For animal rights activist Jenny McQueen, the call on the last day of April came as a complete surprise.

Crown prosecutors, she was told, had decided to drop all charges against her — charges stemming from almost two years of action by McQueen against a London-area pig farm.

No longer was she facing charges of break and enter and mischief over $5,000. No longer was she accused of illegally entering the 2,600-sow Adare Pork Ltd. operation near Lucan and removing two piglets that she deemed in need of rescue.

The Crown’s official reason for dropping the charges was that there was “no reasonable prospect of conviction.”

What was odd about this explanation, however, is that McQueen happily admits to what she did.

“If I had gone to trial, I would have testified that I’d entered and removed two piglets,” she told me over the phone last week.

“It’s very obvious where I was,” she said, noting that she had posted online pictures of herself inside Adare Pork, including one with a piglet she named Noel.

She had also made two formal complaints to the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and one to the Ontario Fire Marshal about conditions in the factory farm. In all three, she said, she had identified herself fully.

“I’m completely open about what I did,” she told me.

Industry groups are furious that the charges against McQueen have been dropped. On May 1, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and eight other farm groups slammed the Crown’s decision.

“Without meaningful prosecutions that act as a deterrent to future crimes, activists become bolder,” they wrote in a joint press release.

The Western Producer, a farm publication, called it “a frightening day for livestock producers in the country.”

Strangely enough, McQueen too was disappointed by the Crown’s decision. A member of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, she supports a tactic known as “open rescue,” whereby activists who free animals they believe are being mistreated identify themselves publicly and suffer the consequences.

“It’s a hollow victory in a way,” McQueen said. “I wanted a trial and I was prepared to go to jail.”

A trial, she said, could have offered her the opportunity to publicize the conditions in which food animals are kept.

“I would have been able to show how horrifying it is, keeping pigs in a small, dark room. It’s just wrong — particularly when there are so many plant-based alternatives to meat.”

Her one consolation is the thought that maybe, just maybe, the dismissal of charges against her signals a sea change in the way the justice system views animals — that, in effect, the Crown is recognizing the “right to rescue” as a legal form of protest.

In any case, she said, she will continue to proselytize for animals.

Does that mean that she’ll engage in more open-rescue operations?

“Absolutely,” said McQueen. “Absolutely.”

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In a column last month, I reported on the case of a poor sap who has been trying fruitlessly since February to obtain from the Canada Revenue Agency a print copy of a booklet that he needs to file his income tax return.

Last week, some 16 days after the deadline for filing income tax returns came and went, three copies of the booklet arrived in the mail. Who says government doesn’t care?