At about the same time, 16 neglected horses – animals so emaciated they had not developed winter coats – were sent to a meat factory in Lacombe, Alta., in an unheated truck as the thermometer dipped to minus 12 C. Government inspectors who witnessed their arrival took note of the incident but let the transport company off with a simple warning.

Those and other anecdotes are included in a report by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) to be released later this week that looks at the conditions in which animals intended for Canadian dinner plates are transported – often for the last time.

The study, which was based on inspection reports filed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) between Oct. 9, 2008, and Jan. 9, 2009, was initiated in response to the listeriosis crisis of 2008 that killed 22 people. It finds that Canadian standards for the transport of animals are significantly weaker than those of other jurisdictions, including Europe and the United States.

Under CFIA policy, an inspection is warranted if 1 per cent of a shipment of broiler chickens arrives dead, whereas the U.S. threshold is 0.5 per cent. The report also found that the CFIA standards are not strenuously enforced.

“A lot of MPs were asking how many meat inspectors were hired during the listeriosis outbreak and it started to get us questioning how many animal inspectors are there,” Melissa Matlow, the report’s lead author, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. It’s an important question, “not only from an animal welfare perspective, which is what our organization cares the most about, but from a food-safety perspective.”

In fact, much evidence suggests that food-borne illnesses are readily transmitted among animals that are crammed into trucks and train cars.

“When the animals are packed more closely, the opportunity for bacteria to pass from one animal to another is obviously increased,” said Carlton Gyles, who studies animal-borne diseases at the University of Guelph. “There have been studies looking at things like salmonella that can be passed by animals during transportation. So that could increase the chances of contamination of meat.”

Canadians also want to know that the meat they eat comes from animals that did not suffer unduly, Ms. Matlow said. Statistics that the animal rights organization obtained from CFIA indicate that two million to three million animals die during transport every year and another 11 million arrive at their destination diseased or injured.