The Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) in Windsor quietly closed its doors in May and officially shuttered operations in October. Now Canada risks falling short on its ambitious goals.

More than 3.5 million animals were reportedly used in research, teaching and testing in Canada in 2022. And that number represents only federally funded facilities, since private laboratories are not required to report.  

By passing Bill S5, the Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, albeit eight years after the United States passed similar legislation, Canada appeared to be working toward what are known as the three Rs: to reduce, refine and replace the use of animals in toxicity testing.

In addition to phasing out chemical toxicity testing of substances such as, say, new flame retardants or pesticides, on animals, Canada would become the 44th country to pass laws to end cosmetic animal testing and sales of cosmetics tested on animals, joining several U.S. states and the entire European Union. And according to the federal budget released in April, the government was poised to allocate tens of millions in funding to “protect Canadians from being exposed to some 30,000 chemicals, including by advancing scientific research to phase out animal toxicity testing.”  

In addition to providing humane alternatives for animal toxicity testing, CCAAM’s work also has great potential to benefit the millions of other animals undergoing other types of agonizing experiments every year in Canadian labs.

– Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice

For Dr. Charu Chandrasekera, founder and executive director of CCAAM, this was the hope she needed to keep CCAAM’s underfunded work alive. Until she realized her centre was not included in the plan.  

CCAAM opened in 2019, at the University of Windsor. Chandrasekera, a former animal researcher, worked for years in biomedical research with mouse models of heart disease and diabetes. “It became very obvious that the work I was doing was not translatable [to humans],” she told Maclean’s magazine at the time. “Nothing was really reproducible; there were so many discrepancies and contradictions, even among the top-notch researchers.” 

The use of animal models has long been considered necessary in biomedical research and toxicity testing. Yet more than 90% of drugs deemed safe and effective in animal models go on to fail in human clinical trials. Similarly, relying on animal models in toxicity testing – to assess the potential risks of substances such as pesticides, cleaning agents, drugs, et cetera – has also proven to be problematic in terms of assessing real-world effects. These stark statistics highlight a fundamental flaw in traditional testing methods, where results in animals often do not translate to human outcomes.  

With this knowledge, Chandrasekera and her team went to work on developing and promoting cutting-edge, human-based methods that not only reduce animal suffering but promise precise, cost-effective and faster results.

“At CCAAM, we led pioneering interdisciplinary programs to transform the Canadian animal-testing landscape,” Chandrasekera tells Corporate Knights. “Through collaborations with academia, industry, government and NGOs, we advanced various technologies to emulate human biology in a petri dish, such as 3D-bioprinted human tissues.”  

Innovative alternative methods are being developed at centres around the world – in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, Brazil and South Korea – to mimic human biology (rather than mouse biology), allowing researchers to replicate complex biological processes in a petri dish or virtual environment, without the need for animal testing. The only difference is that those centres receive millions in federal funds. CCAAM subsisted on private gifts and modest grants. Until it didn’t.  

Animal welfare advocates cry foul over lack of funding

Today, Chandrasekera’s equipment sits boxed up in a storage facility in Ottawa, the doors to her University of Windsor laboratory closed.  

​​And with the comment period on the draft strategy to replace, reduce or refine vertebrate animal testing under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act closing today, November 13, animal advocates are hoping the public and other stakeholders will speak up in defence of Chandrasekera’s work.​ 

Corporate Knights contacted Health Canada to find out why the government isn’t funding CCAAM. Although the department didn’t provide a direct answer, spokesperson Marie-Pier Burelle stated that it and Environment and Climate Change Canada “are leading and collaborating on a range of scientific and research activities related to animal testing alternatives.” This includes “various scientific and research activities led by Health Canada scientists to support key focus areas for ongoing and future research, as well as contributions to initiatives with intergovernmental and multistakeholder organizations.”  

Health Canada adds that efforts to reduce reliance on vertebrate animal testing extend beyond any single organization. Though it would appear it doesn’t include CCAAM at all. Burelle says that, despite the centre’s closure, the department’s “aim to reduce reliance on animal testing remains unchanged.” She also points to “several funding sources to support academic research,” including grants.  

Liberal Member of Parliament Nathaniel Erskine-Smith says that while the government has committed legislatively to phasing out toxicity testing on animals, “it’s completely failed to take commensurate action to fund these efforts, and it’s inexplicably stood on the sidelines while CCAAM closed its doors.” He says that a number of caucus members “have spent years trying to secure a funding commitment to match the government’s stated promises, and it’s frankly embarrassing that the government has been unable to deliver nominal funding to support.”  

Related

Of mice and men: Could COVID spell the end of animal testing?

Empty animal welfare promises a bad look for the food industry

Is your pension invested in animal cruelty?

He’s not the only one calling foul. Lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, says in a statement that the indefinite closure of CCAAM “would represent a major setback not only for animals but for Canadian science.” She says that “in addition to providing humane alternatives for animal toxicity testing, CCAAM’s work also has great potential to benefit the millions of other animals undergoing other types of agonizing experiments every year in Canadian labs.” Federal support is needed, she says, “to ensure Canada can stay on track with its goal to end animal toxicity testing and become a leader in cruelty-free research.” 

Health Canada says revisions to the government’s draft strategy will be made “based on input received from the public and stakeholders, with a final strategy expected to be published by June 2025.” That input can be relayed via the Government of Canada website through November 13.  

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that university labs in Canada are not required to report their use of animals in research. They are accredited by the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) and their data is included in the report linked above. 

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also a co-host of the Canadian animal law podcast Paw & Order.

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That’s where Huron University’s Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership (AESL) program comes in. Western University’s Huron University College may be one of Canada’s oldest universities, founded in 1863, but this year the London, Ontario, institution is offering up a very new degree. The AESL program is said to be the first of its kind in the world, aiming to arm students with a fundamental understanding of crucial issues relating to animal welfare and the environment, as well as giving them practical leadership skills to be able to put that understanding into action.  

“It is for economic, ethical and environmental reasons that there’s such a significant need for this program,” says Kendra Coulter, the program’s coordinator and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. It’s a degree she says she “dreamed of” when she was a student. The professor of management and organizational studies is a globally recognized expert in animal protection and the author of the recently published book Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. “I think the primary purpose of my life is to improve and save animals’ lives,” she says.  

Coulter developed the AESL program to offer a unique mix of knowledge and skills that she says will turn out graduates able to take on roles in animal welfare in the private, public and non-profit sectors. “The goal is for graduates to be effective in a range of different roles with an ability to really hit the ground running in organizations and companies of different kinds.”  

Required classes for the program include Animal Welfare and Sustainability Leadership, Nature and Technology, Animals in Law and Policy, and Animal Ethics. Electives include management and organizational studies, social sciences and arts. “It’s a distinct combination of social science, arts and business education,” Coulter explains.  

It’s also a launch pad for budding plant-based entrepreneurs, those students interested in creating their own ventures in the plant-based economy – say, in the fashion and beauty sectors.  

Huron’s AESL degree has come along at a crucial time, with billions of animals being exploited by the meat and dairy industry every year. Labels like Tyson Foods’s “climate-smart” beef – which is now at the centre of a lawsuit over misleading marketing claims in the United States – make it all the more confusing for consumers. “Business is very much a cause of key animal and environmental damage,” Coulter says. “At the same time, businesses can be drivers of solutions, and that’s what this degree is intended to do.”  

