It's kosher
Federal Court blocks rules that hampered kosher slaughter. Plus some record breaking numbers and the latest legal news.
Dylan Gibbs & Alexandra Son
July 26, 2024
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Fantastic stuff out of Ohio yesterday. In a 4-3 split decision, the state’s Supreme Court held that restaurants can’t be held responsible for bones that crop up in boneless wings. The majority said it’s so obvious that a jury shouldn’t even be asked to consider the issue—as a matter of law, customers should know that chicken may contain bones.
Here are the highlights from the decision’s two opinions.
The majority:
[T]he boneless wings were analogous to a fish fillet—and “everyone ...knows that tiny bones may remain in even the best fillets of fish.”
A diner reading “boneless wings” on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating “chicken fingers” would know that he had not been served fingers. The food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style; it was not a guarantee.
And the dissent:
[Y]ou have to give the majority its due; it realizes that boneless wings are not actually wings and that chicken fingers are not actually fingers.
The majority’s burst of common sense was short-lived, however, because its opinion also says that no person would conclude that a restaurant’s use of the word “boneless” on a menu was the equivalent of the restaurant’s “warranting the absence of bones.” Actually, that is exactly what people think. It is, not surprisingly, also what dictionaries say. “Boneless” means “without a bone.”
The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t. When they read the word “boneless,” they think that it means “without bones,” as do all sensible people.
What do you think? |
— Dylan Gibbs
with Alexandra Son
TODAY'S DOCKET |
Ritual slaughter barriers
Spousal support expiry
Record numbers
Liquor lawsuits
Resume errors
Gas bans
CHARTER
A resurgence for Kosher slaughter?
Jewish Community Council of Montreal v. Canada, 2024 FC 1163
Canada’s kosher meat supply has been declining. But the Federal Court granted an injunction this week that could turn the tide. Justice Régimbald suspended federal food processing guidelines that were hurting the economics of kosher slaughter.
What happened: Slaughterhouses can’t hang conscious animals off the ground. That’s straightforward for conventional slaughter, which starts with a blow to the head. But ritual slaughter (like halal and kosher) requires cutting an animal while it still has its senses.
Ritual slaughterhouses need to make their ritual cuts on the ground. And they need to ensure animals are unconscious before continuing with the process.
They used to be able to check consciousness however they wanted. But—after seeing some issues—the Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently tightened the rules.
The CFIA’s new guidelines force ritual slaughterhouses to look for three measurable signs of unconsciousness.
The rub: The new guidelines add a few minutes to each slaughter—and time is money. Kosher slaughterhouses say the change has forced them to shut down. That means less kosher meat on the market. And it means less work for specialized rabbis trained in kosher slaughter.
Slaughterhouses, Jewish organizations, and a rabbi are trying to get the new guidelines thrown out, arguing that the rules are unreasonable and unconstitutional.
They applied for an interim injunction in advance of the court hearing.
Injunction granted: Justice Régimbald didn’t see much public interest in keeping the guidelines in place. He wasn’t convinced that the guidelines responded to a widespread issue. And he said the CFIA can enforce the unconsciousness requirement without using its three new indicators.
On the other hand, he was satisfied that the guidelines reduced kosher meat and slaughter work. Those reductions stand between the Jewish community and their religious beliefs—causing irreparable harm that can’t be fixed with damages.
Kosher slaughter has … been conducted in Canada for many years [in compliance with the unconsciousness requirement], and in cases of non-compliance, … the CFIA issued non-compliance orders and imposed corrective action which were adopted to ensure animal welfare...
[An injunction] is not contrary to the public interest, given that [unconsciousness] may be ensured without the use of the three indicators of unconsciousness now mandated by the Guidelines.
While the impact on the public interest is minimal, I am satisfied that the corresponding impact[s] on Rabbi Banon and the Jewish community’s Charter rights are significant.
Big picture: Several European countries have also cracked down on ritual slaughter. Some effectively ban the practice, requiring stunning blows before slaughterhouses make their cuts. Other countries allow ritual cuts on conscious animals, as long as a stunning blow immediately follows the cut.
HEARSAY ROUNDUP
Canadiana
💰 Spousal support doesn’t necessarily have an expiry date—even if payments last longer than the relationship they stemmed from. The British Columbia Court of Appeal said the mere passage of time isn’t a material change in circumstances, upholding a lower court order for indefinite spousal support. The Court followed a similar case decided by the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal last year.
🧑💻 A Crown slip-up led to a successful unjust enrichment claim. Several victims suffered a ransomware attack, paying hefty sums to protect their data. The perpetrator of the attack pled guilty, the Crown seized his assets as proceeds of crime, and every victim who claimed restitution got their money back. But the Crown forgot to raise a claim for Travelers Insurance, which had reimbursed one of its insureds over $255,000 under a cyber fraud policy.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ordered the Crown to pay out Travelers’ claim, given the mistake at sentencing and the success of the other restitution claims.
Travelers stepped into the place of a victim of criminal conduct and would have benefited from a generous restitution order if the Crown had properly put its claim before the sentencing judge or if it had the opportunity, by way of notice of the Crown’s application for forfeiture, to bring its claim to the sentencing judge’s attention. In the circumstances of this case, it has a legitimate interest in the property forfeited.
🍸️ Spirit suppliers sued the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The liquor giants behind brands like Crown Royal, Bacardi, and Smirnoff say LCBO’s pricing policies don’t make sense—suppliers need to give LCBO the best price in Canada, but they also need to follow LCBO’s minimum pricing rules. The combination forces suppliers to raise prices across the country just to match LCBO’s minimums.
The suppliers are taking the LCBO on in court, but they’ve also called for backup. They complained to the Competition Bureau that LCBO’s practices are anti-competitive.
🔥 Vancouver reversed course on home heating, voting 6-5 to eliminate a ban on natural gas.
BY THE NUMBERS
This week’s legal records
$500M: The amount of the class action settlement Loblaws and George Weston agreed to pay because they fixed the price of bread. The plaintiffs say it’ll be the largest antitrust settlement in Canadian history (as long as it gets court approval).
311: The number of paragraphs in today’s unanimous Supreme Court of Canada judgment, which looks to be the longest majority judgment the Court has ever issued. The case is about treaty interpretation and Indigenous rights—more on that next week, after some light reading.
$65M: Quebec’s largest class action settlement for abuse allegations. The funds are headed to victims who were abused at the Mont d’Youville orphanage between 1925 and 1996.
THINGS NOT TO DO
Don’t forget to double-check your resume. Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond recently took a DNA test to show that she does have Indigenous ancestry—contrary to widely reported allegations. But the Law Society of BC wasn’t hung up on her disputed heritage.
The regulator reprimanded Turpel-Lafond for misstating credentials in her CV and bar admission application. The misstatements included an improperly labelled post-graduate degree, incorrect dates, and a non-existent honorary degree.
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