Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance journalist and animal advocate.
This month, an Ontario Superior Court judge deemed a major section of the province’s Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act unconstitutional. The case against the province was brought by the Canadian animal law organization Animal Justice, animal advocate Louise Jorgenson, and me, a journalist covering animal issues.
It’s the first time an “ag-gag” law has been challenged in court in Canada, and this partial but profound victory may signal the beginning of the end for unethical ag-gag laws in Canada.
Generally speaking, “ag-gag” laws refer to any legislation working to deter anyone (including undercover journalists) from exposing the treatment of animals on farms, in slaughterhouses and/or on transport trucks, often under the guise of food safety and/or (ironically) animal protection. The laws do this by making it an offence to go undercover on agricultural properties, and with steep penalties. Depending on the jurisdiction, anyone found breaking these laws can face major fines (notably greater than those already in place for trespassing) and possible jail time. As a result, ag-gag laws effectively help cover up animal cruelty and prevent the animal farming industry from being held accountable. In fact, just days before the aforementioned legislation was passed in Ontario in 2020, Animal Justice released a disturbing undercover investigation conducted at a factory pig farm in the province. The farm’s corporate entities later pleaded guilty to two offences under the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act.
It was four years ago that I published an article in The Globe and Mail explaining how animal farms in Canada essentially police themselves. The story explained how the everyday treatment of animals on farms in this country is not regulated by any laws nor overseen by the government, but rather by voluntary codes created and enforced by the industry itself. My piece was written in response to increasing instances of animal activists, undercover investigators and whistleblowers gathering and broadcasting oft-hidden truths about animal farming spaces in Canada.
Since then, governments have reacted to the many exposés, livestreams and news articles uncovering concealed cruelty on Canadian farms not with greater protections for farmed animals, but with laws to punish the people doing the uncovering. Farm lobby groups have been successful in getting ag-gag laws passed in Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Ontario. But animal advocates say this recent win shows that the tide on these laws is turning.
“Many Canadians don’t realize that our animal protection laws are already among the worst in the world,” Thompson Rivers University law professor Katie Sykes said in a preface to a public lecture on ag-gag laws she gave in February. She added that with this type of legislation, “We are creating a kind of law-free and accountability-free zone for animal agriculture. That should concern everyone who cares about constitutional rights and the rule of law, whether or not they’re interested in animal protection.”
There have been no undercover investigations on farms or in slaughterhouses in Ontario since ag-gag legislation was passed. But that is likely to change now that the section of the act regarding undercover investigations and whistleblowers has been struck down. Justice Markus Koehnen ruled that multiple provisions of the regulation are unconstitutional as they violate the right to freedom of expression guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The provisions that ban undercover work at farms and slaughterhouses were declared of no force and effect – in other words, quashed. Similar laws in the U.S. have also been deemed unconstitutional in some states.
Ag-gag laws certainly hinder my freedom of expression as a journalist covering animal issues in Canada. Over the past several years I have depended on activists, investigators and whistle-blowers – those on the ground willing to witness and record all the concealed sights and sounds – to be able to tell Canadians the true story about animal farming. Dozens of published articles about animals farmed for food and fur would not have been written if these laws were in place prior to 2019.
Consumers deserve to know what they are paying for, and feel-good industry marketing is certainly not giving them the full picture. That includes shocking standard practices, such as “piglet thumping,” an industry term for euthanizing baby pigs by slamming their heads onto concrete; ripping newborn calves from their bellowing mothers; throwing live male chicks into macerators; or slaughtering pigs in gas chambers. It can also include instances of egregious animal cruelty that would otherwise go unchecked. You won’t see any of that in commercials for milk or pork.
“The court decisively rejected ag-gag laws as an unconstitutional attempt to hide the truth about animal abuse in the food system,” says lawyer and Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk. Other provinces should consider themselves warned, she added. “These anti-expression laws will be struck down there, too.”
Indeed. On to the next.