Food

• Author: Lesli Bisgould
• Profession: Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law
• Pages: 161-200

161

CHA PTER 6

FOOD

Laws, like saus ages, cease to ins pire respect in proportion a s we

know how they are m ade.

— John Godfrey Saxe, A merican poet, The Daily Cleveland Herald, 186 9

In R v Dudley and Stephens,1 the necessity defence was rejected in the

case of two sailors charged with murder after they killed a nd ate their

companion while shipwrecked at sea; as f ar as the common law was con-

cerned, no matter how dire the circumstances, it could never be legally

necessary to k ill another human being to sustain oneself. The subject of

this chapter is t he law in respect to the beings we do per mit ourselves

to eat. Agriculture falls under both federal and provincial jurisdiction

and there is extensive legi slation at both levels, in addition to industry-

created recommended codes of practice. In order to understand how

the laws governing this vast industry are interpreted and applied, one

must have a sense of the context. In this chapter, Part A provides a brief

overview of the modern indust ry; Part B is an overview of animal life in

that industry; and Part C reviews the legislative scheme.

1 [1881–85] All ER 61 (QB), as discussed in t he Introduction.

ANIM ALS AND THE LAW162

A. OVERVIEW OF THE MODERN

AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY

Since the Second World War, consumption of animals and animal

products has become big business. In Canada, we now kill at least 700

million anima ls for food every year.2 In the United States, the number

is greater than 9 billion animals and global ly, the meat, dairy, and egg

industry kills 56 billion animals every year.3

Like any transform ative sociological and economic development,

the dramatic incre ase in animal consumption is attributable to a num-

ber of factors; however, the most unequivocal are the industriali zation

of agriculture and its par tnership with the research industry. Early in

the twentieth century, animal slaughter was already a highly mechan-

ized process.4 After the Second World War, breeding and raising ani-

mals became i ncreasingly eff‌icient, allowing anim als to be produced on

a scale that had never been seen before. “Farmers” became “producers”

and Old MacDonald’s farm ceased to resemble children’s drawings.5

The availability of antibiotics allowed for the intensive conf‌inement

of animals. This brought the animals indoors, out of public view. Major

corporations with no connection to agr iculture, such as bus compan-

2 The exact number i s unknown. Agricult ure and Agri-Food Canad a collects

slaughterhouse st atistics in respect of some s pecies raised and ki lled on land,

but not f‌ish and other se a creatures. The 700 million numb er is based on 2008

statistic s for hogs, cattle, calves, sheep, and l amb slaughtered in both federal ly

and provinci ally inspected facil ities, and poultry, including ch ickens, turkeys,

ducks, and geese : Canadian Food Inspe ction Agency, compiled by Agriculture

and Agri-Food C anada, online: ww w4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/d isplay-aff‌icher.

do?i d=117767631697 1&lan g=eng .

3 See 2007 stati stics collected by Food and Agr iculture Organizat ion of the

United Nations’ Global L ivestock Production and Healt h Atlas, online:

http://kids.f ao.org/glipha (enter theme: L ivestock population).

4 Upton Sinclair ’s 1906 novel, The Jungle (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), alerted

readers to the br utal conditions for both workers a nd animals in the tu rn-of-the-

century Ch icago stockyards. Their met hods inspired Henr y Ford in his conception

of the assembly l ine production of cars. The novel is th ought to have been a factor

which led to the Unite d States’ f‌irst meat insp ection legislation, and the de velop-

ment of the Bureau of Chem istry, which became the Foo d and Drug Administ ration.

5 Thousands of pigs can b e kept in a single building; at lea st 15,000 pigs living in

one building in A lberta were killed in a f‌i re: “Massive Blaze at Cluny Hutter ite

Colony” ctvcalgary.ca (1 August 2009), online: http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet /an/

local/CT VNews/20090801/CGY_pig _f‌ire_090801/ NFL. Egg producers keep

an average of anywh ere from approximately 11,000 layers (Albe rta) to 50,000

(Newfoundland an d Labrador), and the number i s growing: Egg Farmers of

Canada, 2010 Annual Repor t (Ottawa: Egg Fa rmers of Canada, 2011) at 25.

Food 163

ies, life insurance companies, and oil companies, became the owners

or part owners of farm ing operations, thereby gaining t ax concessions

and diversifying their prof‌its. Living animals began to be regarded as

machines that convert low-priced fodder into f‌lesh. Growth hormones

made them grow bigger and faster and conti nuing innovations have

sought an ever more eff‌icient conversion r atio.6 Across North America,

small producers have had to adopt modern methods, establish a niche,

or go out of business. There continue to be family farms in Canada, but

they are much like the belugas of the St. Law rence River, polluted by the

eff‌luent of mega-corporations and headed for an unpleasant death.7

Globally, the industrialization of agriculture has had cata strophic8

6 Research now also i ncludes the growing f‌ield of biotech nology. For example,

biotechnology ma nipulates the DNA of anima ls like the Enviropig engi neered

at the University of Gue lph, Ontario, so as to produce waste w ith less phos-

phorous, and AquaA dvantage Salmon, developed in New foundland and Prince

Edward Islan d, engineered to grow bigger a nd faster.

7 To note an exception, as people beg in to learn about and respond to t he harms

of industri alized agricultu re, a small but apparently grow ing movement seeks

to return to more loc al and sustainable organ ic farming. As subsidie s and tax

incentives cont inue to favour large, factory operat ions, the long-term fate of the

new wave of family f arms remains prec arious.

8 Approximately 1.5 billion cows populate t he earth, occupyi ng nearly one

quarter of the pl anet’s landmass. The popul ation is destroying nat ural habitat

and interr upting ecosystems on six c ontinents. Herding is a pri mary factor in

the destr uction of the world’s remaining tropica l rain forests. Million s of acres

of ancient forest in Cent ral and South America ar e felled and cleared to make

room for pasturel and to graze cows for richer nat ions. Herding is respon sible

for much of the spreadi ng desertif‌ication in sub -Saharan Afric a and western

rangeland s in the United States and Aust ralia. Runoff from feedlots i s a major

source of pollution and a se rious threat to water safet y. Cows are a major source

of global warm ing, emitting methane ga s, which prevents heat from esc aping

the Eart h’s atmosphere. The list go es on.

See Jonathan S afran Foer, Eating Animals (New York: Little, Brown a nd Co,

2009); Jeffrey Moussa ieff Masson, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food

(New York: WW Norton & Company, 2009); Food and Agric ulture Organiza-

tion of the United Nation s, Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues an d

Options by Henning Steinfeld (Rome: Foo d and Agriculture Organ ization of the

United Nations, 20 06); Erik Marc us, Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Mone y

(Minneapoli s: Brio Press, 2005); Stuart L aidlaw, Secret Ingredients: The Brave

New World of Industrial Farm ing (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 20 04); Eric

Schlosser, Fast Food Nation : The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York:

Houghton Miff‌lin, 2 001); Howard F Lyman with Glen Mer zer, Mad Cowboy:

Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Wh o Won’t Eat Meat (New York: Touchstone,

1998) [Lyman & Merzer]; Jeremy Rifki n, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the

Cattl e Culture (New York: Penguin Bo oks, 1992); Orville Sc hell, Modern Meat:

Antibiotics, Hor mones, and the Pharmace utical Farm (New York: Vintage Books,

1985); Mark Gold, Assault and Batter y: What Factory Farming Means for Humans