In Canada, animal welfare effort runs afoul of privacy laws

Efforts to end abuse of chickens at poultry farms in British Columbia are counter to Canada’s privacy rights laws, the province’s acting information and privacy commissioner, Drew McArthur, said in a report. Employees of chicken-catching contractor Elite Farm Services Ltd. were videotaped earlier this year stomping on live chickens and ripping the birds apart. The company fired the workers on the video and implemented video surveillance in the form of body cameras worn by a supervisor and at least two staff members during working hours. But McArthur said, “I was concerned that video surveillance was being used as a ‘quick fix,’ without thoughtful consideration of its privacy impacts.” In fact, Canada’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) governs the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. In his report, McArthur wrote, “We found that the company was not authorized to collect the information under PIPA because the purposes for which it was collecting and using personal information were not reasonable.” Not only would the body cameras capture employees who were not implicated in the original video, as those workers had been fired, but the cameras would also collect information about others, such as farmers, truckers and other contractors, who had not consented to being videotaped.