When Canadians shop for meat at the supermarket, many believe that buying local meat is a more ethical choice. Yet between 2017 and 2022, nearly 800 cases of inhumane handling of animals were reported in federally inspected slaughterhouses across the country. What do these figures reveal about animal welfare in Canada?

Shifting geopolitical dynamics — particularly with the United States — have prompted many Canadian consumers to favour locally sourced foods. At the same time, growing public concern about animal welfare invites a deeper examination of what is being supported when consumers choose local meat. Very few people know how animals are processed into meat, a blind spot largely explained by the discomfort these practices provoke.

As a professor and doctoral student at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law specializing in agri-food and animal law, we aimed to shed light on this issue in a recent research project.

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The Canadian legislative situation

In Canada, approximately 95 per cent of animals intended for consumption are slaughtered in federally registered establishments. These slaughterhouses are governed under the Safe Food for Canadians Act and the Health of Animals Act, as well as their respective regulations.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors and veterinarians supervise the activities carried out in these establishments to ensure regulatory compliance.

These rules primarily concern food safety and quality, but they also include animal welfare requirements, since sick or injured animals generally pose risks to food safety. The general idea is not to inflict avoidable suffering or injury on animals. For example, at the time of slaughter, the animal must be rendered unconscious before being suspended, bled and butchered.

In addition, as part of the CFIA’s shift towards an approach that places greater responsibility on industry, slaughterhouses must develop and implement a written preventive control plan (PCP), an internal document that set outs steps to ensure animal welfare.

Nearly 800 irregularities

As part of this project, we analyzed 796 incident reports describing incidents of non-compliance with humane handling requirements between 2017 and 2022 in all federally inspected slaughterhouses in Canada. The three most recurring problems involved unloading animals at the slaughterhouse, stunning and animals returning to consciousness at the time of slaughter, and improper handling of animals.

Irregularities observed at the time of unloading indicate that there were problems either during the removal from the truck or while the animals were waiting to enter the production line. Many animals are also found dead in the trucks, particularly when temperatures reach extreme highs in summer or lows in winter. In addition, employees do not always take the appropriate measures to handle injured animals with care.

During stunning, the different methods used (mechanical, electrical or gas) revealed a number of failures, resulting in numerous animals not being rendered unconscious or regaining consciousness after, which inevitably causes avoidable suffering.

As for improper handling by employees, this was particularly problematic with birds, which were often found in places where they should never have been: inside industrial washers, in bins intended for dead animals, crushed under the wheels of a truck or trapped between two transport cages.

These non-compliance reports were obtained through an access-to-information request. Their content will come as no surprise to organizations that have been denouncing animal abuse for years, such as Humane Canada and the Montréal SPCA. The negligence observed also reflects a broader context of precarious working conditions and pressure put on employees to maintain speed and profitability, often at the expense of animal welfare.

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Difficult to document

Considering that more than 800 million animals are slaughtered for food in Canada each year, what conclusions can we draw from the approximately 800 incidents that occurred between 2017 and 2022?

To better contextualize the quantitative data, we wanted to conduct interviews with the CFIA and its inspectors. Despite repeated requests, no official response was received from the agency.

The union representing CFIA staff refused to participate in the study without the agency’s official authorization, and several inspectors declined our invitation to be interviewed on the basis that they believed it would violate their code of ethics.

Nevertheless, we managed to conduct a few interviews with veterinary inspectors from the federal agency and with slaughterhouse employees. While not representative, these exchanges, combined with our analysis of the reports, lead us to believe that many cases of non-compliance go undocumented and that the actual figures are higher.

A first explanation, also supported in the literature, lies in the discretion given to inspectors. Regulatory enforcement is variable. For example, some inspectors may issue more verbal warnings before taking action, while others may avoid the most problematic areas of the slaughterhouse in order to make their work easier.

In fact, we were told that some inspectors have faced, or continue to face, undue pressure from industry not to slow down or stop the production line in cases of non‑compliance, and are even accused of hindering operations when they simply carry out their duties.

Another explanation: the 796 reports we analyzed did not correspond to a single animal or even a single problematic situation. Some reports described multiple similar events occurring over a certain period. Others involved several animals; for example, in the case where an entire flock of birds regained consciousness.

Regulations that blur the picture

We are concerned that the lack of data and institutional opacity will intensify, given the CFIA’s shift towards outcomes-based regulation and increased industry responsibility under the new Safe Food for Canadians Act.

The requirement for slaughterhouses to maintain their own preventive control plans means that inspectors will only record non-compliance if employees fail to follow these internal measures. In other words, an animal welfare incident will not be considered a violation if it is resolved internally.

As a result, the CFIA records that are accessible through access to information requests will only reflect part of the reality, making it even more difficult to paint a complete picture of animal transport and slaughter practices in Canada.

At a time when animal welfare is a growing concern for the public and trust in government institutions is eroding, the secretiveness of the CFIA is troubling. It helps keep the public in the dark, unable to determine whether purchasing Canadian meat truly meets higher ethical standards for the treatment of animals.

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