The federal government, through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has granted $2.25 million to the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC) to update the codes of practice that establish standards of care for farmed animals.
NFACC is an industry-led animal agriculture group. Instead of legislating standards, the government opts to fund the industry’s own creation of guidelines.
As Mercy For Animals Canada’s investigations have shown, Canadians are compassionate people who have no appetite for abuse and neglect of farmed animals. MFA Canada urges NFACC to consider the will of the Canadian taxpayers who are funding the development of these codes of practice and establish stringent animal welfare guidelines.
The codes of practice relating to egg-laying hens and turkeys are currently under revision.
A 2013 MFA Canada investigation documented egg-laying hens crowded into cages so small they couldn’t stretch their wings or do anything that came naturally to them for their entire miserable lives. The current code of practice deems battery cages acceptable, even though they are inherently so cruel that they have been banned by the entire European Union, Switzerland, New Zealand, and the states of California and Michigan.
In addition to leading to animal cruelty prosecutions, MFA Canada’s recent investigation at the country’s largest turkey breeder revealed turkeys bred to grow so large so quickly that they became crippled under their own weight. Following our investigation, almost 70,000 consumers signed our petition calling on NFACC to do away with this horrific practice. That petition can still be signed here.
The current veal code of practice, dating back to 1998, is also due for an update. MFA Canada’s investigation at a veal factory farm revealed lonely calves living their entire lives in feces-encrusted crates, sometimes chained by their necks — a practice considered so cruel that eight U.S. states, Australia, New Zealand, and the entire European Union have banned it. Following our investigation, veal producers representing 97 percent of the industry, as well as grocers accounting for 50 percent of the market, agreed to phase out veal crates by 2018. Yet Canada’s code of practice is entirely silent on the use of these archaic crates.
MFA Canada is calling on NFACC for meaningful updates to the codes of practice under revision, including prohibitions of cruel battery cages and veal crates, and an end to the breeding of suffering into the very DNA of turkeys.
Meanwhile, consumers hold the power to eliminate animal cruelty from their diets by making compassionate food choices. Visit ChooseVeg.ca for more.
