Region: Canada

Raise the bar for dogs, families and communities by fighting harmful breed-specific policies

Humane Society International / Canada

Pitbull terrier
triciamacd/iStockphoto

Across Canada, municipalities and even entire provinces like Ontario ban or restrict dogs because of their breed (or perceived breed).

HSI/Canada opposes such public policies as inhumane and ineffective. There is no evidence that breed-specific laws reduce dog bites or attacks on people, and they divert resources from more effective animal control and public safety initiatives. This is also reflected by the position statement of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association on dangerous dog legislation, which they support, “[p]rovided that it is not discriminatory of a specific breed. This legislation should be directed at fostering the safety and protection of the general public from dogs classified as ‘dangerous’ or ‘vicious.’ The CVMA encourages and supports a community approach to dog bite prevention, including responsible breeding, training, pet selection and pet ownership as well as education on animals in the community.”

Breed-based policies aren’t founded on science or credible data, but on myths and misinformation surrounding different breeds. Their impact on dogs, families and animal shelters, however, is heartbreakingly real.

Learn the truth about breed bans, and help your community become a place where dogs aren’t judged by their looks, but by their behavior.

Bad laws have high costs

Breed bans and restrictions force dogs out of homes and into shelters, taking up kennel space and resources that could be used for animals who are truly homeless. Underfunded animal control agencies bear the burden of enforcing the laws, and are often called on to decide, based on looks alone, whether a dog belongs to a certain breed. Battles erupt between dog owners and local agencies—and often continue to the courts—costing the community resources that could have been spent on effective, breed-neutral dog laws and enforcement.

Science doesn’t support breed bias

Experts have found that no breed is more likely to bite than another. The CVMA, the Ordre des médecins vétérinaires du Québec, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the National Companion Animal Coalition and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oppose breed-specific legislation, along with leading animal welfare organizations.

Complicating the issue of breed bans and restrictions is the fact that often pet dogs are mixed breeds. Through canine genetic testing, studies have found that even people in animal-related professions can’t accurately identify the breeds in a mixed-breed dog’s genealogy. Tragically, breed-biased laws have caused the deaths of countless dogs whose only crime was to resemble a certain breed.

Breeds don’t magically disappear

In a 2012 article about the long-standing breed ban in Miami-Dade County, Fla., Kathy Labrada, then head of animal services enforcement, admitted that the ban had been a failure. “No, it has not been effective,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “To target a specific breed I don’t think is logical.”

Many animal shelters are flooded with dogs who, because of breed bans, can’t be adopted to the people in their communities. Shelters in neighboring cities and counties often end up taking in the dogs, creating something like a shell game. Katie Barnett, an animal law attorney in Kansas, remembers when animal control officers showed up at her door several years ago and told her that she had two weeks to get rid of her dog, Katrina. Instead, Barnett and Katrina moved just 10 miles away, to another city in the Kansas City metropolitan area that didn’t ban Staffordshire bull terriers. Her experience, Barnett says, underscores the illogic behind a patchwork of local breed bans: “I can live in one city and by simply crossing the street into another, all of the sudden my dog is labeled dangerous.”

BSL is a dying trend

Fortunately, more people and their elected officials are learning why breed bans don’t make sense, and BSL is on the decline. In the United States, 19 states have passed laws prohibiting BSL on the local level, and nearly 100 municipalities have replaced BSL with breed-neutral policies. Repealing BSL has not resulted in more dog bites in these communities. In fact, after Ohio repealed its statewide breed-based law, State Farm Insurance reported a decrease in dog-related claims in the state.

Humane Society International / Canada

The vast number of consumer labels affixed to egg cartons can leave a shopper feeling dazed and confused. One carton may label its eggs “Natural.” Another carton may call them “Free Range,” while yet another may claim its eggs are “Certified Organic.” How are thoughtful consumers supposed to know what these labels and claims really mean?

The truth is that the majority of egg labels have little relevance to animal welfare or, if they do, they have no official standards or any mechanism to enforce them.

Welfare concerns

No label, classic, conventional, regular, farm-fresh, natural

The chickens who laid these eggs are kept in cages for almost their entire lives. The cages are about the size of a file cabinet drawer and can hold up to seven hens. The birds don’t have enough room to even flap their wings, and cannot lay their eggs in a nest—a hen’s strongest instinct.

Omega-3 enriched, vegetarian-fed, lutein-enriched

These terms all describe the hens’ diet, not their level of welfare. Unless they are marked with a label specifically addressing their housing (e.g. free range eggs), these eggs are from caged hens.

Better options

Free run

These hens are kept cage-free in barn housing. While they don’t have access to the outdoors, they can lay their eggs in a nest box, flap their wings, peck at the ground and have access to perches.

