IF YOU’RE in the business of raising livestock, you take some things as
given.
1. Successful production requires emphasis on animal welfare.
2. Successful production requires specific management practices.
3. Successful production requires an understanding of animals as
property.
The federal government’s contentious cruelty-to-animals legislation
seems to grasp the first point but its grip on the latter two is
tentative at best.
The bill, now before the Senate, is in dire need of amendment if it is
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to finish its tortuous passage into law, and time is running short.
As is, the bill leaves livestock producers open to vexatious lawsuits
brought by individuals or groups that don’t approve of common
management practices – things like branding, castration and dehorning,
or keeping animals in pens or cages.
Such an outcome certainly isn’t the bill’s intent. In fact, the
original intent remains widely, dare we say unanimously, supported: to
increase the penalties for willful or reckless cruelty to animals, and
through those penalties deter people from perpetrating animal abuse.
But the devil is in the details and the current wording of this bill
leaves ambiguities begging for legal interpretation. Animal rights
groups have already stated their intention to test new legislation.
What better way than to launch a suit against some unfortunate rancher
intent on pulling a cow from a mud hole or against a chicken producer
who uses cages?
Considering that many animal rights groups believe animals should not
be used for any purpose, the list of potential nuisance lawsuits
stretches long and expensively into the future.
Livestock industry associations and farm groups have put forth their
concerns to government. Opposition members have been tenacious in their
criticisms of the current bill.
To their credit, the former justice minister and members of the rural
caucus in particular acknowledged flaws in the bill. Yet on the promise
of amendments at the Senate level, the bill cleared the House of
Commons last week, flaws intact.
Now we discover that the amendment promise may be fiction. Even if
proposals are brought forward, there may not be enough time before
Parliament’s summer recess to see them through.
What the bill needs is an amendment to clarify that normal farming
practices would not be subject to legal challenge. And it must include
acknowledgement of animals as property, thus allowing producers to
defend themselves, if need be, by claiming legal justification for
their management practices.
If the new bill can’t include these things, better that it die than
cost Canadian farmers and ranchers time, money and aggravation in
defending normal agricultural activities.
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