A new Ontario bill would make it near impossible for whistleblowers to expose incidents of cruelty in the animal industry.

Calling it a measure to protect food safety, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government quietly tabled Bill 156 in the legislature on Monday.

The bill would provide stiff fines — up to a maximum of $25,000 — for anyone convicted of trespassing in a farm or slaughterhouse where animals are kept.

It would also outlaw any activity, including picketing and demonstrations, that interfered or interacted with the transport of animals.

Most importantly, it would criminalize the practice of entering a farm or slaughterhouse “under false pretenses.” This would prevent whistleblowers and journalists from taking jobs in processing facilities or factory farms in order to investigate them.

The bill comes at a time when the animal industry across North America is increasingly under attack for tolerating cruel and inhumane treatment.

The advent of the smart phone in particular has allowed journalists and activists to record in graphic detail the conditions under which food animals, such as pigs and chickens, are kept.

These conditions are rarely pretty. An investigation last year by the advocacy group Mercy for Animals into a Niagara-area chicken operation produced particularly disturbing video images — including one in which live chicks deemed commercially unsuitable were thrown into a macerator and ground to bits.

A 2016 investigation into a Kitchener-area hog operation by Last Chance for Animals, another advocacy group, included pictures of workers repeatedly slamming undersized piglets into the ground until they were dead. Other photos showed workers kicking adult hogs and zapping them with electric prods.

Another Last Chance for Animals investigation, this one into a Guelph-area mink farm in 2018, revealed the horrific conditions in which animals were kept. As the Star reported at the time, this resulted in animal cruelty charges being laid.

In none of these cases, did the whistle blowers reveal that their real intent was to investigate and record the living conditions of animals. In that sense, they obtained access under false pretenses — a common practice among investigative journalists trying to expose wrongdoing. Bill 156 would make it illegal for journalists and others to go undercover in order to investigate animal abuse.

The bill would also prohibit pesky activists, such as the Toronto Save Movement, from “interacting” with animals being transported.

Toronto Save made headlines in 2015 when founder Anita Krajnc was charged with criminal mischief for giving water to a thirsty pig being trucked to slaughter. She was eventually acquitted.

Bill 156 appears designed, in part, to forestall the thirsty pig defence and prevent such acquittals from happening again.

The Ontario government’s move comes just days after Alberta’s legislature rammed through a similar bill. As Camille Labchuk, executive director of the animal rights organization Animal Justice notes, both are part of a North American trend to impose so-called ag-gag laws on those who dare to question the animal industry.

Emboldened by the success of ag-gag laws, two U.S. states — North Carolina and Arkansas — have moved to curb whistle blowers in other, nonanimal, private businesses, such as nursing homes.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But in two other states, Utah and Idaho, ag-gag laws have been struck down as unconstitutional attempts to interfere with freedom of speech. Labchuk notes that a similar argument could be used against the Ontario and Alberta bills. She says that both could arguably be seen to violate the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

That both provincial governments are going to such extremes to prevent bad actors in the animal industry from being exposed is telling. It speaks to the power of the industry. It also speaks to how vulnerable that industry feels.