Written by Michelle Sherrow
Finally, a bit of justice for the most abused animal on the planet. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) charged Canada's largest chicken producer, Maple Lodge Farms, with 60 violations of federal animal health laws after it let thousands of chickens freeze to death during transport.
The CFIA cites multiple occasions on which Maple Lodge crammed crates full of chickens into unheated trucks and drove them to slaughter in temperatures well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. CFIA inspectors even found snow and ice inside the crates of some chickens who were stacked near the truck's freezing-cold metal floor and walls.
Our neighbors to the north seem to assert that chickens at least shouldn't be frozen to death, unlike in the U.S., where birds have no federal legal protection from cruelty whatsoever while being transported to slaughter. The best protection that chickens currently receive in both the States and Canada is from people who say "No" to supporting torture and "Yes" to cruelty-free mock meats.
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