ANNUAL MEETING: BFO passes 17 resolutions

Demands animal police stop treating livestock as pets

Farmers Forum staff

TORONTO — Once again, the province’s new animal welfare enforcement regime was subject to a demand for change at the Beef Farmers of Ontario annual general meeting last month in Toronto.

Beef industry leaders have complained that current law in Ontario empowers Provincial Animal Welfare services (PAWS) officers to effectively treat farm animals as pets. An approved resolution calls for continued lobbying of the provincial government for separate animal welfare legislation that strictly applies to farm animals.

The law’s current lack of distinction between commodity farm animals raised as food and household pets arose as a major concern in December 2022 when Ontario’s animal police, in their first-ever intervention on a beef farm, removed more than 100 cattle from an elderly Peterborough-area producer. PAWS placed the animals in costly foster care as if they were rescue puppies or ponies. There was no allegation of animal abuse in the case, and the initial refusal by PAWS to at least send the cattle to market, rather than rack up foster bills, also raised eyebrows in the beef sector. The farmer was vindicated at a provincial tribunal and is now suing PAWS.

Sixteen other resolutions were approved including the 10 outlined below:

• Work towards more reasonable building codes adapted to livestock and agricultural conditions;

• Lobby the province to eliminate current payout caps for livestock killed by domestic dogs and permit municipalities to pay fair market rates as compensation instead;

• Continue working on improving access to large-animal veterinarians;

• Lobby for a yield-based hay insurance program like the regular production insurance program that applies to other crops;

• Request that municipalities and the province give insurance coverage to livestock valuers who investigate livestock kills;

• Work with the Canadian Cattle Association to ensure that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is “held accountable for the rules developed and enforced;”

• Keep the Risk Management Program as a top priority for BFO;

• Lobby for large-scale funding and training incentives to significantly increase operating capacities at small, medium and large-scale abattoirs, as well as pursue new operating facilities where expansion is not feasible. This includes pressuring the provincial and federal governments to fast-track the reopening of the Joyceville Penitentiary abattoir;

• Look into carcasses being condemned at provincially inspected abattoirs, with an eye to lobbying for an appeals process and other measures;

• Lobby the University of Guelph to ensure that first year students enrolled in the OAC at the university are guaranteed first-year residence.