The Usual and Customary Shield: How Criminal Law Exemptions for Agricultural Animal Treatment Undermine the Foundations of Personhood and Criminal Justice

I.         INTRODUCTION

There is a contradiction within Canadian criminal law: the implicit farming exemption. Sections 444 to 447 of the Criminal Code are functionally invalidated for industrial farming and any other Canadian-sanctioned commodified animal use.^[1] The exemption has settled into Canadian jurisprudence, condemning farmed animals to a life below the Code's protections and undermining the Code itself.^[2] It trades justice for the victims criminal law was meant to protect for industry profit, in violation of the norms the Canadian constituency relies on for peace, order, and good government.^[3]

The federal carve-out under the Code's cruelty provisions and the explicit provincial “reasonable and generally accepted practices” clauses^[4] together form a philosophically incoherent shield. By deferring to industry-defined norms rather than to evolving public standards, they classify sentient farmed animals as property and expose a normative failure in Canadian criminal law's claim to safeguard the public from systematic exploitation.

This paper argues that the “usual and customary” exemptions are philosophically untenable on criminal-law theory's own terms. They fail animals, but they also undermine the principles that justify the criminal law's existence: legal personhood, the public justification of criminal accountability, and the protective functions of the criminal law itself.

A.        Theoretical orientation

The literature on animals and the law is dominated by external moral and ideological frameworks, most prominently Peter Singer’s utilitarian account in Animal Liberation, against which any federal or provincial statute would immediately appear indefensible, without question.^[5] This paper does not defend Singer’s framework or suggest it as the standard against which the Code is measured. The argument being made is narrower and harder to ignore; even on Canadian criminal law’s own internal justifications, the implicit farming exemption fails.

I rely on three readings from this course. Morris's account of the right to be treated as a person under criminal law exposes the cognitive dissonance of recognizing some sentient beings as subjects of the Code while keeping others outside it.^[6] Chiao's public-law model treats the Code as an institution defensible only by the same principles that govern any use of state power; blanket deference to industry-defined norms is a legal failure regardless of one's views on animals.^[7] Husak sets out the functions criminal law must perform, and the exemption defeats several at once.^[8] Gardner's account of the displacement function is the focus of Part IV.^[9] None of these theorists writes about animals; that the exemption still fails on grounds they supply is itself indicative of imbalances within the core of criminal law.

B.        Roadmap

Part II maps the architecture of the exemption: the Code's “unnecessary suffering” standard, the case law that has interpreted it, and the provincial clauses that make the federal carve-out explicit. Part III shows, through Morris, Chiao, and Husak, that the exemption is philosophically incompatible with criminal law's own terms. Part IV turns to Gardner: where industry sets the standard, private actors step in for a state that has relinquished its responsibility, the very pattern criminal law exists to prevent.^[10]

II.        THE ARCHITECTURE OF EXEMPTIONS

The Code’s animal cruelty provisions signal the most fundamental conceptual problem: animals are classified as property in Canada.^[11] Section 445.1(1)(a) makes it an offence to “wilfully cause or, being the owner, wilfully permit to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal or a bird.”^[12] The word “unnecessary” is not defined in the Code. Canadian case law has supplied an interpretation, and that interpretation is the gauge by which the implicit farming exemption is measured.

A.        Canadian case law

Courts have largely deferred to the framework articulated by Lamer J.A. in R v Menard.^[13] That framework converts a statutory prohibition into a quasi-legal test in which lawful purposes, social priorities, and the costs of avoidance are weighed against the suffering inflicted. Subsequent cases refine the threshold and the mens rea, but none has displaced Menard's central message: suffering inflicted in the service of an accepted human purpose is presumptively necessary. In Menard, the accused operated a stray-animal euthanasia business in which dogs and cats were killed by forced inhalation of unfiltered exhaust from a gasoline engine, suffering approximately thirty seconds of pain and burns to their mucous membranes and respiratory tracts.^[14] The Crown's evidence established the suffering could have been avoided at modest cost. Lamer J.A. restored the conviction the Superior Court set aside.^[15]

