RED DEER – A lengthy audit of Alberta’s provincial meat plants shows room for improvement in animal handling and stunning.
Animal handlers need more education because many come to the job with limited experience, said John Church of Alberta Agriculture regulatory services.
The inspections started September 2006 with the last one completed last month.
Of the 50 provincial plants, some are killing up to five days a week with few employees. Animals are slaughtered, meat is cut and wrapped and further processed items like sausages are manufactured on a custom basis as well as for public sale. The plants handle cattle, sheep, hogs, bison and elk.
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“I am impressed in a lot of ways with the quality in small plants,” Church said in an interview at the Alberta Farm Animal Care annual convention in Red Deer April 4.
An audit of poultry plants is planned for later this year.
Church reported overzealous use of electric prods to move animals through pens. In many plants nearly all the pigs and cattle were getting zapped.
The auditors showed the staff alternative methods of moving animals including paddles used like noisemakers. However, they found handlers were often slapping the animals rather than shaking the paddles.
Regulations dictate that stunning the animals to make sure they are unconscious before they are bled out must work 95 percent of the time. Inexperienced people may not understand animal physiology and may apply the stunner in the wrong place so it needs to be repeated.
Provincial inspectors have been taught to make sure people understand how to stun properly whether they use electricity, captive bolts or .22 rifles.
“Really the vast majority of plants in Alberta are doing an excellent job with the beef and the processors that are using rifles or captive bolts to stun pigs are doing a very good job,” he said.
Church said concerns were raised in about half the plants that electrically stun pigs with homemade devices or instruments modified from federal plants where facilities are adapted for pigs coming down a conveyor belt.
A pilot project will introduce a large tong-type stunner and train operators how to use it.
Church said the audit found unacceptable stunning related to a lack of employee training, ergonomic problems, damp equipment, excessive electric prod use that agitates the animals, poor stun box design and insufficient amperage.
Downers were not seen, which was partly attributed to a campaign urging the livestock industry not to transport unfit animals, and partly to the federal-provincial program to euthanize unfit cows on the farm for BSE testing, including a payment to the farmer.
The government plans to follow up audits. The industry is finding third party audits are failing. Staff works properly while the inspector is there and then slips back into bad habits later.
“There are a few operators who will try to cheat when the auditor shows up,” Church said.
Alberta will provide five government auditors to integrate food safety inspection and auditing of animal welfare.
These auditors shadowed Church as he checked each plant so they can check plants on a regular basis using the same standards. It is up to the meat inspectors to ensure problems are corrected because inspectors are always in the plants.
Audit standards are based on the American Meat Institute basic critical control points. Developed by animal behaviourist Temple Grandin, a numerical system assesses the percentage of animals that are hard to handle or that vocalize, percentage stunned correctly on the first attempt and the percentage of animals still alert while on the bleed rail.
Grandin, who also attended the animal care meeting, said she not only inspects processing equipment but observes staff behaviour on the floor rather than examining company performance reports.
Her audits started in 1999 when restaurant chains demanded third party inspections of their suppliers. A passing grade is achieved when 97 percent of cattle are stunned properly the first time. The number of cattle vocalizing must be less than one percent.
The percentage of pigs prodded with electrical shots must be less than 15 percent, only one percent of pigs can fall and less than two percent should squeal.
