Support strong Canadian climate journalism for 2025
A public survey could change animal welfare in Canada. Why was no one talking about it?
Over 90 per cent of farmed land animals are chickens raised for meat — 780 million each year in Canada alone. And they suffer from some of the worst conditions. Yet, while major companies have pledged to adopt better standards, the “Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard” compiled by Mercy For Animals finds that too few are taking seriously the most pressing animal welfare topic in the food industry today.
We can do something about that right now.
Until November 8, the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC) ran a survey about chicken welfare, following a national campaign by Mercy For Animals Canada that exposed the poultry sector’s use of ultrafast-growing breeds and called for swift action from companies falling short of their public pledges.
Chickens in Canada have been bred to grow four times as fast as they did in 1950, reaching about 2.4 kilograms in 38 days. Known as “Frankenchickens” because of genetic selection for unnatural and monstrous growth, these birds commonly suffer organ failure, heart disease and muscle abnormalities at just a few weeks old.
Polling continually shows that Canadian consumers value animal welfare and transparency, yet we rarely hear about opportunities like NFACC’s survey. Instead, we get advertising gimmicks from associations like Chicken Farmers of Canada that spend resources on friendly chicken mascots, instead of better treatment of animals.
What’s more, NFACC’s survey included the troubling caveat that they “may exclude submissions that are coordinated or directed by an organization or group,” revealing the fragility of the happy chicken facade.
Groups focused on chicken welfare are key stakeholders, and they serve as the public’s primary vehicle for engaging an often cagey industry. So, why might a public comment process exclude submissions prompted by organizations, and will this apply equally to industry groups, as it will to their critics?
We may never know because the process is as undemocratic as it is unaccountable.
NFACC’s membership is industry dominated — 49 of 56 members either benefit financially from the sale of animal products or represent those that do.
The NFACC model raises concerns about standards “created by a group dominated by the very industries affected by those standards.” And now they want to limit who can weigh in on issues that touch on core Canadian values.
With no federal legislation protecting animals in Canadian farms, the animal agriculture sector is consolidating its power through the guise of regulation offered by NFACC. Members include some of Canada’s largest food companies, like Loblaws and Sobeys, that together own about 50 per cent of Canada’s grocery market.
In early 2021, the grocery sector backtracked on long-standing animal welfare policies precisely when it declared it would make commitments only through NFACC.
Nearly four years later, the sector has yet to make a single animal welfare commitment, while over 90 per cent of retailers around the world with policy deadlines before 2024 have gone 100 per cent cage-free.
Although companies appear to take on industry interests through participation in NFACC, they are also beholden to consumers and investors who want better animal welfare standards and transparency. Over 130 companies in Canada have publicly committed to going cage-free, and 50 to meeting leading standards for chickens raised for meat.
But holding the industry accountable is falling to private citizens, the few professional animal welfare experts without financial conflicts of interest and socially responsible businesses.
Mercy For Animals has led this work through the annual “Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard.” The fourth edition is the most comprehensive analysis of corporate animal welfare policy in Canada ever produced, highlighting both company progress and the urgent need for greater transparency.
A happy chicken mascot won’t fool Canadians or make a cruel system trustworthy, but holding powerful industry players accountable is a step in the right direction.
PJ Nyman is the corporate engagement manager at Mercy For Animals Canada.
Comments
I am old enough to remember the glee and triumphalism of the announcements about the "new breeds" of chickens who matured in phenomenally short periods of time. This was at a time when industrialized farming methods were just appearing. Over the decades caged animals, primarily chickens and hogs became the mainstays of the accelerated growth and slaughter cycle. The abysmal abuse of living, sentient creatures treated as widgets eventually attracted the attention of animal welfare activists who presented compelling evidence of both the abuse and the cover-up.
We now have lobby groups obfuscating both the conditions and the conspiracy to shut down the investigations. We also have political laisse faire attitudes about the food the voters have to eat, whether or not those foods are contaminated with lethal organisms, dangerous preservatives, pesticides, herbicides, or over exposure to antibiotics. Health and safety???
Increasingly governments are employing caveat emptor reasoning to their responsibilities and proto dictators are agitating for the removal of regulations, just like in the bad old days when graveyards filled with the victims of capitalist malice.
I suspect that nothing could be more unfortunate to these lobbyists than the spate of scandals over contaminated and occasionally lethal processed meat products - which, from what I have read, is amply documented by following the extensive and largely unregulated/un-monitored conditions both animals and carcasses experience in the journey from living animal to processed and packaged meat products that show up in deli's and supermarket shelves.
The processing takes place. often in once family owned meat packaging plants and what may have started as passionate and prideful output of superior products has, over the decades, under the influence of modern exploitative capitalism, devolved into corporate malfeasance, ranging from failure to upgrade, maintain standards of hygiene, badly aged, rusty and filthy machines, and over use of chemicals and additives to enhance the longevity and palatability of their products. It is now so prevalent, so many recalls issued, that it may well spur people to avoid the consumption of processed meat - or even ANY meat. The Lunch meat industry, all its retail outlets and fast food restaurants will be facing unwelcome questions about the safety and quality of their meats.
I guess the next time I think about going to purchase a meat sandwich -I'll have to ask the waiter it they test the meat delivered to them for the presence of e coli or listeria....
This is an outcome Animal welfare activists have been promoting, and the asset stripping industrial BigAg sector has waltzed right into their arms.
I commend Mercy For Animals for the work it is doing to reduce animal suffering. This is a difficult uphill battle in the face of the corporate drive for profit. However, the root of the problem goes deeper than the living conditions of farmed animals: it is the very notion that nonhuman animals are ours to farm. Insofar as we can live flourishing lives without treating our animal kin as exploitable resources, we have no moral right to do so. Even chickens possess a form of self-consciousness that includes some sense of existing through time; this means they have a fairly strong interest in not being killed, one that cannot be overridden by the relatively trivial pleasure humans derive from eating them.
“Welfare” means “The state or condition of doing or being well; well-being, prosperity, success; the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group – animal, child, public, social welfare, etc.” (OED). Those who exploit animals are not promoting their welfare. Typically, even ostensibly well-treated animals are raised to be slaughtered or will be killed when their egg or milk production falls off. It is unfortunate that even many of those dedicated to protecting animals have ceded the word “welfare” to animal abusers.