Informed viewers, welcome to Animal World:Our Co-Inhabitants. On today’s episode of the Stop Animal Cruelty series we will visit with Stephanie Brown, founder and director of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA).
Ms. Brown, who follows a vegan (animal-free) diet, has long worked to improve the lives of millions of voiceless animals in Canada, where approximately 696 million of our fellow beings are slaughtered each year for meat.
The Coalition’s members include many prominent Canadian animal welfare groups such as the Calgary Animal Rights Coalition, the World Society for the Protection of Animals and Voice for Animals and represents more than 120,000 Canadians.
The group seeks to raise awareness among Canadians about the horrors of factory farming in their country and around the world.
We will now hear from Stephanie Brown about the Coalition’s beginnings and the key issues on which the group is focusing.
Ms. Brown: In 2002 a number of people from across Canada got together and decided that nobody is focusing on the issue of farm animals the way they needed to, where we would really tell the realities that farm animals, particularly in intensive confinement, are subjected to.
Even, unfortunately, the humane movement didn’t address the issues head on. So we decided that we would get together, form an organization and deal with three main issues: pregnant pigs in gestation crates where they are in boxes, crates barely larger than their own body for their entire pregnancy, which could be four months, unable to turn around.
The other issue is hens in battery cages --- here is a photo of a Canadian farm --- that is typical where 98 percent of eggs in Canada are produced from hens kept in this kind of close confinement.
And the other issue is transportation, where it’s legal in Canada to transport cattle, for instance sheep and goats, for 52 hours plus another five hours of food withdrawal without food, water or rest, so its 57 hours legally, to not provide any water even to animals.
So we decided that we needed to talk to the world about this and this is what we have done.
For more information on the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, please visit
www.humanefood.ca
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