Over the past 30 years, animal agriculture in Canada has intensified dramatically. While the number of farms has decreased, the average farm size and number of animals per farm have increased, leading to a substantial environmental footprint. This intensification results in significant air and water pollution, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. Animal agriculture is a major source of potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. It’s also a leading cause of water pollution through nutrient runoff from manure and fertilizers, which contain large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus that can harm aquatic ecosystems.

To understand how legislation addresses these impacts, Animal Environmental Legal Advocacy, on behalf of World Animal Protection, conducted a review of environmental protection laws related to animal agriculture. The purpose was to identify legislative and policy reforms needed to better address the environmental harms of intensive animal farming operations, with a focus on Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. The researchers reviewed laws in six Canadian provinces, including British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec, and three international jurisdictions, California, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Environmental Laws Are Failing

The review found that environmental laws in most Canadian jurisdictions are “woefully inadequate” to address the impacts of the animal agriculture sector.

A key problem is that the industry is often exempt from environmental protection laws. For example, Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act prohibits the release of contaminants but creates an exemption for “normal farming practices.” Furthermore, none of the provinces reviewed have a single, comprehensive legal framework to manage pollution from animal agriculture. Instead, various laws deal with isolated issues like nutrient runoff or waste management.

The report’s comparative analysis identified which jurisdictions are leading — and lagging — in protecting the environment from animal agriculture.

Air Pollution

Manitoba has the strongest laws, as it requires greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and considers emissions when licensing new meat and other processing plants. Ontario and Quebec are among the weakest, with the former exempting farming and the latter not addressing air pollution related to animal agriculture at all.

Water Pollution

Manitoba again leads with concrete, measurable limits for phosphorus and other chemicals in water. In contrast, British Columbia and Ontario exempt agriculture from general prohibitions against introducing waste into the environment.

Land Degradation And Biodiversity Loss

This was an area of major weakness for most Canadian provinces. Queensland, Australia, and the U.K. have stronger protections, such as requiring government approval for new land clearing and making biodiversity a policy priority.

Enforcement Is Failing Too

However, the report stresses that even strong laws are only as good as their enforcement. Across Canada, nutrient management laws are often underenforced. For example, despite Manitoba’s relatively strong laws, Lake Winnipeg continues to experience severe algae blooms caused by nutrient pollution. In Ontario, it was found that only 3% of farms regulated under the Nutrient Management Act were inspected, and while 62% of those were in non-compliance, this was rarely penalized.

Key Reforms Are Needed

The report concludes that existing legal frameworks have failed to account for the devastating effects of animal agriculture. For advocates, it provides a clear roadmap for policy reform in Ontario and other jurisdictions:

1. Restructure government subsidies. Advocates can push governments to redirect subsidies away from intensive animal agriculture and toward more sustainable, plant-based food systems. Financial support could be made conditional on farmers reducing their environmental footprint, which may encourage them to shift away from intensive animal use.
2. Remove exemptions for animal agriculture. A key goal for advocates is to eliminate loopholes like the “normal farming practices” exemption from environmental laws. Animal agriculture projects should also be required to undergo environmental assessments, just like other major industries.
3. Expand and enforce environmental laws. Where laws apply to just a minority of farms, advocates can demand that the rules apply to all farms, especially in vulnerable watersheds, and that enforcement is improved through regular inspections and mandatory soil testing.
4. Introduce mandatory best management practices. Voluntary programs that aim to help farmers improve environmental conditions often have low participation rates. Mandatory best management practices would help the entire industry shift toward more sustainable practices that may also improve animal health and welfare and discourage intensive animal agriculture.
5. Impose a moratorium on intensive animal farming operations. Inspired by past proposed legislation in California and at the U.S. federal level, advocates can campaign for a moratorium on the construction of new intensive animal farming operations and the expansion of existing ones. This would be a direct way to curb the escalating environmental damage from the sector.

This summary was drafted by a large language model (LLM) and closely edited by our Research Library Manager for clarity and accuracy. As per our AI policy, Faunalytics only uses LLMs to summarize very long reports (50+ pages) that are not appropriate to assign to volunteers, as well as studies that contain graphic descriptions of animal cruelty or animal industries. We remain committed to bringing you reliable data, which is why any AI-generated work will always be thoroughly reviewed by a human.