TORONTO — Restaurant owners across Canada are joining in a fight to keep pregnant sows out of gestation crates in a new campaign aimed at the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), the Lacombe, Alta.-based leader for developing codes of practice and farm-animal care in Canada.
Organized by the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA), a Toronto-based group that advocates animal welfare, the campaign has attracted 100 supporters who advocate eliminating gestation crates.
And, although the NFACC recently released a draft code, it still allows pork producers to use gestation crates for the first 35 days of the sows’ pregnancy cycle.
The CCFA is pushing for more. “In calling on NFACC to eliminate, rather than reduce, gestation crate use throughout the pork industry, these Canadian restaurants are reflecting their customers’s values when it comes to extreme confinement within the pork industry,” said Stephanie Brown, a spokesperson for the CCFA. “A recent poll found that 84 per cent of Canadians support a complete elimination of caging pregnant sows.” [humanefood.ca]
