Agriculture Committee on April 4th, 2017

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay, just checking.

[Krista Hiddema]

We did an investigation at a facility that was—

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you believe that the majority of farmers abuse their animals?

[Krista Hiddema]

I did not say that. I said that in the 11 facilities we went into, we saw abuse in every one of those cases.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm just reading your website, “blatant abuse is now standard practice on farms both large and small”. Standard practice means the majority of farmers are abusers, and abuse their animals.

[Krista Hiddema]

I think there is—

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That is the theory you are coming forward with.

I'll just get back to transportation, but at the end of all this, I believe that my job is to balance proper regulations with making sure that we don't increase the price of food. Otherwise, I'm going to have poverty advocates here saying that the price of food is too high. We're talking about.... You've mentioned that over 700 million animals being transported are slaughtered. That's 2% of animals that would be suffering when they're being transported, if you do the math. It's also less than 1% of animals who arrive dead on arrival.

At the end of all this, the proposed regulations, how much—and I'm asking all members here; they can answer the question—will it reduce that percentage? At the end of it, if it doesn't reduce that percentage, we're doing this for nothing. I want to make sure that what we propose, what we come forward with, and what recommendations we propose in this committee reduce that number. If they don't, then we did this exercise for no reason.

[Krista Hiddema]

We know that the most amount of suffering in transport is in birds. There was a study done in Canada by Schwartzkopf-Genswein in 2012 that indicated that 86% of cattle journeys are already less than eight hours, and that the majority of pigs already spend less than three hours in transport trucks.

We know that the real problem in Canada is the transportation of birds, chickens in particular. When we look at the statistics for the number of animals that are arriving either DOA or so sick and injured that they can't become part of the supply chain, the vast, overwhelming percentage is birds.

We also know that, where we see the courts stepping in—which has nothing to do with Mercy for Animals—they are stepping in on incidents regarding birds, in particular Maple Lodge Farms, who has been held to account in our court system and on multiple occasions been charged with animal cruelty. The biggest issue regarding animal transportation is birds.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Cockram, do you have anything to add?

[Dr. Michael Cockram]

You need to look at the role of legislation that's in society to look at these broader aspects. It's basically to provide a framework of essential practices that the industry needs to adopt to reduce the risk of suffering. Doing that, you have commercial conformity when delivering these essential provisions. You also need to have a mechanism for dealing with non-compliance for these essential practices, so it's really a type of insurance to try to make sure you have the infrastructure there to reduce the risk of suffering.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

On DOAs for instance, for poultry, I'm looking at numbers in the U.S. They're at 0.025%, and in Canada right now we're at 0.015%, so we're actually lower than the U.S. At the end of this, I just want to make sure that we don't over-regulate for no reason.

[Dr. Michael Cockram]

I can deal with that one.

The good news is that the DOA percentage in Canada for the transport of poultry has gone down quite dramatically in recent years. That shows the commitment of the industry to achieve that end. It shows that, by changing management practices, you can get a desired outcome. But we need to do more than count dead chickens, unfortunately. It's quite a bad welfare outcome for an animal to die. We need to be able to catch other forms of suffering before death occurs. Therefore, we need to make sure that we have a well-designed manageable system of regulation in place. It's not impossible to get improvements.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you have numbers in other jurisdictions in terms of suffering, the percentage for poultry, for instance, or cattle in Europe, the US, or Australia, for example?

[Dr. Michael Cockram]

It's already been said. Poultry is at the greatest risk of dying during transportation. There should be very little reason why cattle die during transport. We're talking at a very sort of base level here, in terms of animal welfare, about transporting animals so you don't kill them. You shouldn't be killing any animals when you transport them.

We need to go for a higher level of standard so that it's actually beneficial for the industry in terms of saving money, getting better product quality, but increasingly now, by increasing consumer confidence in the food that they want to buy. They don't want to buy food if they think there's any risk of animals being exposed to suffering in their production. This is all—

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If I tell consumers that 98% of their chickens are safe, do you think they'll react like that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Maybe you can answer that in the next one.