Free range

These hens are kept cage-free in barn housing. They can lay their eggs in a nest box, flap their wings, peck at the ground and have access to perches. These animals are allowed access to the outdoors when weather permits.

Best choices

Organic, certified organic

Unless these eggs are marked with one of the logos below, compliance with Canadian Organic Standards is voluntary, so standards may vary.

These labels are found in some parts of Canada, and all indicate that the housing systems that these hens live in have been third-party verified.

While each standard specifies a different amount of space per hen indoors, none of these hens are in cages and, in the case of certified free range, all hens have specified time and space outdoors, weather permitting.

What to look for

Certified organic logos (all provinces)

     

Certified organic and certified humane logos (British Columbia)

     

Certified organic logos (Quebec)

       

Note: Virtually all hens in commercial egg operations—whether cage or cage-free—come from hatcheries that kill all male chicks shortly after hatching. The males are of no use to the egg industry because they don’t lay eggs and aren’t bred to grow as large or as rapidly as chickens used in the meat industry. Common methods of killing male chicks include suffocation, gassing and grinding. Tens of millions of male chicks are killed each year in Canadian hatcheries.

Humane Society International / Canada

“Salmonella Thrives in Cage Housing”—This headline was featured in World Poultry in 2009. In 2010, an outbreak of salmonella that sickened hundreds of people caused the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs in the United States.

All 15 studies published comparing salmonella contamination in cage and cage-free egg operations since 2005 founder higher rates of salmonella in the cage facilities. The only two studies ever published comparing risk at the consumer level both tied increased salmonella risk to cage egg consumption.

The health risks posed by battery cages are easy to understand; when birds are crammed so tightly together in cages, with thousands and thousands of hens housed in single barns, the transmission bacteria and of diseases such as bird flu happens much more easily than if hens are afforded more room to move.

Hens are typically jammed into cage-filled sheds by the hundreds of thousands, causing environmental degradation—especially manure-related pollution. For this reason, numerous environmental organizations are in favor of the egg industry switching to cage-free systems.

Studies have shown that not confining animals in cages may improve food safety.

Humane Society International / Canada

Imagine living the rest of your life in an elevator with six other people—being prevented from even the most basic activities! This is the kind of existence that a battery hen endures.

Chickens raised for egg production are referred to as laying hens. Currently, most of the 26 million egg-laying hens in Canada will spend their lives inside small wire cages known as ‘battery cages’. These barren enclosures are about the size of a filing cabinet drawer. Multiple hens—each with a wingspan of approximately 80cm—are crammed into a cage approximately 50 cm across. The lack of space prevents the animals from performing many of the most basic instinctive behaviors, like walking, laying their eggs in nests, perching or scratching and stretching their wings—actions that are necessary to their welfare.

Stress and overcrowding

Battery barns in Canada hold thousands of cages, each confining multiple birds, in tiers of two to eight cages high, with farms averaging more than 17, 000 birds. The extreme overcrowding and unnatural conditions lead to a multitude of problems, including foot and feather damage from the wire cages. In addition, the complete lack of exercise coupled with unnaturally high egg production causes osteoporosis, predisposing hens to painful broken bones.

Overcrowding can also lead to heat stress since adequate ventilation is virtually impossible to provide in these facilities during hot weather. During heat waves, millions of chickens can suffocate. What’s more, excrement and dust builds up in egg barns, leading to poor air quality and an unhealthy and stressful environment for these sensitive creatures.

Our work

Humane Society International/Canada campaigns against these extreme confinement systems because they so severely compromise the welfare of the hens. We work with restaurants, schools, universities and municipalities to help them transition to using cage-free eggs. Read more information on our campaign.

What you can do

One of the best ways to help improve the welfare of laying hens is through your consumer choices.

In the supermarket, labels on egg cartons can be confusing. Have a look at our guide to egg labels to make sure you know where your eggs come from.

HSI/Canada has partnered with the Vancouver Humane Society to educate Canadian consumers about more humane alternatives to eggs produced by battery cage hens. Learn more about the Chicken Out campaign!

Battery cages and food safety

Studies have linked cage housing environments to increases in risk of salmonella contamination, which poses a serious health risk to humans. Find out more.

Learn more

Read the latest news about HSI’s work on intensive confinement issues around the world.

Humane Society International / Canada

Did you know?