The program welcomed its first round of students this fall. Animal rights advocate Cogie Cogan, founder of the Western Environmental Business club, is part of the program’s first cohort. “It perfectly merges my passion for animal protection with the law and business skills needed to make a difference for animals,” Cogan says. Upon graduation, the honours student hopes to either work for a plant-based food start-up or start their own business in this sector. “I believe AESL [is equipping] me with the skills and knowledge to make a meaningful impact for animals in various ways.” 

For her part, Coulter says it’s an honour to see “what these extraordinary young leaders are going to be able to accomplish for our shared planet, and the creation of a more humane and sustainable future.”  

The post New degree is training the next generation of leaders in animal ethics and sustainability appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In February 2021, Robert Downey Jr. appeared on The Colbert Report to prove he’s a superhero out of the Iron Man suit too. In the segment, he plugged his green advocacy and venture capital initiative, FootPrint Coalition, which works with start-ups aiming to disrupt dirty industries. In a bit of show and tell, Colbert and Downey Jr. joked about two of FootPrint’s planet-saving ventures, bamboo and bugs. After stroking his cheek with sustainable bamboo toilet paper, Colbert held up a jar of brownish powder and quipped, “You’re not just getting me to eat dirt, are you?”

The powder was a mealworm larvae protein made by French start-up Ÿnsect, which to date has secured US$375 million in funding. According to FootPrint, mealworm larvae and other insect feeds present a big opportunity to clean up the notoriously polluting aquaculture industry. With global fish consumption doubling in the past 50 years, the company says that feeding fish insects, instead of the typical sardines, anchovies and soy, requires 98% less land and cuts overall resource use in half.

“We’re doing something incorrectly,” Downey Jr. told Colbert. “If we make this switch, it’s a huge, huge intervention.”

Beyond aquaculture, the environmental case for humans replacing vertebrate protein, especially greenhouse-gas-intensive beef, with lower-emitting insect protein is compelling. A seminal 2013 report from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) on eating insects highlighted the myriad benefits of edible insects, which include circular use of waste to rear insects, relatively low greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions, and low water use.

Given that agricultural, forestry and other land-use emissions account for 22% of global emissions, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures (nearly half of those are caused by livestock production), cutting food emissions while increasing food security is imperative. Combined with the nutritional case for insect protein (it’s packed with amino acids, fibre and micronutrients), and that it’s considered low risk for spreading zoonotic infections, deploying this supposed panacea seems like a cut-and-dried case to transform global food supplies.

But a potential blind spot hovers over the insect movement. Questions about insect sentience and welfare gather in the background, raising the spectre of a factory farming repeat, just on a miniature scale. Counterintuitive as it may seem to push pause on a potentially promising climate solution, the insect movement demands a deeper reflection on emission reductions that subjugate other life forms to mitigate a crisis caused by humans.

Swarms of investors

The business case for insect farming is strong, too. Conditions are ripe for growth, and investors are ponying up. Aside from venture-capital initiatives like Downey Jr.’s, government-backed insect mega-plants have been swarming agricultural news. In the last few years, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada awarded up to $8.5 million to a London, Ontario, cricket producer and $6 million to a facility in Alberta that breeds black soldier flies. In the U.K., a black-soldier-fly start-up won a £10-million grant from a government industrial-strategy fund to construct a facility outside London, while Ÿnsect snagged €20 million from the European Commission to build a vertical farm in northern France that would increase its production by 50 times. Earlier this year, a Spanish mealworm producer announced that it’s poised to break ground on a new facility that is reported to be the world’s largest at 90,000 square metres.

These facilities primarily produce animal feed and pet food, which is where most industrial insect production goes (for now). Even still, the output figures are staggering for an industry that remains somewhat marginal. A 2020 report from the research group Rethink Priorities estimated that upwards of 1.2 trillion insects are produced annually for feed and food (the majority being black soldier flies, crickets and mealworms), figures that would skyrocket with the mainstreaming of entomophagy – that is, humans eating insects.

Roughly two billion people worldwide already eat insects regularly (largely in Asia, Africa and Latin America). Most of this, however, is locally caught, harvested and consumed as an affordable, traditional source of protein and, often, a means of survival. On North American grocery shelves, they’re being branded as a novelty “superfood”: crickets are turning up in products like protein bars, chips, cookies and whole protein powders. The trend has been getting the full social media influencer treatment, making ripples on TikTok and Instagram with fitness buffs calling insect protein a game-changer in their regimens.

Still, as the industry marches forward and markets more directly to humans, a nagging question keeps coming up: is insect farming cruel?

Couldn’t hurt a fly?

To answer that, scientists are investigating the notion of sentience. Invertebrates have historically been considered insentient, but a growing body of research shows that it’s more complicated than previously thought.

Lars Chittka is a professor of sensory and behavioural ecology at Queen Mary University in London and the author of The Mind of a Bee. He has conducted and reviewed hundreds of experiments to observe cognition- and emotion-like states in bees and other insects. “The conventional wisdom about insects has been that they are automatons – unthinking, unfeeling creatures whose behavior is entirely hardwired. But in the 1990s researchers began making startling discoveries about insect minds,” Chittka writes in Scientific American. He points to ants rescuing nest mates buried under rubble and bumblebees seeming to experience joy, noting that “bees and other insects also form long-term memories about the conditions under which they were hurt.”

While there are no universally accepted criteria to determine invertebrate sentience, Chittka uses a framework developed by the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Jonathan Birch, associate professor and cognition researcher, recently led a five-year project called Foundations of Animal Sentience that devised eight criteria, which include exhibiting self-protective behaviour and whether an animal values an analgesic when injured. Birch’s work on sentience led to the inclusion of octopuses, crabs and lobsters (all invertebrates) in the U.K.’s Animal Welfare Act in 2022.

Chittka, with other researchers, mapped hundreds of studies against Birch’s eight criteria and found, for example, that adult flies and mosquitos satisfied six, which indicates strong evidence of sentience according to Birch’s grading scheme.

Of course, establishing cows and pigs as sentient hasn’t prevented cruelty in factory farming, but Chittka notes it has led to legislation that pain and distress should be minimized.

“Science tells us,” Chittka writes, “that the methods used to kill farmed insects – including baking, boiling and microwaving – have the potential to cause intense suffering.” Other academics call for applying the animal sentience “precautionary principle,” also devised by Birch, which states that “where there are threats of serious, negative animal welfare outcomes, lack of full scientific certainty as to the sentience of the animals in question shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent those outcomes.”

Even if insect sentience becomes accepted by the industry, implementing rigorous welfare standards and metrics is complex and species-specific, researchers note, and likely to lag behind industry growth.

At this point, the industry is a wild west, and welfare measures are mostly voluntary. (Where regulations do exist, they mostly address food safety, not welfare.) Of 20 insect producers and brands randomly selected by Corporate Knights, only four had public welfare statements.

Ethologist Jonathan Balcombe, the author of Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects, calls flies the entrepreneurs of the insect world, with a “fantastic diversity of expressions and behaviour.” On the notion of welfare, Balcombe tells Corporate Knights, a move toward insect consumption may be the lesser of two evils and preferable to the factory farming we have now.

“If they can make major dents in conventional factory farming of vertebrates, that is a good outcome.” However, “it’s a grim scenario,” he notes, “if insects turn out to be highly sentient or sentient at any level.”

