Hello, my name is Sarah Berger Richardson. I’m an associate professor in the Civil Rights Section at the University of Ottawa, and today I’m going to talk to you about a topic close to my heart: the problem of fires in agricultural buildings.
A few years ago, I received a sticker in the mail that I put on my front door to alert first responders in case of an emergency that I have a dog at home. I’ve been afraid of fires ever since I was a child. When the firefighters came to elementary school to talk to us about the importance of evacuation plans, I decided to put all my special items, my stuffed animals, in plastic bags so I could grab them quickly in case of a fire when leaving the house.
But I still have this fear, even for my dog today. And I always have this fear that in case of emergency, if we have to evacuate and she escapes, she won’t have her collar with her identification.
My research focuses on agri-food law and I have a particular interest in the welfare of farm animals. So, if the welfare of my dog in the event of a fire concerns me, I ask myself the question: what happens for farm animals on a farm?
To answer this question, I went to visit the “Lijonor” dairy farm to learn from a dairy farmer how he experienced a fire on his farm.
Hi, hi Isabelle! Hello! Sarah? Is that right? Yes, Jonathan, delighted! Hello, hello.
Thank you! That’s nice, nice. Come on, let’s go see it. Okay, I’ll show you! Thank you.
In a week’s time, the culture will be done, we start to take out the “dry” cows and a week later or even the same week, it’s some “heifers”. We’re bringing out about fifteen “heifers” and then around five “dry” cows.
Thank you for welcoming us to your farm. It’s a pleasure!
My name is Jonathan Saint-Pierre, I’m from the Lijonor farm in 2012. Lijonor is Lise, Jonathan, and Normand. I’m the 4th generation and I have a little one, a little boy, and a big girl who will probably be the 5th: which is what I’d like. And we’re currently a dairy farm of 65 cows with about 60 shifts, also with two milking robots for robotic milking, in free use. My animals still go outside when they’re on leave, either “dry” cows and the adolescents, the larger “heifers,” near the verage, but they go outside, everyone goes outside. In their lives, everyone will go outside or will be outside.
So we’re in a new building, but I understand there are still challenges with a new building, so what happened in February 2023? On February 14, 2023, I got a call at 1:57 a.m. to be very precise, which doesn’t happen that often, but my robot called me, robot A5, A4 wasn’t there, A5 was there. He called me to tell me there was no cow at the robot for 10 minutes. Which shouldn’t happen, never. So that means there was a problem. So in the middle of the night, I get dressed, it takes me 8 minutes to get here on site and in a corner of the building, well, I had a tractor that was, that was stopped there, an old tractor from 1972 and it was on fire.
When I arrived in the building with my outside door, there was smoke all over the barn, and it was February so the ventilation wasn’t very open. So what I did: I called 911 immediately. With the central, I said that the building wasn’t on fire, that there was a tractor on fire, which was in the new building, but between two buildings that housed 140 heads. So I said, I said to the girl at the central, I said: it’s urgent, it’s important but I say we can still save everything. So I said, I’m going to go as quickly as possible, I’m going to try to get as many extinguishers as possible to try to put it out.
And I managed to get three. Then some firefighter friends, nearby; only half a kilometer away, they arrived in less than 4 minutes. And I gave them two more fire extinguishers, then with my three fire extinguishers that I initially put out, it was still burning so much, I was just slowing down. Between the call I made and the first firefighter who arrived to water, it took 14 minutes.
After emptying my three extinguishers, well, I didn’t have class in my garage to get two more extinguishers and my tractor with a backhoe. And uh, the firefighters were still waiting. I arrived with my tractor with a backhoe, I tried to get the tractor out as quickly as possible by completely uncoupling the whole little tractor that was on fire. But after that, my second tractor, my tractor with a backhoe went out. Completely out.
So it took a few minutes, I went to get a third tractor and then when I came back with my third tractor, the firefighters had already arrived. It had been 14 minutes since I called. Then they had already installed a swimming pool in the courtyard. There were five trucks, 19 firefighters and they watered for a minute and it was all over.
So this is where it all starts. This is exactly where it all started, I had a small tractor parked here. Every week, we used it, and uh, the tractor lit itself. When I arrived at 2:00 in the morning, well, I had spectators watching me here, I had a fire on the hood of almost half a meter and a little more. So the best thing was to call like I did at the beginning, my ventilation, to go get another tractor to try to get out as quickly as possible, to try to save the building, to try to save all my friends. I was very serious but extremely precise.
