Animal rights concerns are not new to the Canadian agriculture industry. What is new is that a small contingent of animal rights activist organizations have access to greater international resources and tactics, increasingly leveraging ever-advancing technology to coordinate their activities and enhance their impact on industry. This fringe of the animal rights movement can access and assemble individuals across the country to carry out illegal or unsafe undercover "investigations" of farms and processing facilities. The fruits of this work are often highly edited and taken out of context, and released to regulatory agencies and media outlets with demands for immediate prosecution and with the added extra judicial punishment of a now coloured public perception of the Canadian farming industry.
These activist groups have even started offering monetary rewards to crowd-source information and so-called "evidence" of farm operations. These organizations have been empowered by robust donation campaigns and have legal representation. They are also encouraged by enforcement agencies who accept and rely on their "investigations" with little skepticism or critical analysis. Further, they are able to reach global audiences and target major decision-makers in government and stakeholders in the investment community using social media and other platforms. Such organizations specifically target consumers and retailers with misleading media campaigns aimed at ending consumer confidence in the various protein industries. Processors and farmers should proactively address the threat these organizations pose—as targeted farms and processing plants are exposed to significant legal and business risks—and should understand their recourses in the event they fall prey to animal activists' vigilante surveillance. There are various measures that farms and processing plants can implement to mitigate these risks. For instance, farms and processing plants may wish to adopt workplace policies and policies for visitors with respect to the collection of information, such as video, image and voice recordings; and the release of information, such as sharing on social media and other platforms. Farms and processing plants may also wish to update employment contracts, as appropriate, to set out clear expectations regarding workers' conduct and privacy. Farms and processing plants can also install physical obstacles to deter trespassing and improper collecting of information. Proper training and re-training of individuals is an important step to ensuring that activists have little to discover, and proper supervision of all employees means that activists will have little opportunity to create or fabricate situations worthy of a click-bait fundraising campaign.
Should farm or processing plants be targeted by activist vigilante surveillance, they may have access to recourses to manage the legal consequences. These will vary from province to province and depending on the specific circumstances, but they include protective and proactive mechanisms. For instance, entities undergoing prosecution as a result of vigilante surveillance may challenge the admissibility of activist-obtained evidence for lack of the requisite thresholds of authenticity or reliability. Further, activists found trespassing on property may be guilty of mischief or breaking and entering under the Criminal Code. For example, in the British Columbia criminal courts, four well-known PETA vigilante activists are currently facing 21 combined counts of break and enter and criminal mischief in relation to a large farm protest and swarming in 2019. They are expected to proceed to trial in 2022. Some provinces, such as Alberta and Ontario, have recently enacted additional protections for farming operations, by prohibiting entry onto certain agriculture property under false pretenses.1 These have been found to apply to activists posing as employees to record agriculture operations. Violators may be sanctioned with fines or even imprisonment. Other provinces may adopt similar prohibitions in the near future. Currently, the Québec government has a committee examining how to prevent trespassing on farms. In British Columbia, a private member's bill has been introduced to increase fines for trespassing on farms, but lost momentum after the 2020 election.
Finally, targeted farms and processing plants may have civil recourses, and could—again depending on the specific circumstances at issue—initiate legal proceedings against activists, claiming intentional interference with economic relations, conspiracy and trespass. While such allegations against activists have not yet been tested in court, a new precedent is highly anticipated. On December 20, 2021, forestry firm Teal Cedar Products Ltd. (Teal Cedar) filed a Notice of Civil Claim against protestors, seeking unspecified damages for unlawful and intentional interference with contractual and economic relations, conspiracy, trespass, nuisance, and intimidation.2 These proceedings were brought after a year-long legal and physical dispute with protestors obstructing Teal Cedar's logging activities in Fairy Creek. The outcome of this claim may pave the juridical path for similar future claims by the agriculture industry.
Footnotes
1. Bill 27, Trespass Statutes (Protecting Law-Abiding Property Owners) Amendment Act, 1st Sess, 30th Leg, Alberta, 2019, (assented to on 5 December 2019); Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, SO 2020, c 9.
2. See "Lawsuit of the week: Teal Cedar Products sues protesters who allegedly blocked access to Island logging sites", Business Intelligence for B.C. (7 January 2022), online: (https://biv.com/article/2022/01/lawsuit-week-teal-cedar-products-sues-protesters-who-allegedly-blocked-access).
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