TORONTO – Competent auditors following consistent standards are needed to properly assess animal welfare in packing plants, said livestock handling specialist Jennifer Woods.
“One of the biggest problems we have is inconsistency in auditors and interpretation in what they see,” said Woods, a certified auditor.
She explained the criteria used in an audit during a Canadian Meat Council symposium on animal welfare and transportation held in Toronto Sept. 30.
The red meat industry was the first to venture into animal welfare auditing. They may use internal audits where the plant checks itself, a second party audit where a company brings in an outside person to evaluate practices or a third party audit where a food company sends in a private auditor to check out the supplier.
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While some rules and regulations are different between Canada and the United States, the American Meat Institute livestock guidelines serve as the basis for what is used here for audits.
Written 20 years ago with the aid of animal behaviourist Temple Grandin, the guidelines establish numerical targets for acceptable practices.
The AMI reviews its guidelines every two years to make sure the language is clear and up to date, said AMI spokesperson Janet Riley.
“We recognize zero is impossible but we have very strict standards,” she told the meat council.
The AMI animal handling guidelines are available free of charge at www.animalhandling.org.
These audits are used in addition to United States law for animal care.
“We have veterinarians present at every minute of operation, which comes as a huge surprise to most consumers in the United States,” Riley said.
The institute advocates gentle handling and records the condition of the animals when they arrive at a plant.
In addition, the guidelines describe what constitutes a fall, how much animal vocalizing is acceptable as well as proper stunning and bleeding techniques.
Auditors watch to see how often electric prods are used to move stubborn cattle and hogs.
“In the majority of our plants, this has become a non-issue because they do not allow them,” said Woods.
Prods cannot be used on sheep and the wool may not be grabbed to pick them up.
Poultry audits are different from the red meat trade and companies like McDonald’s have taken a lead in the way birds are handled, Woods said.
It audits from the barn to the plant. It monitors how birds are handled, weather conditions during transport and processing in the plants.
Auditors assess the number of bruises, broken wings and legs and try to determine when it happened.
Canada is also launching a horse welfare audit that covers transportation, handling, stunning and insensibility. The biggest welfare issue in kill plants is the condition of the animals when they arrive.
Initiated by the Horse Welfare Alliance last year, a certification program for auditors will be offered in November.
Martin Appelt, national manager of policy development for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said auditors must be independent and qualified.
He said it is important to know if the people who wrote the welfare guidelines for a company are also conducting the audits because that could be a conflict of interest.
Some audits do not catch serious issues.
Three years ago, Westland-Hallmark, a California-based plant handling dairy cows, went bankrupt when videos showed major animal abuse and welfare violations.
The company passed 17 audits up to 2007 and most were food safety audits, said Appelt.
Five freedoms of animals
1. Freedom from hunger and malnutrition
2. Freedom from thermal and physical discomfort
3. Freedom from pain, injury and disease
4. Freedom from distress
5. Freedom to express normal patterns of behaviour
The European Union has issued this directive based on the five freedoms to improve animal welfare:
1. Good feeding: the absence of prolonged hunger or thirst
2. Good housing: comfort around resting, thermal comfort and ease of movement
3. Good health: absence of injuries or disease and absence of pain induced by management procedures
4. Appropriate behaviour: Expression of social and other behaviors, good human-animal relationships, absence of general fear
Source: Farm Animal Welfare Council, European Commission | MICHELLE HOULDEN GRAPHIC