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

Thank you, Mr. Cockram.

Ms. Brosseau, you have six minutes.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to thank our witnesses before committee today on this study on animal transport.

I'm just trying to go through this. When we're done our day in the House, I always go home and I try to prepare for the following days.

I must commend you on the amount of documentation provided for this study. Thank you. I'm still trying to process it all.

I'd like to start off by asking a question. We had laws put in place in 1977. Now in 2017 we're going over them after a 10-year consultation period. I know we're trying to get in line and harmonize our laws and certain of our practices in Canada with international standards. I know what we do has to be made in Canada and has to take into account the geography and the weather we have here in Canada, the four seasons.

Could you maybe comment on where Canada is as compared with the States, and maybe comment on Europe's practices and standards in comparison with regard to international animal health?

[Krista Hiddema]

Is that for me?

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Yes.

[Krista Hiddema]

We've actually done an analysis of where Canada sits in comparison to every major country, including the OIE. That can be found in our documentation, in chart format. Unquestionably, we fall behind every other civilized country in terms of animal transportation. While we don't fall particularly far behind the United States, we are still behind. We certainly take the position very strongly that, as Canadians, and in particular as Canadians who don't want animals to suffer, we have an obligation to make dramatic change at this point.

The other thing I just want to comment on is the ongoing question about the EU. At the end of the day, while we are not the EU, animals certainly have the same capacity for suffering, whether those animals are sitting in Germany or they're sitting in Canada.

When we talk about the number of hours in transport, there are alternatives. When we talk about animals being offloaded and reloaded, yes, that's extremely stressful, but there are trucks available that have on-board food and water, on-board ventilation, and on-board monitoring of temperatures. When we know those transport times are going to exceed maximums like eight hours, they should be utilizing separate trucking systems.

We also believe that there is an opportunity for job development in having more slaughterhouses so that they simply would not have to be in transport for 52 hours, which is grossly unacceptable. We know there are job opportunities here, and there are better trucking systems.

It's no different. If you're going to take your kids to Florida, what are you going to do? You're going to pack a lunch and put it in the back of your car, and you're going to do a few other things, and you're going to stop. There are opportunities for animals as well. As Michael has indicated, every animal feels suffering, and not one death is acceptable. Where we can reduce that dramatically, we have that obligation on the global stage, to Canadians, and quite frankly, to the animals.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I know my colleague Alaina Lockhart has brought up quite often the need for slaughterhouses. I think we could all agree that if that infrastructure and those types of services were more accessible and closer to home, that would solve a lot of these issues.

Mr. Cockram, what is the difference between “unfit” and “compromised”?

[Dr. Michael Cockram]

An “unfit“ animal is an animal that cannot legally be transported. Canada is quite unique compared to, say, the EU regulations, by having a separate category of “compromised animals”, whereby those animals are not fully fit but they are allowed to be transported under special circumstances.

The difficulties we in the CVMA have when we look at the proposed regulations are, first, the maximum time they could be transported is 12 hours—that's a long time for an animal to go downhill—and, two, there are a number of conditions listed for compromised animals, meaning that the suffering will be exaggerated by the transport. Having sick or injured animals enter the human food chain is a way of allowing industry to get an economic return from them.

We are suggesting that the list of compromised animals be reconsidered so that animals that shouldn't be transported at all are not transported, and that the only option for these animals should be local slaughter, say within an hour of the livestock unit. Otherwise those animals are going to suffer unduly, and that's not acceptable.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I've been going through the document you've submitted to the committee, “Mercy for Animals”. There are studies and quite a lot of expert testimony that have been included. Could you comment on this, Ms. Torgerson-White?

[Lauri Torgerson-White, Animal Welfare Specialist, Mercy for Animals]

Yes, absolutely. We spent a ton of time going through—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Give a quick comment, please.