For most pet owners, a house fire is our worst nightmare – watching first responders do their best to save our precious but helpless companions as smoke billows out the windows.
Read more “Five tips for Pet Fire Safety Day”10 ways you can build a humane Canada
What do we mean when we say the word humane? And what does it mean to be a humane community or nation?
In Canada and around the world, the humane movement is about compassion, collaboration, education and action. It was built on the idea that we need to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and it’s focused on minimizing or eliminating the suffering and exploitation of animals.
Farm Animal Slaughter in Canada
The humane slaughter of farm animals is of great concern to Humane Canada (also known as the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies). Canada’s current humane slaughter regulations are weak, and enforcement of these regulations is inadequate.
Read more “Farm Animal Slaughter in Canada”Lessons learned from the Fort Mac wildfires
June is Disaster Preparedness Month, and I took the opportunity to have a conversation with Tara Clarke, the outgoing Executive Director of Fort McMurray SPCA, to hear what the organization learned about disaster preparedness after living through the largest animal disaster rescue in Canadian history: the Fort McMurray wildfires. It’s been just over a year since the wildfires hit, and the Fort McMurray community is still in the process of rebuilding and recovering.
Read more “Lessons learned from the Fort Mac wildfires”Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare
The Five Freedoms is a core concept in animal welfare that originated in a UK government report in 1965 and was then refined by the Farm Animal Welfare Council. It states that an animal’s primary welfare needs can be met by safeguarding the following five freedoms:
Read more “Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare”What’s the difference between a humane society/SPCA, rescue, municipal pound and satellite adoption centre?
Humane Society/SPCA
This generally refers to an organization dedicated to the betterment of animal welfare. They usually run a shelter and an animal adoption program to find new homes for abandoned, mistreated and/or surrendered animals. They also conduct education in their community and are often mandated to enforce provincial and federal animal cruelty laws.