Conservative Party of Canada Agriculture Critic John Barlow introduced the bill with the goal of punishing those responsible for on-farm protests.

Why it matters: Protesters are increasingly entering livestock barns and taking animals, potentially introducing disease and disrupting the animals.

“There are a lot of variables (farmers) have to deal with, commodity prices, now a carbon tax and illegal blockades,” he said. “Having to deal with activists and protesters coming on your property and into your barns and onto your land is just one thing that we don’t think that they should have to deal with,” he said.

If passed, the bill would amend the Health of Animals Act and make it an offence to enter a place where animals are kept without permission if doing so could result in the animals being exposed to disease or a toxic substance.

Ontario has proposed similar legislation.

It has the support of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Canadian Meat Council, Canadian Pork Council, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada and Turkey Farmers of Canada.

“We are not trying to muzzle free speech. This is nothing against legal protesting,” Barlow said. “You can do that on public land, that is fine. But when you cross that line onto private property, we have an issue.”

The bill would also put in place a financial penalty and potential jail time for people involved in threatening on-farm animals. A fine of up to $50,000 or up to two years of imprisonment is included for individuals, while every person other than an individual – essentially meaning organizations – who contravene the new law would be subject to a fine of up to $500,000.

“A lot of times these protesters don’t really understand the potential consequences of when they are endangering animal health,” said Barlow.

“The feeling that we had was, you know, a lot of these groups are now very well funded, very well organized by large organizations like PETA and the World Wildlife Fund,” he said. “To just have a small fine for an individual is one thing, but I think the groups that are organizing this and putting our food supply and the biosecurity of our supply chain at risk, there has to be consequences for them as well.”

Lisa Bishop-Spencer, director of brand and communications for Chicken Farmers of Canada, said producers take a lot of pride in raising safe food for Canadians.

“We have a government-recognized on-farm food safety program that strictly enforces biosecurity measures on every farm across the country,” she said. “It’s a mandatory program. It’s an enforceable program. It’s a third-party audit program.”

Anything that helps to strengthen animal health laws is good for the chicken farmers, according to Bishop-Spencer, who said she is encouraged people within the House of Commons are recognizing the issue because it is a substantive threat to farmers.

“I can’t tell you specifically how many on-farm trespassers there have been as a result of activism, as we call it, but I can tell you that it has increased,” she said. “We’re always hearing about it, it was becoming a new method by which attention could be drawn to those who wish animal agriculture didn’t exist.”

She added it’s a concern the organization hears about weekly from farmers.

While private member bills often don’t pass, Barlow is hopeful for some bipartisan support in the Liberal minority government.

“It’s also raising some awareness that our farmers, our producers, processors, they care more than anyone in the world about the health of their environment, their animals and their operations,” said Barlow. “This is also an opportunity for us to highlight the work that they’re doing to kind of change the narrative that, you know, Canadian farmers and agriculture do better than anybody in the world. And we should be proud of that, not attacking them.

“We’re all worried about the safety of our food. And we want to make sure it’s protected.”

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The 500-year-old tradition of cockfighting in Puerto Rico was due to end on Friday under a law passed by Congress last year to bring the island in step with prohibition in every U.S. state.

But Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez on Wednesday signed legislation designed to allow cockfighting to continue. That could set up a conflict with U.S. federal authorities.

Puerto Rican fans see cockfighting as part of their cultural heritage and say 27,000 jobs could be lost among breeders, food suppliers and others if the ban goes ahead.

They bristle at being ordered to end fights by Congress, where the island’s three million people have no elected voting representative.

“This is an abuse the U.S. government is committing against our culture,” said fighting cock owner Carlos Junior Aponte Silva.

Animal rights groups say cockfighting is cruel.

The birds have spikes attached to their legs by owners to cause more damage to opponents as men gather around a pit to watch the combatants peck and scratch each other in 12-minute fights. The death of cocks during a bout or shortly afterward is common.

The cocks’ lives are miserable even without fighting, says the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) group.

“Many of these birds spend most of their lives tethered by one leg near whatever object is intended to serve as their shelter, such as an overturned plastic barrel or a small wire cage placed directly on the ground,” PETA says on its website.

With Puerto Rico’s economy suffering from a debt crisis and the effects of devastating hurricanes in 2017, breeders say they are prepared to go underground if need be.

“If there’s nothing before (December) 21st, well then we’ll continue fighting cocks… we will become criminals,” said part-time breeder Elvin Lugo.

While it is not clear how the issue will be resolved, the legislation signed by Vazquez also urges negotiations between Puerto Rico and Congress for a five-year moratorium on the ban.

It also prohibits the trade of fighting cocks between the island and the rest of the United States to ensure there would be no breach of interstate commerce laws if cockfighting continued.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ricardo Ortiz and Luis Valentin; writing by Alistair Bell.

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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the use by Whole Foods of a five-step rating system for beef, chicken, pork and turkey was a “sham,” because it was not enforced against suppliers, and the standards were at best little better than normal industry practices.