It’s a grim scenario, if insects turn out to be highly sentient or sentient at any level.

 

—Jonathan Balcombe, author, Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects

It may be a trap we’re setting for ourselves. Balcombe says the insect industry “assumes a growth economy, which is a dead end we ultimately need to move away from.” In Downey Jr.’s video for FootPrint Coalition flagging insects as climate-friendly fish feed, he does not suggest that humans eat less fish. Asking consumers to cut back has always been a delicate issue in the climate movement; instead, the movement often looks for solutions that can support current consumption levels.

In the end, we just seem to get more factory farming, bringing up a question larger than how to make insect farming more humane: is now the time to ditch factory farming altogether?

Cold, hard climate math

With the Paris Agreement’s target of net-zero by 2050 fast approaching, economies are scrambling to transition to, and cement, the practices that will make up the next green industrial age. Coal mining and internal combustion engines will be a thing of the past. Does factory farming trillions of insects have a place among EVs, solar-powered homes and plant burgers? If the answer is no, supplanting entrenched industries is no small feat, and we have a small window to course correct.

“If we realize insects are sentient,” Balcombe says, “it’s more difficult to upend or end an industry that already has a foothold.”

Human–insect relations have historically been fraught with ambivalence, ranging from reverence to disgust. For ancient Egyptians, scarab beetles represented the eternal cycle of life. Jain ascetics, to avoid harming insects, gently sweep the ground in front of them as they walk. In some homes, centipedes are treated to glue traps and ants are poisoned. Cochineals give us “carmine” red pigment for food colouring and cosmetics. And, of course, bees are vociferously defended by environmentalists for the indispensable pollination they provide, which gets to the heart of how we came to farming more than a trillion insects a year: their status is determined by what they can do for us.

This approach corresponds to a mindset of solving climate change that is absent a wider appreciation for why life on Earth is worth saving in the first place. Creatures that can provide utility in cutting emissions are folded into the industrial machine and heralded, in the case of powderized crickets, as a cleantech innovation, even if the process entails suffering and the deprivation of a life in a natural habitat. It’s still factory farming, only this time it’s low carbon. Call it a kind of cold, hard climate math.

If the climate movement takes an intrinsic-value approach to insects, it may steer away from industrial-scale insect farming and embrace less morally grave alternatives that still lower greenhouse gases and boost food security. No, not certified free-range organic insects, but other innovations racing to solve agriculture’s climate problem, such as plant protein and cell-based meat.

Ultimately, it will be consumers who decide. If the insect craze amounts to crickets, it would be one time Iron Man didn’t save the world.

Christopher St. Prince is a Toronto-based journalist and fiction writer.

The post What the climate buzz around insect farming gets wrong appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The advocacy organization’s Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard ranked 55 top food companies that have operations in Canada, focusing specifically on three contentious issues: confining egg-laying hens in cages; confining pregnant pigs in gestation crates; and standards for how chickens should be raised and slaughtered known as the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC). Chipotle, Whole Foods and Campbell’s were among the “gold tier” companies that have strong policies concerning all three issues and are publicly reporting the progress they’ve made.

“This year, there are more companies showing that they’re taking meaningful steps to reduce the suffering of animals in their supply chains,” Mercy for Animals spokesperson PJ Nyman tells Corporate Knights, adding that it’s a “good sign” that these companies are listening to the increasing concerns consumers have about animal welfare. But there is always more work to do when it comes to how some of the largest food companies in Canada treat animals. The report’s bottom tier includes Moxies, Mary Brown’s, Co-op and Domino’s Pizza, none of which had  public animal welfare policies or reporting. Last year, Sysco, a massive broadline food distribution company, was in the lowest tier by itself, but it made it into the report’s fourth tier this year as it made a cage-free egg commitment and started reporting its progress.

The report shows that companies in Canada are generally falling behind ones that operate in other parts of the world in some ways when it comes to animal welfare. The percentage of laying hens confined to cages (as reported by industry) in Canada, for example, was 83% last year, while the EU reported 45% and the U.K. reported 35%. Even the United States performed better on this front, with 71% of laying hens there confined in cages.

There were also no Canadian retailers with public welfare policies regarding chickens raised for meat that aligned with the Better Chicken Commitment in 2021, while the EU had 42, the U.S. had 12 and the U.K. had four. BCC requires that companies have policies that give birds more room and enrichment than typical industry standards. It also indicates that birds must be stunned with CO2 gas before slaughter, rather than the common industry practice of electrified water bath stunning, which is considered inhumane by many welfare advocates.

“This country is falling behind on critical animal welfare issues, and we need food companies to step up and show that they’re taking animal welfare seriously and fulfilling their promises to Canadians,” says Nyman.

Mercy for Animals ideally wants to see all food companies in Canada (and beyond) make animal welfare a priority by integrating it into their corporate social responsibility policies. But the commitments are only the start, as Big Food needs to set deadlines and show that it’s achieving steady progress in making its supply chains much less cruel.

The post Chipotle, Whole Foods top food company report card on animal welfare appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Guliker wasn’t the only livestock operator hammered by the record flooding that ravaged B.C. last fall. An astonishing number of farm animals – at least 628,000 chickens, 420 cows and 12,000 pigs, according to the provincial government – died in the floodwaters. In all, about 200 square kilometres of southern B.C., encompassing the low-lying, fertile Sumas Prairie, flooded with upwards of 250 millimetres of rain a day. With more than $1 billion a year in farm-gate sales, the potential impact was massive not only for Abbotsford livestock operators but for fruit, vegetable and nut producers in the region.

Around the globe, the climate crisis is ravaging livestock farms. Last summer’s heat dome across much of western and central North America shrivelled crops and pastures, forcing farmers to send cows to slaughter before they starved. In California, ranchers have struggled to evacuate their herds in the face of record wildfires that have charred millions of acres of land the last few summers. In 2018 in North Carolina, about 3.5 million poultry and 5,500 pigs perished in flooding from Hurricane Florence. The costs are adding up: flooding in Nebraska wiped out US$400 million in livestock in 2019 alone.

What’s coming into sharp focus is that today’s livestock infrastructure is built for a climate that no longer exists. Farmers are facing enormous husbandry challenges trying to keep animals safe from extreme weather that brings floods, blistering heat and drought-caused feed shortages. Will barns have to be redesigned and fitted with expensive cooling systems? Might farmers have to create evacuation plans in case of flooding or wildfires? And what happens when their farms are destroyed and insurance companies deem them too risky to insure? A warming climate also attracts invasive new species, transboundary diseases and pathogens, further threatening animal welfare.

Dan Weary, NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) industrial research chair in animal welfare at the University of British Columbia, says that the November flooding saw remarkable feats of heroism as farmers tried to save animals under their care. “Farmers judge themselves in terms of being stewards for their animals,” says Weary. But the enormous loss of life and livelihoods signals that the agriculture sector must take stock in the coming months and look at redesigning farms to make them more resilient.

“This is going to be a perennial issue,” says Weary. Particularly since B.C.’s Sumas floodplain sits in what used to be Sumas Lake, before it was drained a century ago to take advantage of the fertile soil.

Sean Smukler, chair of agriculture and environment in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia, says that if we’re not willing to invest in the costly infrastructure needed to prevent floods, we’ll have to take a different approach. That may mean shifting to flood-resilient crops, though for livestock producers in the region, the safest solution may be to move their operations altogether. It is going to be a “negotiation between society and producers, deciding whether or not we’re willing to pay the price to protect them,” says Smukler. “We need to pay more for our food if we want something that’s sustainable.”

