Animal welfare activist gets the goat
Lily the goat escaped slaughter last week.
It was blind luck really and hardly indicative. Anita Krajnc and three fellow animal rights activists were in Milton to attend a court hearing (she faces charges of criminal mischief for giving water to a thirsty pig, but I’ll get to that later).
So after the hearing and a bang-up vegan lunch, the foursome decided to protest at a local slaughterhouse which, surprisingly, they were allowed to enter.
According to an account prepared later by one of the activists, Jenny McQueen, they saw the usual slaughterhouse horrors — terrified livestock being prodded into the killing room, bloody carcasses swinging from hooks.
But they also saw a shivering nanny goat waiting to be killed. And they asked that she be spared.
To their delight, the manager agreed. He handed over the goat. He even named her Lily.
“It wasn’t official but a spontaneous rescue,” Krajnc told me in an email later. The manager “listened to our appeal to the higher laws of mercy and compassion,” she said.
The manager was also paid $270.
Still, it was a happy ending for Lily. She’s alive and living on a farm near Brampton.
In a struggle where there are few victories, it was a definite step forward.
The unusual nature of this victory is underlined by Krajnc’s own back story. One of the founders of an organization called Toronto Pig Save, she is hardly a militant.
Toronto Pig Save’s tactics, which involve protesting outside slaughterhouses, are strictly non-violent.
Krajnc’s preferred term is “bearing witness.” She likes to quote Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer and utopian thinker.
Last summer, when protesting in her usual fashion, she gave a drink of water to a pig being trucked into a Burlington slaughterhouse. For that, she was charged with criminal mischief. Her trial is set for August.
Given the law’s ambiguity towards non-human animals (in some instances they are treated as sentient beings capable of feeling pain; in others they are viewed strictly as property) she may well be convicted.
Many Canadians might view it as odd that someone could be charged and convicted for showing compassion to an animal. Many might think the law should be changed. But this process is not easy. In 1999, the then-Liberal govern- ment introduced a bill to update century-old animal cruelty provisions in the Criminal Code. This should have been a motherhood issue. It was not.
In the Commons, the bill met with stiff opposition from MPs in rural ridings. A watered-down version made it to the Senate.
In the Senate, the bill was attacked all over again by the same interest groups. Hunters and anglers opposed it. So did research scientists and chicken farmers.
Jewish and Muslim groups said updated cruelty laws would interfere with ritual slaughter. Inuit groups said a ban on “brutal or vicious” treatment of animals would interfere with traditional hunting practices.
In the end, the bill was completely gutted.
In 2007, Liberal backbencher Mark Holland tried to resuscitate animal cruelty reform by means of a private member’s bill. But private member’s bills are rarely passed. This one was no exception.
Now, newly minted Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has introduced a similar private member’s bill to modernize animal cruelty laws — this one including a ban on the import of shark fins. It is already under attack from the usual suspects.
Still, advocates plug on. Animal Justice, an organization of lawyers set up to defend animal welfare has filed a complaint with the federal Competition Bureau claiming that the grocery chain Safeway is engaging in misleading advertising.
Animal Justice takes particular offence with Safeway’s claim that its poultry is “certified humane” arguing that chickens sold by the grocery store are raised under hellish conditions in crowded cages.
A similar misleading advertising complaint levelled by Animal Justice against the clothier Canada Goose, for claiming that its coats use only “humane” fur trim, was thrown out by the Competition Bureau.
In short, on the broad animal rights front, progress is glacial. But Lily the goat is alive. And that’s something. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.