It was the A5 robot that called me, that is to say the first one. So, I didn’t even delete the alarm. The alarm was ringing but it wasn’t important, the most important thing was that it called me. And then the cows didn’t even want to go get milked, they were too busy watching the fire and that’s okay, because it’s very impressive. For someone who, I spoke to someone who has already had a fire in their house. The crackling and the smell are really unpleasant in one step, that’s what it takes to reach someone. It’s something not to experience, not to experience.
Cows are curious animals, right, they are the ones who sowed the alarm by being too captivated by the fire. They even ran away. They chose to observe the fire instead of being milked. It’s good because otherwise, I might have arrived 1 hour too late, then 1 hour too late right now, well it’s becoming exponential. At the hour, well it’s not 100,000 it’s 1 million, then after 1 hour well there it’s not 1 million anymore, it’s 3 million who pass through it. It’s several after it’s all the animals who pass through it.
But on the spot you still saw that the cows were curious that they were looking in the direction of the fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, lucky that they did, because… yeah. You have to thank them for having warned you. They even ran away.
Unfortunately Jonathan’s story is not unique. Fortunately for him there were no deaths on the farm, but it often happens that animals die during fires. A few years ago, the charity Humane Society International published a report in which they studied farm building fires in Canada. And they identified that between 2015 and 2019, approximately 65 barns caught fire each year.
Given all these challenges and risks associated with preventing and protecting animals during fires, one might wonder what the regulatory requirements are for protecting animals. We know that there are requirements in different buildings to protect the people inside. But what about animals?
In reality, there are very few regulatory requirements to protect animals in the event of a fire and as a lawyer and researcher, this intrigued me because I was wondering: are there really no regulations? So, to answer this question, I was in contact with the founder and director of the Quebec Animal Rights Association, Nicholas Morello. Today, he is leading an in-depth project to better understand the regulatory framework for the protection of animal welfare in the event of a fire.
In Quebec, in 2015, the legislature decided to change the legal status of animals to declare, firstly, that they are not property, secondly, that they are beings, thirdly, that they are sentient—that is, that they can feel things including suffering, anxiety, pain, and distress. As well, it described animals as having essential needs.
It is therefore a unique legal regime. We found that despite this new statute, which states that animals can suffer, there were a large number of fires. In Quebec, since 2015, the DAC has found that more than 60,000 animals are burned alive each year. Burning alive in a fire is like dying in a gas chamber. It is very painful, and the suffering is inestimable.
There are 17 administrative regions in Quebec, and we identified the regions that account for more than half of the fires. There are three administrative regions in Quebec. We studied the regulatory regimes in these three regions, where there are more than 50% of fires.
What we discovered is that among the 333 municipalities we studied, only one municipality has a bylaw specifically concerning livestock buildings. I distinguish between a livestock building where animals are housed and a simple agricultural building. A simple agricultural building doesn’t have any animals in it, so it can have tools, which are property, so if you decide to let your tools be completely destroyed by a fire, it’s your choice to assume that risk or not.
But there is a fundamental distinction when we have thousands of chickens in a livestock building. Why? Because the legislator tells us that they are beings, they are in a state of being, they feel things, and that they have essential needs. So it is important that the purpose sought by a regulatory regime will recognize this reality in the same way that in a school, we will have a regulatory regime to protect the safety of children, than in a building that is inhabited by elderly people, for example.
There is a level of jurisdictions that are responsible for buildings. So there are provincial framework laws and there are municipalities that have the power to regulate within their territory, to create regulations for each municipality, city, or village. So there is not a single law, it is a set of legal frameworks that apply.
Our goal is to put in place the foundations so that we can create a real legal regime to protect animal beings and not only animal beings, but also farmers. We must understand that a farmer exposed to his livestock building on fire is very traumatic. So we want to reconcile the interests of human beings, of farmers, with the needs that are now described in the Civil Code and in the Law on the safety, welfare and security of animals, to reduce to a minimum these recurring fires year after year.
So there were no injuries, but I suppose it was an event that marked you, that scared you. It’s traumatic, as you might think, because I’m not the type to cry or feel sorry for myself, but when I washed myself after all that, well, I burst into tears. And I still talk about it and it still affects me and my flock will have been affected, because it’s like my grandbabies. But I have children, I have two children. My two children are doing much better. But I have 140 and they are my granddaughters too. So I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my granddaughters either.
So I’m very happy, but two days later, it’s like I had a lucky star because two days later, a few kilometers from here, well, a producer in the middle of the afternoon—his herd burned almost entirely. They found a few heads but in the end almost everyone died. So really, I was just… I had a guardian angel for me because at two o’clock in the morning, how can you save a business? Because otherwise everything would have died. Then we hear about how many there are per year.
