OTTAWA — The Chickens Farmers of Canada (CFC) said a recent video by a U.S.-based animal activist organization is an inaccurate portrayal of Canadian chicken production.
The video is produced by Mercy for Animals, which believes no animal should be eaten. The CFC said the farms in the video are not Canadian as the barns’ architectural style, the weather and farmers’ outfits are not consistent with Canadian farms.
“These tactics are shameful, inaccurate, deliberately misleading, and undermine the hard work and animal welfare standards of local Canadian farmers throughout the country,” the CFC said in a press release, adding the CFC has a third-party-audited, mandatory Animal Care Program that is administered across all 2,800 Canadian chicken farms.
A communications officer with the CFC said a defamation lawsuit against Mercy for Animals would be too hard to prove.
“We know we don’t have farms like that,” said Marty Brett. “Basically, we’d have to let them on all 2,800 farms to let them prove it’s not ours. There would be no other way to prove it wasn’t ours. For evidence purposes, we would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt it’s not here. It would be a very time-consuming step to go through merely to discredit this one thing that they’re doing, and it’s just one of their tactics.”