This is going to be a perennial issue.

-Dan Weary, NSERC industrial research chair in animal welfare at the University of British Columbia

Camille Labchuk, animal rights lawyer and executive director of Ottawa-based non-profit Animal Justice, says that agricultural facilities need to be reduced in size to make rescue attempts viable, with farmers creating evacuation pathways and emergency stockpiles of food and water for the creatures under their care. Current animal numbers make this proposition questionable. Poultry facilities in B.C. have upwards of 54,000 birds per flock and seven flocks a year – an impossible number “to realistically plan to evacuate,” says Labchuk. In the United States, for example, poultry operations can house millions of birds, an even more improbable scenario.

Animal welfare laws also need to be revamped with disaster management in mind, adds Labchuk, pointing to late June’s farming disaster, when soaring B.C. temperatures killed more than 650,000 farm animals – mainly chickens packed into cages.

Livestock scientists suggest a different approach. Veterinarian Tim Kurt is the scientific program director of advanced animal systems at the Washington, D.C.–based Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. He points to research focused on making animals more resilient so they can withstand weather extremes. The U.S. livestock industry loses upwards of US$2.36 billion annually because of heat stress: animals eat less (which impedes growth), produce less milk and become less fertile, says Kurt.

Studies are ongoing into nutritional interventions and supplements that specifically reduce heat stress in cattle.

Scientists are also looking at gene editing: identifying traits that enable cattle in places such as sub-Saharan Africa to endure drought and heat. African cows are typically inefficient milk and meat producers, and simple crossbreeding would produce an inferior animal. However, CRISPR gene editing, which allows the addition or removal of genes in living organisms, might be used to improve “the heat tolerance of the animal without impacting the milk production, which is what gives it great potential,” Kurt says.

Unlike other GMO manipulation, CRISPR uses genes from within the same species.

In 100 years, I expect there to be almost no animal agriculture on Earth.

-Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley

Producers are also trying to keep their barns cool by using fans, misters, sprayers and evaporative coolers when temperatures soar. However, such measures increase water as well as energy use, bringing into question their sustainability in drought-strained regions. In an effort to convince more ranches and farms to switch to clean energy, the Rural Energy for America Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides grants to help farmers and ranchers with energy-efficiency retrofits and renewable-energy development.

The irony is that animal production itself is fuelling climate change, creating 14.5% of global greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. “Animal agriculture is the lion’s share of food’s contribution to the climate problem globally,” says Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford. Newman envisions a future where protein is derived from plants, lab-grown meats and cow-free dairy. “In 100 years, I expect there to be almost no animal agriculture on Earth. If we can produce meat and dairy that’s identical for a lower price, that’s better for you and the environment,” she says.

What can be done for the immediate future? Amber Itle, interim state veterinarian for Washington, says that the agriculture industry in Canada and the United States must ramp up cross-border collaboration, including emergency preparedness efforts and coordinated responses to minimize the impacts of disasters like the flooding that struck the Pacific Northwest last fall. “We need to stop thinking about our border as a line that we can’t cross,” says Itle. “We should be prepared to employ new technologies, policies and tools on farms to help prevent, prepare for and respond to animal health emergencies and mitigate the impacts.”

Henk Ovink is the special envoy for international water affairs in the Netherlands. He says that it’s not just international collaboration but an alliance with Mother Nature herself that will be needed to control the repercussions of climate change. Low-lying Netherlands has taken land out of agriculture production, compensating dairy farmers for the property and moving their operations to higher ground. “I think it’s very simple: don’t even try to control nature,” Ovink says.

Back in Abbotsford, Baars’s farm eventually ended up underwater. While he managed to get his cows out in time, it was five weeks before he could resume full dairy operations, as he had to replace milking equipment rusted by flooding. Baars is apprehensive about the future. The flood, which was supposed to be a one-in-500-year event, “could happen again in six months,” he says. He doesn’t have a plan in place in case of another one.

“We are counting on our government to upgrade the dykes in our area. If there is another flood in the future, which is very possible, we hope to get more notice and will evacuate quickly,” he says. “We have to look to politicians and light a fire and say, ‘We gotta stop this.’ I wouldn’t want to see another flood, I can tell you that.”

The post How livestock is getting caught in the climate change crossfire appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“This alternative protein source marks a step forward on our sustainability journey to use science to help provide the best possible care for pets,” Hills said in a statement.

Bond first announced the creation of “the world’s first animal-free, cultured chicken meat protein” in 2020. Their Hill-branded products are still in development but are part of a growing trend of pet foods that don’t include meat from animals.

In September, pet food company Wild Earth announced plans to develop dog and cat food made with cell-based meat, with the help of a US$23-million gift from investors who included billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Wild Earth first partnered with Cuban via a deal made on the business reality-TV show Shark Tank, when Cuban agreed to invest $550,000 for 10% of the company.

Since then, Wild Earth has secured an additional $16.2 million in funding from other investors.

According to research conducted by Insight Partners, the global market for vegan pet food is forecasted to grow from roughly US$9 billion in 2021 to almost US$16.7 billion by 2028. What’s driving that growth? The rise in vegan pet owners and plant-based diets is a major factor. Pet food companies like Hill’s are also looking to reduce their carbon footprints.

In a 2017 study, Environmental Impacts of Food Consumption by Dogs and Cats, University of California Los Angeles professor Gregory Okin found that meat consumed by cats and dogs in the U.S. alone produces the equivalent of roughly 64 million tons of CO2 per year – an impact equal to 13 million cars being driven for a year. The study calculated that pets are responsible for 25 to 30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the U.S. “If Americans’ 163 million Fidos and Felixes comprised a separate country, their fluffy nation would rank fifth in global meat consumption,” reads a UCLA press release, “behind only Russia, Brazil, the United States and China.”

For pet parents seeking to reduce their carbon paw prints, pet foods created with plant proteins such as peas, brown rice and oats, plus nutritional supplements, are becoming an increasingly accessible lower-carbon option. According to Allison Macabobby, a buyer with PetSmart, demand for the products is burgeoning. “We’ve carried plant-based dog food for several years and continue to see growing interest in these products,” she says.

This alternative protein source marks a step forward on our sustainability journey.

-Hill’s Pet Nutrition

One pioneering California-based brand, Natural Balance, has had a vegetarian dog kibble (which is actually vegan) on the market since 2008. Founded by actor and animal welfare advocate Dick Van Patten in 1989, Natural Balance’s meat-free food made of brown rice, oat groats, barley, peas and other ingredients is sold alongside the brand’s traditional animal-based products in mainstream pet supply stores across Canada and the U.S. and is priced similarly.

Natural Balance CEO Brian Connolly says the brand’s plant-based product “has maintained its position among the top performers across our Natural Balance dog food portfolio” and describes latest quarter sales across the U.S. as “showing positive gains.” In general, Connolly explains, “the plant-based dog food market is reflecting what a growing number of consumers are looking for in their own food today.”

Other exclusively plant-based brands such as V-dog (known as V-planet outside the U.S.) can be bought online and in some specialty shops, while California-based Plantiful sells dog food online and delivers it frozen across the U.S., but mainly in California. Owner Gayl Hyde, a licensed naturopath, says she and co-owner Eric Bandner were motivated to create the animal-free, whole-food product after becoming disenchanted with the quality of meat-based dog foods on the market.