Precedent from Menard has governed the interpretation of s. 445.1(1)(a). Lamer J.A. (Lamer) rejected any requirement of “substantial” suffering: the degree of pain is not itself the issue once the pain has been wilfully inflicted “without necessity… and without justification, legal excuse or colour of right.”^[16] Lamer constructed the test asking whether suffering “could have been reasonably avoided” given “the social priorities, the means available, and their accessibility.”^[17] That test asks the same kind of question a court asks under s. 1 of the Charter: whether the chosen means were proportionate to the accepted purpose. Lamer set the test inside a clear hierarchy of values: “… animal is subordinate to nature and to man,” and “… will often be in the interests of man to kill and mutilate wild or domestic animals, to subjugate them and, to this end, to tame them with all the painful consequences this may entail.”^[18] Eating meat, animal experimentation, and domestication are presumptively legitimate purposes. The Menard test asks only whether, within those purposes, the means used minimized avoidable suffering, never whether the purpose itself is legitimate or not.

In R v Galloro, the Ontario Court of Justice convicted an elderly woman for cutting a dog’s ears with scissors to relieve canine epilepsy, applying Menard directly: “What constitutes ‘unnecessary’ pain, suffering or injury is determined by the circumstances of each case including the purpose of the act, the social priorities, and the means available.”^[19]Galloro shows the framework at work where a purpose is judged unusual: accessible alternatives readily render the suffering “unnecessary.” In R v Sanaee, the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the conviction of a dog trainer who used an electric cattle prod. The court held that the Crown does not need expert evidence to prove an animal felt pain, that mistake of law is not a defence, and that an owner cannot consent on an animal’s behalf to unnecessary pain.^[20]

In R v Picco, the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal held that, on established facts, whether an animal has suffered is a legal conclusion that an appellate court reviews on a correctness standard. On that basis, the court overturned a trial-level finding that beagles “extremely emaciated, starving, and near death” had not suffered within the meaning of s. 445.1(1)(a).^[21] In R v Higgins, the Newfoundland Supreme Court (Trial Division) confirmed that wilfulness includes subjective recklessness; the s. 445.1(3) presumption adds to but does not replace that standard.^[22]

In every decision discussed above, the conduct lies outside an industrial agricultural setting. Menard concerned a small euthanization business; Galloro and Higgins, individual companion animals; Sanaee, a dog trainer; Picco, a private kennel. The Menard test has been applied where the human purpose is unusual; it has not been used to ask whether industrial farming purposes are themselves legitimate. The closest case is R v Pacific Meat Co Ltd, a 1957 British Columbia County Court decision that accepted, with minimal analysis, that hog slaughter methods were not “unnecessary” because hogs “fulfil a purpose of providing food for human beings” and the lethal injury was therefore “a necessity.”^[23] Pacific Meat shows the exemption in operation: the industrial purpose is treated as the justification, and the inquiry rubber-stamps deference to standard practice.

B.        Provincial “reasonable and generally accepted practices” clauses

What Menard accomplishes implicitly under the Code, provincial animal protection statutes accomplish explicitly. Ontario’s Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019 exempts any activity carried on in accordance with “… reasonable and generally accepted practices of agricultural animal care, management or husbandry.”^[24] Other provinces achieve the same result through different statutory routes. Nova Scotia’s Animal Protection Act exempts slaughter carried out under provincial or federal slaughter laws and treats agricultural practices conducted in accordance with industry-drafted codes of practice as not contravening the Act.^[25] Alberta and Saskatchewan’s statutes mirror Ontario’s “reasonable and generally accepted practices” review.^[26] The federal exemption is a doctrinal pattern, and the provincial exemptions are statutory and explicit. Together they produce the same outcome, industry-defined practice that is treated as the legal standard, and all conduct conforming to it is placed outside the reach of animal cruelty laws altogether.^[27] The shield is circular: practice is lawful because it is standard, and it is standard because it is lawful.

