Glenn Black of Providence Bay is asking a list of pointed
questions following the televising of cruelty at two Alberta egg farms.
Mercy for Animals captured the videos to alarm the public about
how laying hens can be treated in barns with banks of cages.
The Egg Farmers of Canada has countered that it does not
condone the extreme abuses depicted on the videos and said it has a standard of
welfare and inspects farms to ensure compliance.
That has prompted Black, who speaks on behalf of small flock
owners, to ask the Egg Farmers of Canada (EFC) the following questions:
1.
What
were the dates of those EFC inspections for the two Alberta farms that were
recently alleged to have had animal abuse for their chicks and/or layers?
2.
Can EFC
provide me with copies of these audit reports? If not, why not? If
no copies of the audit reports will be provided, can you provide the audit
scores, or number of non-compliances found, or number of non-recommended
practices found, or number of recommendations made? If not, why not?
3.
Did the
scope of these annual EFC inspections include animal welfare issues? If
not, why not?
4.
Did EFC
or a third party ever audit these farms for animal welfare issues as part of
that audit? If yes, what was the date of those audits for these two
farms?
5.
What is
the EFC mandated attitude, training, education, skills, and prior experience of
the EFC's inspectors that qualifies them to do these inspections?
6.
Can you
supply me with a copy of these documented requirements for EFC's
Inspectors? If not, why not?
7.
Can EFC
supply me with substantial objective evidence that clearly shows these EFC
inspectors who did these 2 farms were qualified to do so? If not, why
not?
8. Can EFC supply me
with substantial objective evidence that clearly shows that all non-compliances
or recommended improvements were promptly implemented by these two farms, and
these corrective actions were subsequently re-inspected by an independent
inspector and found to be 100% complete, consistently applied, and
effective? If not, why not?
Black has been
aiming barbs at the chicken marketing boards, trying to persuade the Ontario
board to increase from 300 to 2,000 birds per year the number that can be
raised by farmers who own no quota.
In this case, he can readily guess that the EFC did not adequately inspect the Alberta egg farms.
After all, why would it? The marketing boards have animal-welfare codes of practice entirely as a public relations exercise. They don't intend to force their members to do anything to clean up their act - until they're caught on embarasing videos.