“I came to the realization that the commercial pet food out there is not so healthy or holistic,” says Hyde. She went back to school to study canine nutrition and became interested in the idea of plant-based dog food. “I wanted something that I knew would be healthy not just for my dogs, but also healthy for the planet.”

Plantiful is made with human-grade ingredients, including organic lentils, peas, potatoes and more, and complies with the necessary standards of the Association of American Feed Control Officials. AAFCO is a non-profit membership association of local, state and federal agencies – including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – that “establishes the nutritional standards for complete and balanced pet foods,” according to its website. While AAFCO standards are not official regulations, most U.S. states have adopted a version of the AAFCO model into their own laws and regulations.

According to Canadian veterinarian Jonas Watson, meeting AAFCO standards is key to ensuring that animal-free foods satisfy dietary requirements. Watson warns that some commercially made vegan dog foods have been found to be deficient in certain amino acids, “which could lead to health risks for dogs.” He stresses that “it is important for pet food manufacturers to review their formulations to ensure the nutritional adequacy of these diets.”

Reports of nutritional insufficiencies in some products have fuelled controversy around feeding pets a plant-based diet. Justine Shotton, president of the British Veterinary Association, recently stated that the organization does not recommend putting cats or dogs on a meat-free diet. “It is theoretically possible to feed a dog a vegetarian diet, but owners would need to take expert advice to avoid dietary deficiencies and associated disease, as it is much easier to get the balance of nutrients wrong than to get it right.”

I came to the realization that the commercial pet food out there is not so healthy or holistic.

-Gayl Hyde, co-owner of Plantiful

The statement came after a veterinary professor at the University of Winchester, Andrew Knight, found through his research that cats and dogs “had as good, or better, health outcomes on plant-based diets as they did when fed on meat pet foods, provided these were carefully formulated with additional synthetic nutrients,” according to The Guardian.

In the U.K., news tabloids have been warning that pet owners can be prosecuted, fined or jailed for not providing their animals with a diet that meets all their nutritional needs, though this does not specifically apply to a plant-based diet.

“There is a lot of misinformation out there,” says Hyde, “that people think dogs need meat versus dogs need nutrients. They need amino acids; they need protein, not meat.”

The topic of feeding cats a vegan diet is even more controversial. Unlike dogs, which are considered omnivores, cats are categorized as obligate carnivores, meaning their physiology requires animal-based food for survival. In particular, cats need an amino acid called taurine, which can be consumed only through meat or supplements. While there are some supplemented plant-based cat foods on the market, Watson believes that lab-grown meat will be the “game changer” for cat food.

Lab-grown meat is largely still at the development stage. Although in August 2021, Philadelphia-based start-up Because, Animals announced the “world’s first-ever cultured meat product for pets,” the Harmless Hunt mouse cookies for cats, manufactured with mouse meat made without killing any mice. In late 2021, the company debuted plans to open a new laboratory in Vienna, Austria, ahead of its products hitting shelves in 2022, depending on regulatory approval.

A 2020 study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that nearly 60% of those surveyed were “willing to change their shopping habits to reduce environmental impact.” Consumers are increasingly embracing social causes and seeking products and brands that align with their values. For conscious pet owners, this means hunting for ethical ways to feed their furry friends. For the pet food industry, this means bringing plant- and cellular-meat-based products to an eager and growing market.

Update: A study from 2020 looking at the global impacts of pet food production found that the emissions impact of pet food may be much lower: 1.1%−2.9% of global agricultural emissions. Though this still amounts to a significant environmental footprint.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also a co-host of the Canadian animal law podcast Paw & Order.

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In the lead-up to Canada’s federal election this fall, the Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) – an industry lobbying and marketing group that represents 2,800 chicken farmers – was busy promoting chicken as a climate solution. In an August 19 tweet, CFC pushed the idea that compared to the rest of the world, “Canadian chicken has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all.”

Around the same time, CFC released a poll by Abacus Data it had commissioned that found 82% of Canadians support the supply management system that chicken farming operates under. The industry group heralded the survey of 5,000 Canadians as proof that the “Canadian chicken sector is very popular heading into a federal election” and that “party support for the chicken sector will bolster the vote strength, attract opposition voters, and bring in swing voters.”

The tweet and survey were part of a larger effort by the chicken industry to push its products as the sustainable protein of choice for many Canadians. CFC first created a campaign called Let’s Talk Chicken to promote its Sustainability Excellence Commitment program a few years back. More recently, the group published a “Life Cycle Assessment” that claimed the carbon footprint of Canadian chicken decreased by 37% over the last four decades “due to major productivity gains and improvements in the feed to gain conversion ratio.”

But what exactly are these gains in productivity, and what does that feed conversion ratio mean for the environment? While raising chickens in our own country might sound wholesome on a food label, what, if anything, does that translate into for the animals and the planet?

Low-carbon poultry?

Research suggests that minimizing or forgoing meat consumption, in particular red meat, can be a key component to keeping climate chaos at bay. And polls show Canadians are taking that to heart, with one in four having considered cutting their beef consumption in the last year, according to a 2021 survey by the Agri-food Analytics Lab and Dalhousie University. However, as beef consumption in Canada has decreased in recent years, chicken consumption has boomed by almost 20 pounds per person since 1998. As of 2020, chicken is the most consumed meat in Canada. Of the nearly 834 million land animals slaughtered in Canada in 2019, around 90% of those are meat chickens. So how has CFC managed to make farming those hundreds of millions of animals more eco-efficient?

“It just means they are cramming more chickens into barns,” says Nicholas Carter, an environmental researcher and the co-founder of Plant Based Data.

Being small and monogastric (having one stomach rather than multiple methane-belching stomachs, as cows do) naturally lessens chickens’ impact. Chickens also require less food, water and space per animal. However, in an effort to boost both profit and efficiency, modern animal agriculture has become increasingly industrialized and intensified. Though the number of chicken farms in Canada has dropped since 1976, from more than 99,000 to fewer than 3,000, the average number of chickens per farm has increased sevenfold, from fewer than 900 to more than 6,000 today. Growing a greater number of animals faster for maximum yield has been the central goal. This increase in efficiency has brought with it an additional bonus: a reduced carbon footprint. This is thanks to faster-growing birds who require less food and water and produce less waste over their shorter life-spans. Canadian chicken farmers now claim to have a smaller carbon footprint than the majority of the world’s chicken farmers.

Despite efficiency gains made by using fast-growing birds, chickens remain the greatest consumers of feed crops such as soy, corn and other grains on the planet, according to WWF, requiring copious amounts of land and water. The CFC acknowledges that “feed production contributes to half of the total carbon footprint” and that “GHG emissions are mainly caused by fertilizers and diesel use to produce feed crops.” The association also points out that 62% of the entire sector’s total energy use comes from renewable sources, but that’s not because barns are powered by solar panels. The group clarifies that “chicken feed accounts for the bulk of renewable energy consumption” – meaning the grains being fed to chickens are being counted as a renewable energy source for the sector because the sun that helps the crops used as chicken feed grow is a renewable input.

Mounting calls for better chicken

Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-food Analytics Lab, says public pressure and changing expectations have forced the chicken industry to put more focus on sustainability. But, he adds, “more Canadians are conflicted these days. While they benefit from industrialized farming, they are increasingly questioning farming methods and how their food is made.”