III.      CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The architecture mapped in Part II is, in form, an ordinary criminal prohibition. Section 445.1(1)(a) names farmed animals as protected subjects. The exemption is therefore not a textual exclusion. It is a doctrinal one, generated by Menard’s deference to social practice and reinforced by provincial statutes that name industry standards as the legal standard. The question is whether that exclusion is defensible on the Code’s own theoretical commitments. It is not.

A.        Recognition and its withdrawal: Morris on persons and their treatment

Morris's “Persons and Punishment” defends a “right to be treated as a person” under criminal law.^[28] Part of Morris's argument is the right to be punished for what one has done rather than managed for what one might do.^[29] The structural part is broader. Morris contrasts a punishment system, which addresses its subjects as persons by recognizing them as authors of their own conduct, with a therapy system, which addresses its subjects as objects of management whose behaviour is treated as a “happening” to be prevented or cured.^[30] The first imposes the burdens of compliance and the promise of fair process; the second imposes neither, because it does not recognize the subject as a rights-bearing participant.^[31] The point is not that farmed animals are persons in Morris's sense, but that a regime claiming to address a subject while in fact addressing something else, recognizing welfare rights on paper but treating the subject as an object to be managed, is not a normative form of criminal law.

Section 445.1(1)(a) names animals, without qualification, as protected subjects whose suffering, when wilfully and unnecessarily inflicted, is a public wrong. Despite this, the Menard framework, and the provincial clauses that mirror it, change what the section does. Once “reasonable and generally accepted practices” are defined by industry codes, the Code’s engagement with farmed-animal suffering is no longer a criminal-law issue. What remains is the therapy-system approach that Morris describes. The suffering is managed by industry codes, by veterinary science, and by provincial regulators applying the typical standards, but it is no longer addressed as a wrong for which the Code holds anyone accountable. The animal’s suffering becomes a regulatory event, not a violation of criminal law.

The Code recognizes farmed animals as victims for purposes of its prohibitions and then, through the doctrinal mechanism Part II describes, denies that recognition for purposes of enforcement. Recognition without enforcement, on Morris’s account, is not a partial form of recognition. It is the substitution of a therapy-system approach for a punishment-system approach, the very substitution Morris identifies as central to what makes criminal law legitimate. What s. 445.1(1)(a) says it does and what it actually does never logically resolves.

B.        The Public-Law Model: Chiao on Industry Capture as a Failure of Public Justification

Chiao's thesis is that criminal law and its associated institutions are “subject to the same principles of institutional and political evaluation that apply to public law and public institutions generally.”^[32] Criminal law is “first and foremost an institution that contributes to making social cooperation under the rule of law possible,” to be “understood and justified” in the same terms as any other component of society's basic structure.^[33] Its authority comes not from the wrongfulness of the conduct it prohibits but from the political values that justify any use of state power. Two of Chiao's conclusions advance this paper's argument. First, the distinction between “retributive” and “distributive” justice does not insulate criminal law from public-law review.^[34] If criminal law is one form of public ordering among others, the choice to engage with conduct through criminal law rather than regulation is itself a political choice that must be publicly justified. Second, criminal law “must explain how it fits within an overarching theory of justice appropriate to society's basic structure.”^[35]

The Menard framework permits “unnecessary” to be set by reference to “social priorities” and “the means available and their accessibility.”^[36] Where the activity is industrial agriculture, those priorities and means are determined in practice by the industry the prohibition is meant to constrain. The provincial “reasonable and generally accepted practices” clauses leave no room for interpretation: what is reasonable and generally accepted is what is reasonable and accepted within the industry, as documented in industry-drafted codes of practice.^[37] The substantive content of the rule is, by operation of doctrine and statute together, written by the regulated party itself. On Chiao's account, this is the failure of public justification his framework is built to identify; the problem starts not at enforcement but at rule-making.

