Global Action Network investigates and documents animal abuse on Candian factory farms and in auctions, slaughterhouses and during transport. We provide our footage to media, rescue animals in distress, and campaign to close markets for animal products. We are currently working to obtain federal legislation to protect Canadian farmed animals.

Stockyard auctions are facilities where animals – the majority of them farmed animals – are collected and then sold to the highest bidder. Currently, there are over 100 livestock auctions operating in Canada, with the majority located in Quebec and Ontario. Auctions vary enormously in frequency, numbers and varieties of animals sold. But there is one common theme that links them all together - animal suffering.

A primary function of auctions is to serve as a clearing house for animals that are no longer profitable within the factory farming system. The spent laying hens, used up dairy cows, worn out sows who can’t produce large enough litters of piglets, and unwanted male calves from dairy farms are all sold to the highest bidder - sometimes for as little as one dollar.

These already weakened animals must endure the arduous journey to the auction, the brutal unloading process, and then being beaten in and out of auction rings by abusive animal handlers. Once they have been purchased, the animals must face another traumatic journey - normally to the slaughterhouse. Downers and dead piles are a common site at all auctions, as well as abandoned animals left to die of dehydration and starvation.

Please take a moment to read some of our factsheets and learn more about livestock auctions and what you can do to help the many abused animals that these facilities exploit.