And the chicken industry is aware of that tension in the mindset of Canadian consumers. But instead of making meaningful change, says Camille Labchuk, an animal rights lawyer and the director of Animal Justice, the industry has “consistently tried to greenwash and humane-wash their cruel processes.”
There have been international efforts made by animal advocates to push individual businesses to switch to slower-growing chickens by 2024 through an initiative called the Better Chicken Commitment. More than 200 companies, including Nestlé, Campbell’s, Burger King and Starbucks, have signed on to the commitment, but compared to the U.S., Canadian companies have been slow to join the program.

Even so, in an email to Corporate Knights, the CFC claims slower-growing chickens would have a greater impact on the environment, requiring more water and feed and producing more waste. Thus, it appears that when it comes to chicken meat production, environmental efficiency is at direct odds with animal welfare.

Canadian animal welfare laws include exemptions for standard farming practices. Instead of being overseen by the government, the daily treatment of animals on farms is governed by a voluntary code of practice created by the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), a group mainly made up of industry stakeholders. The CFC claims farmers are held accountable by third-party audits, but as Labchuk explains, audits are industry-controlled, not conducted by the government or animal welfare organizations. “Any private audits the chicken industry conducts on itself are meaningless, and a poor substitute for public oversight.”

Is the chicken local?

CFC’s Raised by a Canadian Farmer marketing campaign was developed to push back against public concerns around conditions on “factory farms,” a term commonly used to refer to large, industrialized facilities raising animals for food. “Over 90% of Canadian chicken farms are family owned and operated,” says the CFC, implying that family-owned farms cannot be factory farms, and leaving out the huge spike in the average number of chickens per farm in Canada in recent decades.

Though the eat-local trend has gained traction in recent years among conscious consumers looking to support Canadian farmers, sourcing animal meat locally “has very little impact on the actual environmental footprint,” says Carter, adding there are much better sources of eco-friendly protein, such as beans and peas. For example, chicken meat production emits about six kilograms of greenhouse gases per serving, whereas production of beans – another high-protein food grown in abundance in Canada – emits around one to two kilograms per serving. So while chicken has a smaller carbon footprint than beef, many suggest a total shift away from all industrial animal farming will be necessary for the world to reach net-zero.

In the spring, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau announced new federal funding to help Canadian chicken producers become even more efficient. The program will provide nearly $350 million in funds over 10 years, in part to help chicken farmers increase efficiency, productivity and environmental sustainability. Though part of the program’s mandate is also to respond “to consumer preferences,” including “improving animal welfare,” there is no indication that would mean increasing standards beyond existing NFACC codes.

Though this multimillion-dollar investment is likely to shrink the carbon footprint of the protein we eat, through improvements in areas such as lighting and heating efficiency, Carter says it is also likely to lead to greater animal welfare concerns. “I don’t think most Canadians want more factory farming, more intensive animal agriculture,” he says, “and that’s really how the industry is getting more efficient.”

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer covering animal rights and welfare and plant-based food topics. She is also a co-host of the Canadian animal law podcast Paw & Order.

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But some scientists and medical professionals are crying foul. The animals that are being used as laboratory test subjects in the search for COVID-19 therapeutics might be hindering, rather than helping, the race, they say. The virulence and highly contagious nature of COVID-19 is demanding a new model of research that bypasses animals, instead using human-biology-based testing. A growing number of scientists suggest that accelerated COVID-19 research is exposing animal modelling for what many have long claimed it to be: a scientific anachronism.

Dr. Thomas Hartung is the director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT), a laboratory for developmental neurotoxicity research based on genomics and metabolomics at Johns Hopkins University. Hartung points to the slow trajectory of drug and vaccine development using animal modelling. Conventional drug development relies heavily on animal testing to understand the molecular mechanisms of disease and potential treatments, helping to explain why it takes more than 10 years to get a medication to market, while vaccines typically take 12 years, says Hartung. Such lengthy timelines translate into a hefty medical bill: roughly $2 billion per drug. With COVID-19, “we cannot wait that long for treatments,” says Hartung, who spoke to online delegates at the 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences in August. “We have to be faster than we were in the past.”

Equally problematic, if not even more eyebrow raising: 95% of new drugs that enter clinical trials don’t make it to the market, according to the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). In other words, the vast majority of new drugs fail once they move into human studies, despite appearing safe and effective in experiments with animals.

In science, as in other areas, necessity is the mother of invention. The rapid acceleration of innovations like three-dimensional human organs on a microchip are being refined. These living organoids are accelerating the development of effective medical advancements for the many virulent maladies afflicting humans, including, most urgently of course, COVID-19.

Hartung, highly regarded in the field of animal-testing alternatives, pioneered a patent on brain organoids, which are tissue cultures made from human stem cells that simulate the human organ. Developed four years ago, mini brains, which can be mass-produced, have been used to study infections caused by viruses such as HIV, dengue and Zika. This past spring, Hartung and his team proved that SARS-CoV-2 can infect and damage human brain cells by testing about 800 mini brains – each the size of a house-fly eye – that were “identical in composition” to the human organ. Observing evidence-based effects of COVID-19 in the human brain will help researchers jumpstart important therapeutics and medical care. “It will be difficult not to use them in a similar, fast way for drug and vaccine development and regulation in the future,” Hartung says.

The vast majority of new drugs fail once they move to human trials, despite appearing safe and effective in animal experiments.

Hartung points to other uses of organs on a microchip, such as human lung organoids that breathe. This past April, researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering reported that human-lung airway chips demonstrated that two drugs, amodiaquine and toremifene, significantly inhibited entry of the COVID-19 virus into the human body. Such models are proving effective for quality assurance and demonstrating that a drug is therapeutically effective, helping researchers leapfrog over animal modelling. Additional benefits include toxicity testing of newly developed drugs, giving more accurate results at a lower cost, Hartung adds. Such micro physiological systems have become so well established, he says, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would reduce mammal testing by 30% by 2025 and phase it out entirely by 2035.

Micro human organs aren’t the only scientific advances pushing animal modelling to the side. Sophisticated computer modelling has already begun to replace standard safety practices for chemicals, such as dropping compounds into rabbits’ eyes or feeding substances to rats to establish lethal doses. IEEE Spectrum recently reported that the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee had crunched data on more than 40,000 human genes and analyzed 2.5 billion genetic combinations to try to determine COVID-19 therapeutics. Summit found a pattern of gene activity in the lungs of COVID-19 patients, which helped identify a pathology that physicians knew would respond to certain existing drugs.

Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies are starting to use alternative models to reduce the animals they use in research. This past spring, Pfizer, in collaboration with German biotechnology company BioNTech, announced it was jumpstarting development of a COVID-19 vaccination in an initiative titled Project Lightspeed. Using BioNTech’s proprietary messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, four different vaccine versions were tested in human clinical trials, which eliminated years of waiting for results from animal modelling. Pfizer spokesperson Jessica Smith stated in an email that traditional animal model studies are also being incorporated into the company’s research. Ultimately, one vaccine, BNT162b2, was selected for further testing. The vaccine may be available in Canada in 2021, pending Health Canada approval. If it proves safe, the American government has already committed to purchasing nearly $2-billion worth for 100 million doses.

