Meatpackers Improve Animal Treatment

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Meatpackers Improve Animal Treatment

 

September 23, 2000

 

Milan, MO - It's an unnerving sound, the screeching from a truckload of hogs

parked outside a slaughterhouse. A few hours later the pigs, hardly make a

squeal as they're scurried off to be killed.

 

Under pressure from major customers - primarily the McDonald's Corp. - farms and

packinghouses are acting to reduce the stress and suffering of the cattle, pigs

and chickens they take to slaughter.

 

Meatpackers are retraining workers and installing new equipment. Egg farms that

supply McDonald's are being forced to give laying hens more room and eschew a

practice known as “forced molting,” withholding food and water from the birds so

they will lay more eggs. And McDonald's is now looking at standards to alleviate

confined conditions on hog farms.

 

This week, the government helped the American Humane Association launch a new

program for certifying food as “Free Farmed,” awarded farms and processors that

adhere to relatively strict animal-welfare standards.

 

Packinghouses began changing their practices in earnest in 1999 after McDonald's

set animal-handling standards for its meat suppliers, helped develop industry

training videos and started auditing the plants. The fast-food chain suspended

purchases from two cattle-slaughtering plants that failed its inspections. The

plants have not been identified.

 

“Plants started to realize this is part of doing business, like food safety is

part of doing business,” said Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, the

nation's leading authority on humane livestock handling. McDonald's audits “sent

a big message out to the industry,” she said.

 

This month, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals suspended an 11-month

protest campaign that included handing out boxes, labeled “Unhappy Meals,” that

were illustrated with graphic pictures from slaughter plants.

 

In a letter to the company, PETA said the slaughterhouse audits and hen

standards were “a fine step in the right direction” and urged additional moves,

such as refusing to purchase pork from farms that confine sows to stalls.

 

“Our customers care about social issues. They expect a lot from companies like

McDonald's,” said Bob Langert, the company's senior director of public and

community affairs.

 

Audits assess whether the animals are frightened or upset during handling and

whether they are properly stunned before being bled and skinned. A plant

automatically flunks if auditors find an animal is bled while still conscious.

 

When properly handled, animals are calm and feel no pain when they die, Grandin

said.

 

There's another a benefit for the companies, because stress can result in

discolored meat.

 

Improvements in industry practices are evident at the Premium Standards Farm

Inc. slaughterhouse in this northern Missouri town, which kills 7,000 hogs a

day.

 

Conditions in the chutes and holding pens, including sprinklers that are

activated on hot days, are designed to calm the hogs. The pens themselves

resemble facilities where the animals are raised.

 

Last year the company became the first U.S. plant to install a new stunning

system that uses carbon dioxide rather than a jolt of electricity to anesthetize

pigs. Researchers say gassing is less stressful for the faster-growing but more

excitable pigs now being bred.

 

The Milan plant already was among the more humane slaughterhouses in the country

before McDonald's started its audits, Grandin said. But Colleen Schultz Kaster,

Premium Standard's vice president of food safety and technical services, said

the restaurant chain's monitoring has made her job easier in getting approval

from company executives for further improvements in the plant, such as a planned

expansion of hog-handling facilities.

 

“It's not just me asking for it. It's McDonald's asking for it, and your

children's Happy Meals,” she said.

 

The plant also has started conducting internal animal-welfare audits based on

the McDonald's reviews.

 

In 1996, just 30% of the cattle slaughtering plants that Grandin surveyed were

stunning cattle properly. During the first half of 1999, that had risen to 74%.

By the end of the year, 90% had acceptable scores, she reported.

 

Grandin also scored plants for the amount of mooing and squealing heard - such

noise is a sign that the animals are under stress - and found that it has

fallen, too. In 1996, the hog plants she surveyed were so noisy they couldn't be

scored. In 1999, more than 70% had acceptable vocalization scores.

 

“It's been a real success story for the industry,” said Carrie Cooper, who

writes about animal handling for the trade magazine Meat & Poultry. “It's a good

example of the customers working with the plants. It's not an adversarial

relationship. It's very cooperative.”

 

The Agriculture Department is considering setting animal-handling standards for

slaughter plants and has stepped up training of its inspectors to detect proper

and improper treatment of livestock.

 

 

http://www.spcnetwork.com/mii/2000/000930.htm

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