Here's an interesting fact: More than 95 per cent of the animals kept by Canadians are - wait for it - farm animals.
And you thought Canadians preferred cats and dogs. Of course it's a different type of relationship we have with farm animals.
The brutal reality for the 100 million farm animals that are raised in B.C. every year is we generally just eat them or wear them.
I went to the Delta Community Animal Expo last Sunday and was thrilled with the number of rescue and advocacy groups on exhibit. It was wonderful to see participation from organizations like Hugabull, which rescues pit bulls and educates the public about the breed.
Until two years ago, Hugabull wouldn't have felt so welcome at the animal expo.
Prior to 2010, Delta's breed-specific dog bylaw designated pit bulls and pit bull mixes as dangerous; the bylaw was changed due to a lack of evidence that pit bulls are any more dangerous than any other breed.
But while exhibitors at the expo represented domestic, exotic and even wild animals, there was no one advocating for the millions of farm animals to whom we quite literally owe our lives.
On conventional farms, these animals are still crammed inside battery cages (egg-laying hens) or other confinement housing (pigs, dairy cows and hens), with tie stalls common for cows and metal gestation crates standard for pigs.
Beef cattle have it the best because at least most of them get to spend some time on the range.
Getting these animals to auction and slaughter is another assault: in Canada, cattle and sheep are allowed to spend 52 hours in transport without food or water while horses, pigs and chickens can legally spend 36 hours on the road. Not surprisingly, more than 10 million farm animals per year arrive at their destinations diseased or injured, are deemed unfit for human consumption and are euthanized.
If consumers knew what animals on conventional farms went through before reaching our dishes and our drawers, they would be more inclined to demand higher and better standards of care for farm animals, and some of them already are. Slowly, international and intergovernmental agencies like the United Nations are starting to pay attention to the need for good farm animal welfare.
Consumers are speaking up too, their voice being the money they're willing to spend on food that comes with adjectives like 'freerange,' 'natural' and 'grass-fed,' and third-party labels like organic and SPCA Certified.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I do look for products that are local, ethical and humane, and luckily in Ladner that's an easy proposition. Organic products are available almost anywhere, and SPCA Certified cheeses made by Little Qualicum Cheeseworks can be had at the Westham Island Estate Winery, Superior Fish Market and the Ladner Village Market, where you'll also find SPCA Certified eggs and chicken sold by Abbotsford's Rockweld Farm.
And in my little corner of the world on River Road West, breakfast is made with free-range eggs from Keith's at the corner of Kettles Road.
We have a choice to treat animals well or not, and it seems to me that animals that are treated well taste better.
Now that's an easy argument to swallow, don't you think?
