THE BEEF BEAT By Angela Rouillard, Senior Policy Advisor angela@ontariobeef.com • www.ontariobeef.com
A Recap on New Regulations T
here have been a lot of fun and fascinating files on my plate these past few months. With a background in animal science and advanced training in research and animal welfare, it made perfect sense to welcome me to the BFO team with a friendly handshake, a delicious beef-filled lunch, and a pile of files dealing with the new animal protection legislation, transport regulation amendments and the BFO research program. I’ll walk you through my first few months with the BFO team.
Animal Welfare As our members know, the Ontario SPCA pulled back from animal welfare enforcement activities as of March 31, 2019. This left the province and the Ontario Provincial Police (who were then assigned to handle these investigations and complaints) scrambling and caused a stir, with perhaps a little anxiety, among the livestock industry. Thankfully, the province was keen to work with producers and commodity organizations on drafting new animal protection legislation that would be appropriate for pets, exotic animals and livestock. There were a number of consultations with the Ministry of the Solicitor General, and the majority of livestock commodity organizations in Ontario submitted comments and draft legislation as one group (spearheaded by Farm & Food Care Ontario). We were pleased to see the introduction of the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act (affectionately referred to as PAWS) in October 2019. Overall, the act was fairly robust and reasonable, incorporating strong penalties for animal cruelty, providing public accountability to the animal protection system, and ensuring that livestock specialists are among the newly hired and trained animal welfare inspectors. However, there were a few sections that were cause for concern. Consequently, we submitted a number of comments and requests to the Ontario government, as did most of our commodity and general farm organization colleagues. Unfortunately, these concerns fell on deaf ears and we saw very few changes made to the original draft. The bill received royal assent in December and was implemented January 1, 2020. Still a little worried about how this is going to roll out? Me too. I do believe that there is a bright future here, though. The regulations that will accompany the act are in the process of being drafted and BFO will be engaged in that process. If we can entrench some of our comments and requests into the regulations (such as referring to our industry-developed Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Beef Cattle), we will be very happy indeed! Another positive to the 6
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process is that the Solicitor General has expressed an interest and desire to maintain the relationship with commodity organizations and will continue to lean on our animal care advisors to provide help and advice on any beef-related complaints and investigations.
Transportation Moving on to the transport regulation amendments. We’ve been talking about these for the last few years as the amendments have been in development for more than a decade (yes, you read that right). I have been involved at various stages of the amendment process and in my past roles I even led a transport study with Dr. Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein that focused on benchmarking compromised and unfit cattle conditions at abattoirs and auctions in Alberta. Taking on this file has been a delight and together with our counterparts at CCA, we are working on creating materials to help producers easily transition to the amended regulations. Ever the eternal optimist, I think it is always important to take note of the positives. The Health of Animals Regulations Part XII: Transportation of Animals was first introduced in 1977 and has not been significantly amended since. One cannot deny that, over a period of more than 40 years, we have learned more about humane transportation of livestock than we knew before. It’s not surprising that some changes were proposed to these regulations. Many of the changes are common sense or include things that most, if not all, livestock transporters already do. However, there are a few areas of concern for cattle producers and these need to be seriously considered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) moving forward. For example, the maximum time in transit has reduced dramatically from 48 hours, with a grace period of 4 hours, to 36 hours with no grace period. Research has shown that, during long-haul transport, more than 99 per cent of animals arrive in satisfactory condition, causing our industry to question whether this change was necessary. It is also clear that the necessary infrastructure and rest station capacity does not currently exist, particularly along northern routes, making it difficult for transporters to comply. Finally, the need for rest periods following various time in transit is a subject currently under investigation by a team of researchers. Ideally, the results of this study will be taken into consideration and incorporated, where appropriate, into the regulations. Despite substantial lobbying efforts from BFO, CCA and other commodity organizations, the new transport regulations will still come into effect on February 20, 2020. Minister of Agriculture and
