Madam Speaker, the members opposite, while debating this particular bill, have used a phrase a number of times and it sounds like they want to amend the legislation by adding the phrase “immediacy of death”. I really question the rationale of that. Either an addition of this sort of clause would jeopardize the whole bill or it would allow two very large loopholes in the bill.
The first loophole would be the actual act that leads to the immediacy of death. One can think of sets of circumstances where there would be immediate death but we would call what happens as being very cruel, for instance chaining an animal to train tracks. It is a horrible thing to think about and one can just imagine the terror that an animal would experience. Animals could be subjected to tremendous terror and yet death could be immediate. That would allow that type of loophole.
The second one is the assumption that all farmers do is harvest animals. In fact, there are chicken farmers who humanely harvest eggs and sheep farmers who harvest wool. Unfortunately, however, there are a few people out there who perhaps would harvest from these animals in a non-humane way. I am not quite sure why they would want to see this sort of clause “immediacy of death” added to the legislation.
Would the member opposite explain why in particular they want this clause and whether or not it would just allow a huge loophole that would render the legislation useless?