On the front lines of animal welfare

In late 2016, animal rights activist Jenny McQueen was on the lookout for factory farms.

The 55-year-old retired Ontario civil servant belongs to a so-called “open rescue” group called Direct Action Everywhere, which is trying to liberate animals from bondage. And on this December day two years ago, McQueen was driving around southwestern Ontario in search of an industrial chicken farm that she might investigate.

What she found instead was Adare Pork Ltd., a 2,600-sow operation near Lucan northwest of London. Known in the trade as a “pig production system,” it specializes in impregnating sows and briefly raising the offspring — usually until they are about 21 days old.

Those piglets deemed strong and healthy are then sold to another farm to be fattened for slaughter. Those that don’t make the cut are usually killed.

Adare didn’t return my telephone calls. But a 2012 profile in the industry magazine The Insider describes its owners as a “progressive and successful farm family” under contract to Quebec pork producer F. Ménard. Ménard, in turn, sells to the grocery chain IGA.

In short, Adare doesn’t appear to be unusual. What happened on that December day in 2016, however, was. McQueen says she drove up to the sow barns without meeting any humans and somehow got inside. There she took pictures, including some that revealed her identity. That’s one of the hallmarks of open rescue — no masks, no balaclavas.

“Everything I do, I do with an open face,” she tells me.

But her main purpose was to document what she saw as the casually cruel treatment of animals held in small, confined spaces and bred for meat.

She used those photos as the basis of a complaint to the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But nothing happened — and for good reason.

Most of what she documented — the piglet bodies bloodied with afterbirth, the confined sows, the burning stench of ammonia coming from open sewage pits beneath the barns — are considered acceptable by government.

McQueen is a bit vague on what happened after that. But she says she and a “small number” of allies made “a few” more trips to Adare Pork and took more pictures.

In order to avoid introducing disease into the crowded barns, they dressed in the standard hog worker’s uniform of plastic biohazard suits and slippers.

She says she timed her visits to take place at nights or on weekends in order to avoid running into farm workers.

Somewhere along the line (she won’t say when), she removed two piglets. One, which she named Noel, had a damaged ear. She won’t say what the other piglet’s name is — or where either of them now resides.

That too is one of the tenets of open rescue — to remove specific animals in need and, as far as possible, tell their stories.

In March, after another clandestine visit to Adare, she made a second appeal to the OSPCA. With it, she included a photo of a sow suffering from a prolapsed uterus. Again, she says, she heard nothing back

The adventure began to draw to an end this summer. In August, McQueen showed up at 5 a.m. at the farm, ready for more open rescue.

But this time, the activists were surprised to find workers there. “We made a fast exit,” says McQueen. It was so fast that they left one of their biohazard suits behind.

Early in the morning of Oct. 4, police armed with a search warrant raided her Toronto home. She was handcuffed and charged with break-and-enter as well as mischief to property worth more than $5,000. She is due to appear in court later this month.

“They treated me like a terrorist,” she recalls bemusedly. “All we were trying to do was help the animals.”