Biotechnology company Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also using mRNA technology in collaboration with the NIH to test a COVID-19 vaccine on humans. The company initially tried the vaccine, called mRNA-1273, on animal models before launching human trials but was able to jump to the first phase of human trials at “record speed,” noted the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is funding the trials. Moderna has received close to US$1 billion in government funding for vaccine development, as well as a purchase order of US$1.53 billion for 100 million doses, if approved.

Canadian scientists are also working to accelerate the shift away from animal modelling. In Quebec City, biopharmaceutical company Medicago is researching a plant-derived vaccine for COVID-19, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. Medicago uses virus-like particles, or VLPs, that mimic the shape and dimensions of a virus, allowing the body to recognize the invader and create an immune response. It started phase-one human trials this summer.

Paradigm shifters

One proponent hoping to see a paradigm shift in which human biology serves as the gold standard in scientific research is Dr. Charu Chandrasekera, the executive director and founder of the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) at the University of Windsor in Ontario, as well as its subsidiary, the Canadian Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (CaCVAM). CCAAM’s aim, Chandrasekera says, is to promote the replacement of animals in Canadian biomedical research, education and regulatory testing.

Chandrasekera recalls her journey from young researcher at an American Midwestern university, investigating the molecular mechanisms of heart failure and diabetes using mice and rats. It eventually became clear, she says, that the studies “didn’t enhance our understanding of human heart disease, nor accelerate therapeutic development for humans, making the rodent studies scientifically futile and ethically unjustifiable. I realized that none of the work I was doing was going to help humans.”

Today, Chandrasekera continues her diabetes research by using alternatives like 3D bioprinted human tissue, including liver, lung, intestine, pancreas, skeletal muscle and blood-brain-barrier. Tissue for testing can be obtained from either live or deceased human organs, preserved and manipulated to ensure they can divide indefinitely, Chandrasekera says. Or, human skin can be biopsied and stem cells harvested, creating brain, heart, liver and pancreas organ cells. “You use these cell models to test drugs and chemicals,” she says.

Despite such advances, animal modelling is still regarded as the gold standard of research and is required for regulatory approval from Health Canada. The federal department demands that researchers use animals when testing the safety of chemicals found in food and household items, pharmaceuticals or medical equipment.

Canada (and the U.S.) also allows the use of animals for testing cosmetics, even though the practice has been banned in the U.K. since 1998. The European Union banned cosmetic testing on animals in 2013 but modified the legislation this past summer to allow for a handful of exceptions.

Toronto-based lawyer Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, says that Canada needs to create a federal animal-protection act with government oversight. Currently, scrutiny of lab-animal welfare lies with the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), which assesses and verifies institutional animal ethics and care programs under its Good Animal Practice certification program. CCAC certification is required for all institutions that receive public funding to undertake animal-based projects. However, private labs can opt out of CCAC’s voluntary certification system. “There’s almost no ability for anyone to get a glimpse into what’s happening” in private labs, says Labchuk, adding that it isn’t even known how many animals are kept in such facilities. “We think that’s unacceptable in 2020 that people can use animals in pretty horrific ways in private without any government or public oversight.” (About four million animals, 40% of them mice, are used each year in public labs for research, education and regulatory testing in Canada.)

“We’re facing this wicked problem of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we can’t afford to be lazy about using antiquated methods in our pharmaceutical research.”
– Dr. Lisa Kramer,
University of Toronto

Labchuk, Chandrasekera and Dr. Lisa Kramer, a professor of finance at the University of Toronto, are part of a working group planning to lobby federal legislators in Canada to invoke greater protections for lab animals. Kramer recommends that funders withdraw support from projects that are using animal testing that show no clear benefit to humans. Continued reliance on animal modelling in biomedical research not only slows down research but poses potential financial risks for pharmaceutical companies, their investors “and for society overall,” she says. “We’re facing this wicked problem of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we can’t afford to be lazy about using antiquated methods in our pharmaceutical research.” It shortchanges not only the medical professionals and students who work with patients, but taxpayers who underwrite research at publicly funded institutions, she adds.

Using non-animal modalities can save money, says Chandrasekera, pointing to a test that assesses how a chemical, once ingested, affects a person’s sensitivity to sunlight, called dermal phototoxicity. Animal modelling, requiring hundreds of rats, costs $11,500 per chemical. The alternative, approved by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals program, is an in vitro (conducted in a test tube or Petri dish) cell-based test that costs $1,300, Chandrasekera says.

Public pressure is key to a decline in animal modelling. The cosmetic industry bowed to public pressure; will other sectors bow too? A private lab in Cheshire, England, called XCellR8 thinks so. Founded in 2008 by Dr. Carol Treasure and Bushra Sim, XCellR8 is striving to “accelerate the world’s transition to animal-free testing,” says Susie Lee-Kilgariff, the company’s marketing director. In 2013, after the EU banned cosmetic testing on animals, XCellR8’s animal-free testing methodologies were suddenly in high demand. Today, clients of XCellR8 include numerous multinationals, such as beauty giants The Body Shop and Lush. Clients have embraced ethical approaches to product testing simply as a part of doing business. It also means they can claim to uphold “vegan supply chains,” with customers assured that they are buying vegan products, Lee-Kilgariff says. With ethical consumerism an ever-growing trend, other businesses, including pharmaceutical companies, that can lay claim to “cruelty-free” therapeutics will have an advantage in the marketplace of the future.

The grim battle against COVID-19 is accelerating the emergence of a new frontier in science. Increasingly, this means looking at alternatives to animal modelling to accelerate therapeutics that will save millions of people from death and sickness. Such advancements will also save the millions of creatures who have long been science’s unwilling servants and victims. As Chandrasekera says, “I would really like to see a scientific culture where human biology is the gold standard, where we all work together to advance science and medicine without harming animals.”

Roberta Staley is a Vancouver-based author, magazine editor and writer and documentary filmmaker.

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For investors with public pension funds who are concerned about animal welfare, knowing a fund’s involvement in potential animal cruelty is crucial, though not always easy to discern.

According to recent research from animal welfare experts, at least six top global pension funds have holdings in potentially cruel companies that slaughter animals for meat, produce other animal products or fall behind in animal welfare standards.

Norway’s pension at back of pack

At the top of the list of funds with holdings in potentially cruel companies is Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), with four holdings of concern worth US$159.7 million. Of that, $61 million is invested in Sanderson Farms, a Fortune 1000 company that, according to its website, has the capacity to “process more than 13.65 million chickens per week.” While the company does have an animal welfare policy of sorts, it refers only to antibiotics and does not address stocking density, painful procedures, breeding or other important animal welfare issues pertaining to chickens.

A 2017 report by the Animal Welfare Institute found that one Sanderson farm had been cited 20 times in the two preceding years for not complying with humane handling standards. One USDA inspector determined that the plant’s slaughtering process was “out of control.”
The other contentious NBIM holdings are Japan’s NH Foods (US$64 million), Mexico’s Industrias Bachoco ($US34.3 million) and Dean Foods in the U.S. (US$0.1 million).

An NBIM spokesperson states the fund has no specific policy regarding animal welfare.

Canada and California pension plans also clued out on cruelty

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board holds a total of US$24 million in potentially cruel companies, including US$13.7 million in NH Foods, US$10.2 million in Sanderson Farms and US$0.1 million in Dean Foods. The fund takes no position on animal welfare and makes no mention of it in its 2017 or 2018 Sustainable Investing Reports.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System and California Public Employees’ Retirement System both have holdings in Sanderson Farms, US$5.6 million and US$7.9 million respectively. Neither has a specific policy regarding animal welfare.