The second conclusion adds to the problem. The implicit farming exemption is a quiet displacement of the most significant category of animal suffering in Canada from the Code to a regulatory regime the Code itself does not acknowledge. There has been no legislative determination that industrial agriculture should be governed by industry codes rather than by s. 445.1(1)(a); the result has been produced through doctrinal evolution and provincial carve-outs, never put to the political community. Chiao’s framework treats this kind of move, that is, from a contested public-law institution to an uncontested private-regulatory one, as exactly the kind of decision public-law standards demand be justified, transparently and to all affected parties.^[38] The exemption fails that test not because it produces the wrong substantive answer but because the question has never been asked.

C.        The functions of criminal law: Husak on what the exemption costs

Husak responds to abolitionist scholarship by listing functions that any partial withdrawal of the criminal law must justify abandoning. The exemption defeats several of these functions at the same time, but three are decisive for the argument at hand.

1.         Censure and the expressive function

Criminal law is the institution through which the political community publicly condemns conduct it judges wrongful, in a form that distinguishes punishment from regulatory sanction. As Husak describes, “… convicted defendants are not merely held liable, they are pronounced guilty,” and that judgment “… publicly condemns; it communicates a message other legal judgments lack.”^[39] Section 445.1(1)(a) performs that expressive function on its face. The exemption removes protections for the largest category of animals to which the prohibition formally applies. The substitution of regulatory management for criminal condemnation is not a neutral choice, but one made from guidance of a profit-driven board of agricultural producers. This helps produce a Code that condemns small-scale animal cruelty and remains silent on industrial-scale animal cruelty.

2.         Proportionality, and suppression of vigilantism and private response

Husak treats proportionality not only as a constraint on punishment, but also as a function of the criminal law’s grading of harms.^[40] The exemption breaks that grading at the largest scale of industrial farming. Section 445.1(1)(a) is engaged by isolated acts of cruelty involving individual animals while remaining a silent partner to industrial conduct that produces the bulk of preventable animal suffering in Canada.^[41] The most egregious instances of the conduct the prohibition names remain financially comfortable outside its operation. Husak also identifies the use of private retaliation as among criminal law’s basic functions, observing that citizens may “resort to vigilantism when they perceive that the criminal justice system” fails to do its work.^[42]

Open rescue, undercover investigations, and other extra-judicial responses occupy the space the criminal law has vacated. Together, the failures compound: condemnation is pointed in the wrong direction, the marginalized are punished while severe industrial conduct against the same victims is tolerated. On Morris's account, the exemption is a denial of recognition; on Chiao's, a failure of public justification; on Husak's, a simultaneous defeat of three functions criminal law exists to perform. They are three descriptions of the same problem: a criminal prohibition that names a category of victim and is not, for the largest segment of that category, a criminal prohibition.

IV.       BROADER IMPLICATIONS: DISPLACEMENT AND THE TWO-TIERED SYSTEM

The exemption is not only philosophically untenable; its continued use produces a structural pattern, a two-tiered system in which the criminal law engages with marginal conduct and detaches from systemic conduct that defeats one of criminal law’s most foundational functions. In “Crime: in Proportion and in Perspective,” Gardner argues that the criminal law’s primary historical purpose, and a central pillar of its modern justification, is the displacement of private retaliation: “the blood feud, the vendetta, the duel, the revenge, the lynching” are the modes of response criminal law exists to render unnecessary.^[43] The law’s job, according to Gardner, is to “take the heat out of the situation and remove some of the temptation to retaliate.”^[44]

Gardner is careful about limits: the displacement function does not support criminalization of “victimless wrongs or wrongs whose victims do not offer or inspire retaliatory responses.”^[45] Two features of his account prevent that limit from defeating this paper's argument. First, the constituency is not the victim alone but the victim “together with their families, associates and supporters.”^[46] Second, the function applies when the state ignores a wrong and others feel forced to act in its place, which is exactly what is happening in Canadian industrial farming.

