The word "chicken" has become the name of a product rather than that of an animal. Nearly all North American chickens are raised and slaughtered in industrial operations. Most chickens raised for meat are engineered to grow rapidly in crowded barns with tens of thousands of other birds. The virtual hell created for tens of billions of animals by factory farming is one of the greatest moral issues of our time. Positive change requires us to take animal interests seriously in the all the choices we make, as consumers, citizens and human beings.

It's time to rethink our relationship with animals. We can begin by demanding effective laws from our governments guaranteeing the Five Freedoms for all animals in Canada. By doing this, animals may begin to become visible to us; they may matter.

Recently CTV's W5 aired an episode called "Food for Thought." The video shows pigs with open wounds living confined in tight gestation stalls, piglets being castrated without anesthetic and piglets killed with blunt force trauma. The hard truth is that much of what the video reveals is likely standard industry practice and not in violation of federal or provincial law.