  • There are approximately 26 million laying hens in Canada. Most of them are kept confined in cramped, barren cages.
  • Battery cages were designed in the 1940s to maximize production and lower animal care costs as a response to the growing demand for eggs.
  • Currently, Canadian hens do not enjoy any protection from animal cruelty legislation. As farm animals, they are exempt from both Provincial and Federal Cruelty to Animals Acts.
  • Battery cages are about 51 cm deep and 61 cm wide. Each cage holds around six hens, giving each hen less space than an average piece of writing paper to live her entire life.
  • A hen requires 600 cm2 to lie down comfortably, and 2000 cm2 to freely flap her wings. In a typical battery cage, a hen has access to between 432 cm2 and 483 cm2 of space.
  • Her lack of space means a hen confined in a cage will never flap her wings, cannot lie down without touching her cage mates, will never peck at the ground for food, or roll in a dust bath—something hens do for pleasure.
  • A hen confined in a battery cage will never lay her egg in a nest—her strongest instinct.
  • Studies have shown that a hen will work just as hard to access a secluded nesting area as she will to access food and water.
  • Hens naturally forage for food—when given the opportunity, they spend up to 50 percent of their time pecking and scratching at the ground. A battery hen is allocated 10 cm per bird of feeding space in a trough outside her cage.
  • Egg laying hens and broiler chickens (chickens raised for meat) are genetically different. This means that male chicks have no value in the egg industry. They are killed a few days after hatching.
  • Most hens have their beaks partially sliced off without pain relief medication when they are a few days old to control the aggressive behaviours that can evolve as a result of the stress of intensive confinement.
  • Chickens naturally live for about six or seven years. However, an egg-laying hen is usually slaughtered after about 12 months.
  • A battery hen can lay up to 320 eggs in the first year after she begins to lay, but shortly after this her productivity begins to drop. She is then slaughtered for chicken by-products or compost.

Learn more about egg labels in Canada and take action to help get hens out of cages.

Humane Society International / Canada

Jennifer Kunz

With nearly 72,000 horses slaughtered in 2013 alone, Canada’s horse slaughter industry is among the largest in the world, and a shameful betrayal against our loyal companions.

Horses are slaughtered in Canada primarily to provide horse meat to European and Asian countries. Horses are brought to slaughter in every possible condition—old, young, sick, healthy, injured, and even pregnant. They are not all unwanted—often, their guardians can no longer afford to keep them, and bring the horses to auction hoping to find them a good home. But horribly, more than 50 percent of horses sold at rural auctions go to slaughter after being bought by “kill buyers.”

A terrible journey

Many times, horses are crammed in trailers designed for shorter animals and travel in uncomfortable positions over very long distances. Loading and unloading is extremely stressful and dangerous for horses as they are moved along the relatively steep ramps. Canadian animal transport standards are among the worst in the industrialized world. Current regulations allow horses to be transported for up to 36 hours without food, water or rest.

Inhumane slaughter—not humane euthanasia

There have been many reported cases of animal welfare violations in Canadian horse slaughterhouses including failure to provide food and water, illegal unloading of animals, animals left for extended periods in kill pens and sick or injured animals denied veterinary care. Not surprisingly, veterinary experts around the world and leading animal protection groups have denounced horse slaughter as inhumane.

Once the horses are corralled into the slaughterhouse, the end is predictable—violent and bloody. Sometimes injured and emaciated, horses are beaten and electro-shocked in overcrowded pens and must endure the smell of blood and the sights and sounds of other horses in pain and being killed before they, too, are led into a kill chute.

Horse slaughterhouses use the same type of stalls and techniques as cattle slaughterhouses. These stalls are too wide for horses and the captive-bolt stun gun method used with cattle is ill-suited for horses. Horses are an extreme example of a flight animal. The panic and instinctive desire to escape they experience in the slaughterhouse causes them to thrash their heads frantically in the kill chute, making it difficult to effectively stun them prior to slaughter. Witnesses (and video footage) document horses subjected to a sharp blow to the head from the captive-bolt gun three or four times before they are rendered unconscious for exsanguination. In a recent investigation of carcasses discarded by a Canadian slaughterhouse, skulls of many horses processed for meat were found without any holes from a stun gun or rifle whatsoever!

Time to act

With the closing of the remaining equine slaughter plants in the United States in 2007, the number of horses imported to Canada for slaughter has increased. There are now four equine slaughter plants in Canada, two in Quebec and two in Alberta. We need to act now to stop this growing climate of cruelty to horses in Canada!

What we’re doing

Horse slaughter is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed throughout North America. In the United States, for example, the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act (H.R. 1094/S. 541) was introduced and, if adopted, would ban domestic horse slaughter in the U.S. permanently and the export of horses for slaughter abroad.

In Canada, HSI is working to achieve a federal ban on the horse slaughter industry that would end the slaughter, sale, transport and trade of horses for human consumption. By raising public awareness regarding horse slaughter, actively campaigning for legislative change in Canada and by working with our partners in the United States and in Europe, HSI/Canada aims to put an end to the cruel horse slaughter industry in this country.

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