Open rescue, undercover documentation, civil disobedience at slaughterhouses, and the broader range of direct-action animal advocacy in Canada are best understood, on Gardner's framework, as occupying the space the criminal law has vacated.^[47] Advocates' own published rationales make the claim explicit: the state has failed to engage with conduct the Code names as criminal, and private engagement is the necessary alternative.^[48]

The pattern is not unique to farming. The same structural features recur across categories of Canadian criminal law in which industry codes shape the meaning of statutory standards.^[49] Farming is the clearest example because the federal prohibition is unambiguous and the doctrinal mechanism rendering it ineffective is obvious. But any criminal-law regime whose rules are set by the conduct it promises to regulate will produce a displacement-function failure.

V.         Conclusion

The implicit farming exemption operates through Menard’s deference to social practice, reinforced by provincial “reasonable and generally accepted practices” clauses that name industry-defined codes as the legal standard. Together, the federal doctrinal architecture and the provincial statutory architecture produce a regime in which the Code’s prohibition on wilfully causing unnecessary suffering to animals is, for the conduct generating the overwhelming majority of farmed-animal suffering in Canada, a prohibition in name only.

Morris exposes the Code’s recognition of farmed animals as victims and its withdrawal of that recognition for purposes of enforcement. Chiao exposes the Code’s rule-content delegated to the regulated industry rather than justified to the political community whose criminal law it is. Husak makes the cost visible: simultaneous failures of expression, proportionality, and displacement of private response. Gardner shows what follows: a public-perception gap, extra-judicial responses occupying the space the criminal law has vacated, and the criminalization of those responses through ag-gag provisions that build on, rather than address, the underlying defect.

Criminal law is defensible only when it practices the theoretical commitments it espouses. The implicit farming exemption fails this test on three of those commitments at once. The argument is not that industrial agriculture must be abolished, that farmed animals must be granted personhood, or that the Code must be re-written; it is that retaining a criminal prohibition in form while delegating its substantive content to the regulated industry is not a defen

sible regulatory choice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LEGISLATION

Animal Protection Act, RSA 2000, c A-41.

Animal Protection Act, SNS 2018, c 21.

Animal Protection Act, 2018, SS 2018, c A-21.2.

Constitution Act, 1867 (UK), 30 & 31 Vict, c 3, reprinted in RSC 1985, Appendix II, No 5.

Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46.

Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019, SO 2019, c 13.

Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, 2020, SO 2020, c 9.

Trespass Statutes (Protecting Law-Abiding Property Owners) Amendment Act, 2019, SA 2019, c 23.

JURISPRUDENCE

R v Galloro, 2006 ONCJ 263.

R v Menard (1978), 43 CCC (2d) 458 (Que CA).

R v Pacific Meat Co Ltd, 1957 CanLII 466 (BC Co Ct), 119 CCC 237.

SECONDARY MATERIALS: MONOGRAPHS

Bisgould, Lesli, Animals and the Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2011).

Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation (New York: HarperCollins, 1975).

SECONDARY MATERIALS: ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Chiao, Vincent, “What is the Criminal Law For?” (2016) 35:2 Law and Philosophy 137.

Gardner, John, “Crime: in Proportion and in Perspective” in Andrew Ashworth & Martin Wasik, eds, Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory: Essays in Honour of Andrew von Hirsch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 31.

Husak, Douglas, “The Price of Criminal Law Skepticism: Ten Functions of the Criminal Law” (2020) 23:1 New Criminal Law Review 27.

Lazare, Jodi, “Animal Rights Activism and the Constitution: Are Ag-Gag Laws Justifiable Limits?” (2022) 59:3 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 667.