The reality is that a fire on a farm is a traumatic event for both the breeder, the farmer, and his animals. And also for veterinarians, and also for first responders who arrive on the scene and notice animals in distress. Despite the lack of state regulations, people affected by these fires will take the initiative to develop standards to better protect the animals on their farms. So we can have veterinarians, farmers who will develop emergency plans themselves, who will think about things they can do.
After the fire, a year later, I understand that there have been changes on the farm. You developed an emergency plan with your veterinarian. Yes, Isabelle is a veterinarian I have known for a long time. She follows my herd a little in collaboration with the Richemont veterinary practice. Isabelle contacted me for a project that was close to my heart: how to plan something like an escape plan, an evacuation plan for the business—either mine or even more broadly, how to have a plan for everyone.
As a veterinarian, what do you encourage your clients to do to prevent or better respond to fires? What I would like is for clients to really think about, if something happens at my house—a fire—where do I let my animals out? I would like them to consider which door is the most favorable. Basically, there are important criteria for choosing animal exits: the door must be at least twice as big as the biggest cow in the barn so that the cow can easily get out of the building.
The house where I live—if there is a fire, I have an alarm and I can get out of the house quickly when I hear the alarm—but I suppose it’s different issues on the farm; it’s more complicated, there are animals. What’s the difference between a fire in my house and a fire on the farm? Oh, well, of course, at home you can decide for yourself whether to get out. On the farm, there are really a lot of animals to manage, and they don’t necessarily listen to you. You have to know their behavior to be able to try to do something. We have the time factor, then we have the safety factor. We really don’t want producers to put themselves in danger to get animals out. I think the key is to have thought about it in advance and to have itineraries in our heads of what can be done.
What happens with the firefighters when they arrive? How can they help manage the evacuation of the animals? I went to meet the firefighters in my region with one of my colleagues, because I was curious to see if there were any special protocols for farm fires. Firefighters are not trained to handle animals, and that’s not their mission either. The firefighters’ mandate is public safety—to make sure people are safe. When you have a fire on a farm, all your equipment to contain your animals is burning on the farm. So we have no equipment to help us contain our cows. We don’t have a halter, we don’t have a barrier.
If the firefighters had a few halters in their truck, well, when they arrived on site—without it being their responsibility—they could give them to the people there who know the animals, who are able to handle them. Because they don’t know, they don’t know how to handle animals. It’s not their mandate to manage euthanasia and all that, not at all. So I would say that it was their business to know, to have a veterinary opinion, but what they asked us: they told us it’s fine if you want to come to a fire, but what we would like is for you to be clearly identified. So we had yellow vests made with them, identified with “veterinarian” written on the back.
It was Isabelle who developed a special plan. This is a plan of the site, either from an aerial view—it shows us a bit of the layout, the buildings—but also what is very important is the access to the doors. So there are several copies of this, either at my parents’ house, or in my house, or in the garage, or in sheds. These are plans, but they can help us move much more quickly. This is what Isabelle proposed, and it was really well done. That’s why we did what we could do—implement it.
And for the contacts who have a place on the list, who should we call? Yes, we have prioritized the contact lists a bit—those who can come and help immediately. Then we have the animal transporters: this can help us, firstly, keep the animals in a safe place if we manage to load them into a trailer, and also if we need to move them to another farm, the transporters are already there to do it. We put the veterinarian on the list because sometimes in an emergency situation you don’t automatically think to call the veterinarian.
We also put excavators and tractors on the list, which can sometimes help cut down the building or stop the fire. Then, among the priorities, farms and animal boarding facilities are possible—that’s where we send our animals if something happens. It seems that under stress, you know a lot of friends who have farms, neighbors, but at the time, it’s difficult to think carefully. If you’ve already made an agreement with someone, you’ve already thought about it, it will be much easier. Otherwise, we also had the list of equipment to keep—something important outside the barn—because if you keep your things inside, well, your barn is burning down, and you need an emergency kit that you know where it is outside the barn.
And I think, Jonathan, you said you had several copies, several, we can take it. Because we’re putting it back in its place. Yes, we’re going to put it back in its place. It’s a great deal. So there are some on the table, there are some in the dairy, there are some in the garage, there are some in the house. It’s the same thing, and we could thank Isabelle for taking the initiative for this, because I hadn’t done it. But with help, we’re doing it.
Ah, but it’s true. We could get the herd out in a few seconds—65 cows—we could get that out relatively quickly because I wouldn’t see one there, so everyone would pass by, everyone would turn around. There’s one who’s curious, who would like to get out. They say to themselves, we’re ready!