In a decision late Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins in San Jose, California said PETA failed to show that Whole Foods’ alleged misrepresentations on in-store signs, placards and napkins defrauded consumers into overpaying.

Cousins said statements such as “great-tasting meat from healthy animals” and “raised right tastes right” amounted to permissible “puffery” by the Austin, Texas-based company.

He also said the statement that “no cages” were used to raise broiler chickens was not misleading merely because Whole Foods failed to also disclose that poultry suppliers normally do not use cages in the first place.

“Retailers do not have a duty to disclose product information unless it relates to a consumer safety issue,” and PETA did not raise any such issues, Cousins wrote.

The lawsuit was brought by PETA and Lori Grass of Portola Valley, California, a town south of San Francisco. It sought class-action status for California consumers who bought Whole Foods meat products over four years.

“There is still no question that Whole Foods is misleading well-meaning shoppers into buying meat falsely labeled ‘humane,'” PETA said in a statement. “This is a developing area of the law, and we are considering how we want to proceed.”

Whole Foods did not immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jonathan Stempel in New York.

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It was an image of downer cows, about to be shot at an American slaughter plant, displayed during a presentation by Jennifer Walker to bring home the message that just because something has become routine, doesn’t make it good animal welfare.

“We have to understand, the animals we send to slaughter are a direct reflection of our care and compassion,” she said, adding the photo wasn’t taken in secret. The veterinarian and director of dairy stewardship for the U.S.-based Dean Foods snapped the photos in the open, with staff watching. No one objected, she said.

“They told me that this was an average cull cow day. Two of the seven cows that arrived fell down on the trailer, two fell down while getting off the trailer, one more was so skinny and weak she fell down later while trying to navigate the system,” said Walker. “All five of these were perfectly and humanely handled by staff at the slaughterhouse; all five of them should have never been put on the trailer to begin with.”

While Canadian dairy producers have largely been spared the kind of undercover animal abuse videos plaguing producers south of the border — with the exception of Chilliwack Cattle Sales in 2014 — the veterinarian stressed that animal welfare must meet consumers’ and processors’ expectations, even if the details are difficult to define.

Ethics

Farmers are no stranger to making ethical decisions, but she stressed they need to recognize that those decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. While cost, profit and production are vital considerations, so is animal welfare and public opinion.

“When it comes to animal welfare and animal health, and understanding what our consumers and customers want, we need to remember it is a matter of perspective,” she said. “So what you might rank as a dairy farmer as your top concern, is going to be different than a customer.”

Giving the example of a farmer with a top-producing cow that’s going on three good legs, she painted a picture of a difficult decision that can’t — at the end of the day — be about money.

“How long does she have to walk around in pain until you sell her? And how miserable is that journey to the sales barn and then to the slaughterhouse?” Walker asked. “And if she gets there and has to be euthanized on the trailer because she can’t actually get up, can we look consumers in the eye and say we’ve done the right thing?

“We have to come to terms with the fact that science can only tell us what we can do; what we’re dealing with today is questions about what we should do,” she said.

Long gone are the days when producers could justify practices on scientific terms, or by relying on efficiency.

Reiterating the mantra that cows must be happy and healthy if production is high, is a failure in the eyes of consumers. Not only does it diminish consumer trust, she said, it pushes consumers to seek information from alternate sources, such as Mercy for Animals or PETA.

“What consumers expect is that we take good care of our cows,” Walker said, and that includes producers acknowledging that their animals have emotional or mental needs, as well as physical ones.

Cow feelings

It’s not an idea that’s particularly popular with some producers.

“I hear it all the time, again and again, we have to feed the world, there’s going to be nine billion people… we’re going to have to increase food production by 70 per cent, and you want me to stop and worry about my cows’ feelings? Are you kidding me?” said Walker.

But she added that good animal welfare, which Walker roughly defines as animals having a life worth living and a comfortable death, has many real benefits for producers to consider.

Besides the all-important need to maintain social licence and consumer trust, healthy and happy animals do produce more and are more resistant to disease, requiring less medical interventions, and fewer antibiotics. They react more predictably during research, in addition to providing better, more profitable carcasses when all is said and done.

No one expects cows to be sleeping at the foot of the bed, however, farm animals are being extended types of consideration that are new to agriculture. And that consideration is being fuelled by some marketing trends, such as not labelling meat products as animal. Where consumers might once have gone to the grocer to pick up a chicken, it’s now labelled a broiler. Beef and pork are labelled by cut.

“So while we have removed the animal from the food we eat, we have simultaneously elevated the animals in our lives, for many, cats and dogs are treated like members of the family. In many cases animal companions have really become the primary, sometimes, only stable form of companionship,” she said.

So it’s not that the ethics around the treatment of animals has changed, it’s that the number of animals those considerations are extended to has been expanded.

“I argue that our ethics aren’t changing, not at all, simply put, the golden rule is still the golden rule. What has changed is to whom we extend consideration of the golden rule to… our circle of caring is expanding,” said Walker.

And if that circle has expanded for consumers, it must also expand for farmers, she added.

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