Morris, Herbert, “Persons and Punishment” (1968) 52:4 The Monist 475.

Ristroph, Alice, “Criminal Law as Public Ordering” (2020) 70 University of Toronto Law Journal (Suppl 1) 64.

SECONDARY MATERIALS: REPORTS AND OTHER SOURCES

Animal Justice, “Despite Efforts, BC Slaughterhouse Fails to Bury Damning Undercover Footage” (11 January 2025), online: Animal Justice <animaljustice.ca/blog/slaughterhouse-fails-to-bury-undercover-footage>.

Animal Justice, “Farmed Animals”, online: Animal Justice <animaljustice.ca/issues/farming>.

Animal Justice, “NFACC Codes of Practice”, online: Animal Justice <animaljustice.ca/blog/nfacc-codes-of-practice>.

Animal Justice, “Research Co Poll: Canadians Care About Animals” (15 April 2022), online: Animal Justice<animaljustice.ca/blog/research-co-poll-canadians-care-about-animals>.

Animal Justice, “Strengthening Farmed Animal Welfare Laws” (16 October 2014), online: Animal Justice<animaljustice.ca/blog/strengthening-canadas-farmed-animal-welfare-laws>.

Animal Justice, Humane World for Animals Canada, Mercy For Animals & Montreal SPCA. Towards a National Framework for Farmed Animal Protection (16 April 2026), online: Humane World for Animals<humaneworld.org/sites/default/files/docs/VisionReport2026-Digital.pdf>.

Mercy For Animals, “5 Undercover Investigations That Blew the Lid Off the Meat Industry” (16 October 2017), online: Mercy For Animals <mercyforanimals.org/blog/5-undercover-investigations-that-blew-the/>.

National Farm Animal Care Council, “Codes of Practice for the Care and Handling of Farm Animals”, online: NFACC<nfacc.ca/codes-of-practice>.

Statistics Canada, “Number of livestock and poultry on farms”, Table 32-10-0130-01, online:Statistics Canada<www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/e

^[1]Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, ss 444–447 [Criminal Code].

^[2] Lesli Bisgould, Animals and the Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2011); Animal Justice Canada, “Farmed Animals”, online: Animal Justice<animaljustice.ca/issues/farming>.

^[3]Constitution Act, 1867 (UK), 30 & 31 Vict, c 3, s 91, reprinted in RSC 1985, Appendix II, No 5.

^[4]Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019, SO 2019, c 13, s 17(1) [PAWS Act].

^[5] Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, updated ed (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).

^[6] Herbert Morris, “Persons and Punishment” (1968) 52:4 The Monist 475 at 476 [Morris, “Persons and Punishment”].

^[7] Vincent Chiao, “What is the Criminal Law For?” (2016) 35:2 Law & Phil 137 at 137 [Chiao, “Criminal Law”].

^[8] Douglas Husak, “The Price of Criminal Law Skepticism: Ten Functions of the Criminal Law” (2020) 23:1 New Crim L Rev 27 at 27-28 [Husak, “Ten Functions”].

^[9] John Gardner, “Crime: in Proportion and in Perspective” in Andrew Ashworth & Martin Wasik, eds, Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory: Essays in Honour of Andrew von Hirsch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 31 at 31–32 [Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”].

^[10] Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”, supra note 9 at 31–32.

^[11]Criminal Code, supra note 1, Part XI.

^[12]Criminal Code, supra note 1, s 445.1(1)(a).

^[13]R v Menard (1978), 43 CCC (2d) 458 [Menard].

^[14]Menard, supra note 13 at 461.

^[15]Menard, supra note 13 at 466.

^[16]Menard, supra note 13 at 463.

^[17]Menard, supra note 13 at 463-64.

^[18]Menard, supra note 13 at 462.

^[19]R v Galloro, 2006 ONCJ 263 at para 10.

^[20]R v Sanaee, 2016 ABCA 289 at paras 16, 23.

