Down On The Farm

Two today from Leslie Bisgould, one of Canada's few animal rights lawyers.

The first, titled Anything Goes, is a detailed analysis of Canadian law respecting the treatment of farmed animals. Print it off, give it a read and some thought. It's an important report. One of many money quotes comes as she is discussing Canada's voluntary codes of practice for animal industry:
"As one reads the Codes and their recommendations in favour of or against particular practices (such as recommendations that containers of live animals not be dropped or thrown; that animals should not be unloaded by tilting the box of a dump truck; that hitting a calf on the head with a blunt instrument is no longer an approved method of rendering a calf unconscious; that animals must not be lifted by the head, ears, horns, tail or fleece; or to ensure there is no backlog at the point of entry where live, unwanted chicks wait to be shredded by a high speed macerator), it is apparent that, unless some piece of legislation specifically says otherwise, these practices may lawfully occur and do; if they did not, there would not be any reason to make recommendations in regard to them.

All of this raises a question which may be somewhat beyond the scope of this paper, but is unavoidable at this juncture: what kind of daily existence must be experienced by animals whose care-givers have to be told not to lift them by the head?"

Second, a much shorter article about human and nonhuman animals, meat, and language, called We All Are Meat. A money quote, you ask?

"In fact, the most intimate experience most of us have with animals begins when they are dead and we eat them."