Some funds are starting to consider cruelty

A spokesperson for Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) says that animal-welfare issues are studied as part of their fund’s pre-investment ESG analysis, and “if concerns arise, we proactively engage in dialogue with companies we’re invested in.”

However, CDPQ has three holdings in potentially cruel companies, including US$9.2 million in Industrias Bachoco, US$1.7 million in NH Foods and US$18.5 million in JBS S.A., the largest meat-processing company in the world, which slaughters 13 million animals every day.
JBS S.A. has also not signed on to the Better Chicken Commitment, an initiative supported by major animal protection groups around the world. And according to the 2018 Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare, though the company appears to have an established approach to animal welfare, it “has more work to do to ensure it is effectively implemented.”

New York’s pension fund claims to use more of a shareholder engagement rather than divestment approach. The proxy voting guidelines of the New York State Common Retirement Fund state that “the Fund will support proposals asking a company to report on its animal welfare standards.” In 2018, fund managers wrote to McDonald’s, requesting information on what the company was doing to align its chicken welfare policy with widely accepted best practices like those of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Global Animal Partnership. However, it still holds US$3.6 million in Sanderson Farms.

Which financial institutions are taking the lead?

While pension funds may lag behind when it comes to animal welfare, other financial institutions are stepping up, providing examples of how to approach animal-friendly finances.

Bank Australia, for example, states on its website that it does not lend to “organizations that use intensive animal farming systems like battery caged hens and sow stalls, or organizations that export live animals.”

The Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) has a three-page position statement regarding animal welfare that includes recognizing animals as sentient beings capable of experiencing pain. FMO considers unacceptable farming practices to include “non-enriched battery cages for chickens, the tethering of sows, individual sow stall housing throughout the entire pregnancy, individual pen housing for veal calves beyond the age of eight weeks, forced feeding of geese and ducks.” The agency will not make investments “that substantially involve any of these systems or practices.”

Other financial institutions notable for making animal welfare a priority include Allianz, CDC Group (the UK’s development finance institution), Rabobank, Standard Chartered and Triodos Bank.

Australian Ethical wealth management outright excludes any investment “in current systems of commercial animal agriculture including meat, dairy, eggs and seafood.”

Another option for investors concerned with the treatment of animals: the VEGN ETF, managed by Beyond Investing and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The fund “excludes from consideration companies that harm animals, screening out companies that are involved in animal testing, animal-derived products, as well as animals in sports or entertainment.” Top holdings aren’t so much in, say, plant protein companies like Beyond Meat, but in corporations like Apple, Microsoft and Mastercard that don’t engage in screened practices.

Investor network pushing for change

One global network of investors with $20 trillion in assets under management has been encouraging investors to consider the financial and climate risks of investing in animal cruelty. Jeremy Coller, executive chair of London-based Coller Capital and a well-known name in private equity, developed the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR) initiative five years ago “to put animal welfare on the ESG agenda.” The Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index assesses the 60 largest global meat producers for investors. FAIRR also pressures corporations like Kroger, Walmart and McDonald’s to consider the risks to investors of relying exclusively on animal proteins within their supply chains – and to consider alternatives.

With the widespread rise in interest in meatless products, veganism and animal welfare, the treatment of animals is quickly becoming an important issue in that realm of socially responsible investing. If large pension funds and financial institutions want to keep up with this trend, they will need to become more aware of their involvement in potentially cruel companies and take steps to keep cruelty out of their investments.

Jessica Scott-Reid is a freelance writer and animal advocate. She writes for major media across Canada and the U.S.

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UK-based Business Benchmark for Farm Animal Welfare has just released its seventh annual ranking of the world’s largest food and drink companies, checking on who’s putting their money where their mouth is and who’s not even at the table. This year, BBFAW assessed 150 grocers, food makers, restaurant chains and suppliers on their farm animal welfare policies, practices and performance. It examines thorny issues like the confinement of animals, antibiotic and growth hormone use, as well as whether companies have, say, senior management in place to move policies beyond feel-good pledges (turns out that 43 % of companies now have explicit board or senior management oversight of farm animal welfare, up from 22 % when the benchmark launched in 2012).

British firms like Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have long dominated the benchmark’s leadership tiers. A handful of American meat giants, including Cargill, are also climbing the ranks after being plagued for years by animal rights exposés. But not a single Canadian food company appears in the top three tiers of the six-tiered benchmark.

Loblaw, Tim Hortons, as well as new arrivals to the list Maple Leaf and Saputo are the top-ranked Canadian companies, sitting at tier 4 (labelled as “making progress on implementation”). Another benchmark newbie, Empire Company/Sobeys, is trailing behind in tier 5. That essentially means that animal welfare may be on their business agenda, but BBFAW says there’s “limited evidence of implementation.”

Conscious consumers might start skipping the roadside hot dogs altogether at Quebec-based Couche-Tard (Circle K) once they find out the company sits dead last in BBFAW’s sixth tier. It’s among 70 companies that BBFAW says offer up little to no public info on their farm animal welfare.

[pullquote]Conscious consumers might start skipping the roadside hot dogs altogether at Quebec-based Couche-Tard (Circle K) once they find out the company sits dead last in BBFAW’s sixth tier.[/pullquote]

Marie-Noelle Cano, senior director of corporate communications with Couche-Tard, told Corporate Knights, “Couche-Tard is both committed to sustainability and to developing a more public strategy to report on its sustainability initiatives.” She adds, “In the future, we look forward to being asked in advance to participate in surveys such as this benchmark in order to provide transparency for our investors, employees, and customers concerning the company’s efforts.”

Considering animal welfare is increasingly front and centre with consumers and investors alike, that transparency is going to be pretty vital. To date, 23 investors, representing £2.5 trillion (C$4.3 trillion) in assets under management, have signed the BBFAW Global Investor Statement on Farm Animal Welfare, recognizing farm animal welfare as a significant financial risk for laggards, as well as a rising business opportunity for leaders.

European companies definitely have a leg up in all this, seeing as EU regs on, for instance, battery cages and gestation crates are far ahead of Canadian standards. Canadian codes of practice still allow farm animals to sit on trucks without food, water or rest for 36 hours, compared to 14 in Europe.

That said, “Canada is making some progress,” says Mercy for Animals’ senior animal welfare specialist, Lauri Torgerson-White. She notes that companies such as Loblaw, Sobeys, Restaurant Brands International (Burger King/Tim Hortons) have committed to selling only cage-free eggs by 2025 in Canada. Making sure companies follow through on those pledges is part of what BBFAW and Mercy for Animals will be keeping an eye on.

BBFAW executive director, Nicky Amos, says there are hopeful signs that Canadian food companies may move up in future rankings. “Watch this space. Maple Leaf came in as a new company at tier 4, which is actually a really good score for a company that is not used to being benchmarked. Similarly, Saputo ranked tier 4, as well.” That, she says, means “they’re well on the journey. They’ve got policies that are being implemented. They’ve got management structures in place to deliver on those targets.”

If food companies don’t continue to make progress on the most pressing animal welfare issues of our day, Torgerson-White warns they’re bound to slip in rankings, as McDonald’s, Subway and Walmart did this year. And you can bet the farm that activists, investors and consumers will be making a stink about it.

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