Between state regulations and individual will, we can also find other sources of normative rules to regulate agricultural activities. So now we see, little by little, the industry taking an interest in this subject.
Daphnée Menard, who is a lawyer and doctoral student in the Civil Law Section, is conducting research on the self-regulation of animal welfare in Canada. And she will give us a picture of how the industry today is beginning to regulate agricultural activities to better prevent the risks associated with fires in farm buildings.
In the context of animal welfare on farms and emergency and fire management, we have, in Canada, what is called the National Council for the Care and Handling of Farm Animals. And the National Council is the basis for codes of good practice, again for the care and handling of farm animals. It is a self-regulatory system.
It is important to understand that the National Council for Farm Animal Care does not report to the federal government, nor to the provincial government, nor is it a public or parapublic body like the French Food Inspection Agency would be in the agri-food sector, for example. In fact, the National Council is a non-profit organization—therefore private—which was born largely at the initiative of the agri-food industry. And the people who are there, in this organization, are mainly people from the agri-food industry. These people decided to impose standards on themselves regarding the treatment of animals on the farm.
In fact, codes of good practice are actually guidelines. They are presented a bit in the form of a guide or a manual intended for agricultural producers, but also for veterinarians who practice agriculture. The objective is to standardize standards—the way we treat an animal on the farm—really to establish a solid level of how things happen, how we treat animals on the farm.
Then you have to understand that obviously there is a code of good practice for each agricultural sector—so for pork, chicken, dairy cows, etc. And you have to understand that the codes themselves are not laws or regulations, and they are not adopted by our elected officials. So they are more what you might call the generally accepted rules or the rules of the art in agriculture. Hence, generally speaking, the industry considers it the acceptable way to raise animals on the farm.
Codes of good practice can include elements in terms of emergency and fire management. And I think what makes them really interesting tools at this level is the fact, as I was saying, that these are tools that come from the agri-food industry itself. So we expect producers, agricultural producers, veterinarians to know and follow these rules.
However, when you take a look at the codes and then read them a little more carefully, you can see that, yes, there are certain requirements in terms of emergency management. For example, there is the idea of having an emergency plan that is known to staff, with, for example, the names of the various resource people to contact in the event of an emergency. These are interesting requirements, but I would say they are still quite minimal.
There are certain codes as well, and for example, the latest 2023 code that was adopted for dairy cows: there are no requirements in this code, for example, on emergencies, emergency management on the farm. These are only recommendations. So it is recommended to implement certain elements, but it is not required.
I think that an interesting solution would be for all the codes for the entire sector—for example, chickens, cows, pigs—to include clear requirements regarding emergency management, for example, in the case of fires, the installation of fire systems in farm buildings.
So if the fire ever goes out now, I see there are fire extinguishers everywhere. Yeah, there’s about 20 pounds, there’s 10 pounds, yeah, there’s some in every corner of the barn. We don’t take any chances.
What does that do? It moves, they’re round bales for bedding, but it would move. So we could manage to block an alley to open the doors for everyone to get through. Okay, to guide.
Having done the emergency measures exercise, it seems like I’ve developed the reflex: automatically when I enter a farm, you know, I look at a set and then it seems like I think: what would I do? But I admit that I don’t say it every time, because sometimes it’s weird to arrive somewhere and say: if there’s a fire at your house, what are you doing there? I mean, it takes, maybe, the subject… the subject has to come up to talk about it. It’s still a bit delicate, but I still think about it. It seems that when I did the exercise, it made me develop that I see things, what could help, I don’t see it anymore.
Isabelle had an interest in this and I had come so close that it had no problem that I wanted to do it. But also my building was very well suited to this, involuntarily, it was well suited. But Isabelle, I also did another study project with her, and it went very well. She is a very kind person, very very competent, and at the office I think it is a good team at the office. I can say that it is a good team at the office. It makes me happy to work with them.
The urgency of acting in the face of barn fires cannot be underestimated. Every animal that dies in a fire or even every animal that has to be evacuated during a fire, that will suffer serious injuries, is a sentient animal that deserves our attention.
We’ve heard that there are significant regulatory gaps. Where should we turn? Is it the federal government? The provincial government? If it’s provincial, is it MAPAC? Is it the Ministry of Public Safety? Is it the municipalities? Is it the first responders? Is it the veterinarians? Is it the industry?
We can also ask the question: Is it the consumers? Are consumers willing to pay more for meat if farmers have to spend money to equip their farm buildings with new equipment?
This calls for solutions. Together we have explored several avenues—now it’s time to act
