Farmscape for March 10, 2016

An animal science professor with Colorado State University says the introduction of third party audits more than 15 years ago has lead to dramatic improvements in animal welfare at North American slaughter plants.
Since the 1980s and early 1990s we've seen tremendous improvements in animal welfare at North American slaughter plants, driven by the introduction of audits in 1999 and 2000 which started with McDonald's Corporation
Dr. Temple Grandin, an animal science professor with Colorado State University, says when a big customer insists  on it that brought about a lot of change but the problem is a lot of consumers don't even know about the because industry has not done a good job of publicizing the good things they have done.

Clip-Dr. Temple Grandin-Colorado State University:
Improvements in stunning.
When I collected baseline data for the USDA in 1997 only 30 percent of the beef plants could shoot 95 percent of the cattle on the first shot because their equipment was broken.
You simply won't find that now.
It's a very simple scoring system and you measure, what percentage of pigs were stunned correctly on the first attempt so if it's electric stunning you would do wand placement.
If it's CO2, they're not coming out of the chamber waking up.
Electric prod use, what percentage of pigs move with an electric prod.
If you're in a CO2 system with group handling that should be 5 percent or less or maybe 0.
Another thing is slips and falls.
If you have something wrong with your handling or wrong with your facility you're going to have more slips and falls.
Measuring squealing in the handling facilities.
It's an outcome based system.
I'm not telling them how to build the system, but they've got to achieve certain outcomes and one of the things that made it work, it was very clear objective numbers like traffic rules, very clear, very simple.

Dr. Grandin says Industry has got to make it clear to the consumer that we do share their values on putting out wholesome food.
For more information on improving animal welfare visit Dr. Grandin's web site at grandin.com.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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