Tag: Media

Photo: Canadian Horse Defence Coalition

In late March, The Hill Times published an opinion piece by Senator Don Plett, an appointed leader who has vocally defended Canada’s controversial live horse export industry and delayed the passing of life-saving Bill C-355. The piece defended the shipping of live horses from Canada on long journeys overseas for slaughter.

Senator Plett denounced animal advocates who are standing up for horses while making many misleading claims, ignoring recent exposes that revealed the underreporting of horse deaths in transit and the prevalence of journeys that exceed the legal time limit.

Earlier this week, The Hill Times published a second opinion piece by Kaitlyn Mitchell of Animal Justice setting the record straight.

Senator Plett incorrect about horse exports: Animal Justice

Mitchell calls Senator Plett’s defence of the live horse export for slaughter industry “a bold move, given that the industry is seen as a national embarrassment to most, with nearly 80 per cent of Canadians of all political stripes supporting its timely end.”

The piece outlines several of Senator Plett’s misleading claims, including:

• The claim that horses exported for slaughter have “ample room”. “This despite countless images captured at Canadian airports showing these horses crammed together in wooden crates as well as evidence given by the horse racing industry and others at parliamentary committee hearings on this issue last year.”
• The claim that “qualified” attendants are present on flights. While sport horses often travel with multiple staff, Mitchell notes that “a single attendant on a flight of 100 or more horses packed into a cargo hold can do little to assist horses who may fall or become injured or stressed during transport.” Records show that these attendants routinely miss animal injuries, including a January 2024 incident involving four collapsed horses, one of whom was already dead and two of whom died after landing.
• The claim that “virtually no deaths of horses during transport have been ‘reported to the CFIA'”. Mitchell outlines the underreporting of horse deaths: “Government of Japan data from June 2023-June 2024 alone shows that although no deaths or injuries were reported to the CFIA during this time, at least 22 horses died during or shortly after transport and more than 60 others suffered serious injuries and illness.”

“The ongoing spread of the highly pathogenic bird flu worldwide is reaching an “unprecedented” scale, a United Nations agency warned” earlier this month. The disease spreads easily on crowded poultry farms, which has led to 600 million farmed birds being killed.

Bird flu’s current spread is ‘unprecedented,’ UN agency warns

“Speaking at a conference in Rome, key members of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) met to discuss the global outbreak of avian influenza.”

“Once limited to a few continents, avian flu has spread across all five continents since 2021, affecting more than 528 species, the FAO warned.”

“The virus is now present in 124 countries, causing the deaths of 47 million wild birds, while more than 600 million domestic birds have been culled (killed)”.

To address bird flu, reform chicken farming

An opinion piece by Eleanor Boyle, published in the Tyee earlier this year, suggests that scaling down the farming of birds for food will be necessary to control the spread of avian flu. Boyle notes that British Columbia, a hot spot for bird flu, is a great place to start shifting the food system.

“Though B.C. turns out less than 15 per cent of Canada’s chicken and eggs, the province accounts for more than 50 per cent of the nation’s recent avian flu-related bird kills and 81 per cent of the country’s now-infected barns.”

The high density of birds packed into barns and the close proximity of farm buildings are risk factors, the article notes. Research shows the disease spreads (and mutates) among crowded animals.

Although wild birds shed pathogens as they fly overhead, “historically, wild-bird pathogens were innocuous. Commercial poultry settings are where low-pathogenic strains tend to become high-pathogenic.”

“Compassion in World Farming says there’s such strong evidence that the poultry industry fuels avian flu that ‘only major farm reforms can end it.'”

Taking decisive action to shift toward more plant-based foods will mean less zoonotic disease risk and a brighter future for animal well-being and public health.

According to two papers recently published in the journals Environmental Research Letters and Climate Policy, the US beef industry knew of its role in climate change decades ago and “worked to obstruct efforts to encourage meat reduction for the sake of climate change”.

Beef industry put profits over planet

The new reports find that:

• A beef industry document from 1989 laid out plans to influence public opinion and legislation in response to climate concerns.
• The plan appears to be a blueprint for the industry’s actions to obstruct efforts that would reduce meat/beef consumption for the sake of climate protection.
• Industry groups organized generously funded advertising campaigns to counter the messaging of environmental advocates.
• The industry lobbied against sustainable diet change efforts including Meatless Mondays, official dietary guidelines, and the landmark EAT-Lancet report.

According to reports, the beef industry’s lobbying and marketing efforts have silenced advocates, maintained a high public demand for meat, and slowed the development of sustainable food policies for decades; all while knowing the climate impacts of the industry.

Vox

In February 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency held a workshop on how to reduce climate emissions. A representative from the nation’s largest and oldest beef industry group — the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA) — attended the workshop. Soon after, the organization developed a report to keep beef on family tables despite the growing knowledge around its climate impacts.

“The Cattlemen’s plan — an internal 17-page memo titled “Strategic Plan on the Environment” — went unnoticed for decades until two University of Miami researchers, Jennifer Jacquet and Loredana Loy, recently unearthed the document in the NCA’s archives.”

“Notably, the beef industry plan had barely a mention about addressing cattle pollution. Instead, it centered around how the public and policymakers would perceive that pollution.”