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 t
