Animal cruelty bill: amend it or scrap it – WP editorial

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Published: June 13, 2002

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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