^[21]R v Picco, 2023 NLCA 33 at paras 16–21.

^[22]R v Higgins (1996), 144 Nfld & PEIR 295 (Nfld SC TD) at paras 11–12; Criminal Code, supra note 1, s 445.1(3).

^[23]R v Pacific Meat Co Ltd, 1957 CanLII 466 (BC Co Ct), 119 CCC 237 at 239.

^[24]PAWS Act, supra note 4, s 17(1).

^[25]Animal Protection Act, SNS 2018, c 21, ss 26(4), 28(b) (exempting slaughter conducted under provincial or federal slaughter laws and agricultural practices carried out in accordance with NFACC codes of practice).

^[26]Animal Protection Act, RSA 2000, c A-41, s 2(2) (exempting distress resulting from “reasonable and generally accepted practices of animal care, management, husbandry, hunting, fishing, trapping, pest control or slaughter”); Animal Protection Act, 2018, SS 2018, c A-21.2, s 4(3) (using the same “reasonable and generally accepted practices” language).

^[27]National Farm Animal Care Council, “Codes of Practice for the Care and Handling of Farm Animals”, online: <nfacc.ca/codes-of-practice> [NFACC, “Codes of Practice”]; Animal Justice Canada, “NFACC Codes of Practice”, online: <animaljustice.ca/blog/nfacc-codes-of-practice>; Lesli Bisgould, supra note 2.

^[28]Morris, “Persons and Punishment”, supra note 6 at 476.

^[29]Morris, “Persons and Punishment”, supra note 6 at 476–82.

^[30]Morris, “Persons and Punishment”, supra note 6 at 482–88.

^[31]Morris, “Persons and Punishment”, supra note 6 at 476, 493.

^[32]Chiao, “Criminal Law”, supra note 7 at 137.

^[33]Chiao, “Criminal Law”, supra note 7 at 138-39.

^[34]Chiao, “Criminal Law”, supra note 7 at 152.

^[35]Chiao, “Criminal Law”, supra note 7 at 153, 160.

^[36] Menard, supra note 13 at 463–64.

^[37]NFACC, “Codes of Practice”, supra note 27.

^[38]Chiao, “Criminal Law”, supra note 7 at 160.

^[39]Husak, “Ten Functions”, supra note 8 at 36-37.

^[40]Husak, “Ten Functions”, supra note 8 at 47-48.

^[41]Statistics Canada, “Number of livestock and poultry on farms”, Table 32-10-0130-01, Statistics Canada online: <150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3210013001>; Animal Justice Canada, “Farmed Animals”, supra note 2.

^[42]Husak, “Ten Functions”, supra note 8 at 41–46.

^[43]Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”, supra note 9 at 31.

^[44]Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”, supra note 9 at 32.

^[45] Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”, supra note 9 at 34–35.

^[46] Gardner, “Crime in Proportion”, supra note 9 at 31.

^[47] Animal Justice Canada, “Farmed Animals”, supra note 2; Mercy For Animals, “5 Undercover Investigations That Blew the Lid Off the Meat Industry” (16 October 2017), Mercy for Animals online: <mercyforanimals.org/blog/5-undercover-investigations-that-blew-the/>.

^[48] Animal Justice, Humane World for Animals Canada, Mercy For Animals & Montreal SPCA, Towards a National Framework for Farmed Animal Protection (16 April 2026), Humane World for Animals online: <humaneworld.org/sites/default/files/docs/VisionReport2026-Digital.pdf>; Animal Justice, “Despite Efforts, BC Slaughterhouse Fails to Bury Damning Undercover Footage” (11 January 2025), online: Animal Justice<animaljustice.ca/blog/slaughterhouse-fails-to-bury-undercover-footage>).

^[49] Lesli Bisgould, supra note 2; Alice Ristroph, “Criminal Law as Public Ordering” (2020) 70 UTLJ (Suppl 1) 64 at 70–75.