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Update Canada's Archaic Animal Transport Regulations
October 12, 2014 Change.org (by MFA)
To: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of
Canada
The Honourable Gerry Ritz, Minister of Agriculture
The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister responsible for the CFIA
Dr. Bruce Archibald, CFIA President
Carolina Giliberti, CFIA Executive Vice-President
Dr. Martine Dubuc, Chief Food Safety Officer & Delegate to the OIE
Dr. Harpreet Kochhar, Chief Veterinary Officer & Executive Director of Animal
Health Directorate of the CFIA
I was horrified to see undercover video footage exposing
brutal animal abuse in Canada’s livestock transportation sector. The video shows
animals overcrowded in transport trucks without protection from extreme weather
or access to food and water; "downed" pigs who are so sick or injured they are
unable to walk being painfully shocked with electric prods; workers using bolt
cutters to break the tusks of male pigs without any painkillers; and animals who
died during transport. Perhaps most shocking is the fact that all of this takes
place under the watch of government inspectors.
For at least eight years, your ministry has been promising to update Canada's
shamefully outdated transport regulations, but has continued to delay and drag
its feet while millions of animals suffer and die. Canada’s outdated livestock
transport regulations are the weakest in the Western world. We lag behind the
European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, and allow animals
to suffer miserably in overcrowded trucks bound for slaughterhouses. Each year
in Canada, more than 8 million farmed animals arrive at slaughterhouses dead or
so sick or injured that they are declared unfit for human consumption.
The time for action is now. You have the authority and the
responsibility to protect farmed animals from flagrant abuse and neglect during
transport.
I urge your department to modernize Canada’s animal transport regulations,
including requiring food, water, and rest for animals at least every eight
hours, and prohibiting the breaking of boars' tusks. Not only do Canada’s
woefully lacking transport regulations need to be updated, they need to be
enforced with meaningful penalties.
As a civilized society it's our moral obligation to prevent cruelty to all
animals, including farmed animals. It’s time that Canada updated its transport
regulations to, at the very least, be in line with the rest of the Western
world.
Sincerely,
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