecy is crucial to maintaining the gap between two conflicting realities that exist today — on one hand, there is a growing sensitivity toward animals, as humans increasingly understand them to be sentient beings capable of experiencing pain, sadness, joy and grief.
On the other hand, dramatic changes in the farming business have created a horrific world for animals on modern industrial farms — or what New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff recently dubbed the “livestock gulag.”
No longer grazing in outdoor fields, most farm animals now live their lives in indoor facilities where they’re confined in cramped, crowded sunless spaces and subjected to painful cutting procedures beyond the public’s view.
Exposés of these conditions by undercover activists alarmed the public and led to calls for government intervention. But governments have tended to be more responsive to demands from the powerful agriculture industry to shut down the exposés.
In 2020, Ontario Premier Doug Ford brought in an “ag-gag” law that effectively made such exposés illegal.
Without exposés, however, there’s little to protect animals locked up in these facilities.
The only regulations governing their welfare are “codes of practice,” but these codes are drawn up by an industry-controlled organization, known as the National Farm Animal Care Council.
In other words, the industry is regulating itself. And, not surprisingly, it’s not very hard on itself.
Provinces have animal protection laws that prohibit causing “distress” to animals. But procedures that are generally accepted in the industry are exempt.
So, while it would be illegal to confine a cat or a dog to small cage for its entire life, the same sort of confinement is perfectly legal — and widely used on factory farms — for pigs and hens.
“To insulate a painful practice from legal scrutiny, the only thing the farm industry has to do is ensure that the practice is widely adopted,” according to a report prepared by Animal Justice and other advocacy groups. “Our animal welfare framework enables systemic cruelty.”
Canada received a “D” on the World Animal Protection Index for allowing practices — such as the use of confining crates for long time periods and painful procedures — that are banned in some comparable jurisdictions, including some U.S. states.
Although polls show Canadians strongly support protections for farmed animals, the issue attracts almost no mainstream media attention.
That can change abruptly however with the release of a graphic undercover video. For instance, there was huge media attention and public outrage in 2014 when an undercover video captured frightening scenes inside a large dairy farm in Chilliwack, B.C.
The video showed cows being repeatedly beaten, kicked, punched and whipped with chains and canes, and a cow being lifted by a tractor with a chain around her neck.
Industry executives and their allies in the Ford government want to make sure there’s no such disturbing videos disseminated in the future, so they’re clamping down hard — not on potential abusers but on those brave enough to try to capture the abuse on film.
This article originally appeared in the Toronto Star.
