EDMONTON – The head of the Alberta SPCA enforcement branch has pleaded
with cattle producers to stop shipping weak animals and stem the
increasing number of animals collapsing in trucks on the way to
slaughter.
A few years ago, sick or weak animals that couldn’t walk were brought
to an auction market and were killed within two days at a local
slaughter plant. With fewer small plants left on the Prairies, and none
of the large plants willing to take poor quality animals, the cull
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cattle can now spend two or three weeks shunted between auction markets
and assembly yards before being trucked long distances to United States
slaughter plants.
“The stress of it becomes too much and they start to go down in the
truck,” said Morris Airey, the director of enforcement with the Alberta
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“We really need your help to handle these problems,” Airey told
producers at the Alberta Farm Animal Care, or AFAC, annual meeting.
Producers, not government, need to establish rules about which animals
can travel the longer distances to the slaughter plant.
“There is an urgent need to get guidelines in place to be able to
educate producers. We really need you as individuals to make these
decisions.”
AFAC manager Susan Church said there are no standards describing what
animals are fit to travel. Large packing plants won’t accept sick or
weak animals but farmers are able to ship them through auction markets.
“We have no consistency,” said Church, whose organization has been
trying to get a grasp on the number of animals that are arriving at
auction markets unfit to travel.
The association was established in 1993 by Alberta’s livestock industry
to work on behalf of all groups on animal welfare issues.
“We have to work with industry to set standards. Where is that line in
the sand?” Church said.
Darren Malchow, a Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspector in
Lethbridge, Alta., deals with downed animals at the American border.
In the past year he has killed eight animals that have been down in a
truck when it was stopped by inspectors at the border. If an animal is
down in a truck at the border, the truck is turned back. Malchow said
because not all border crossings have proper unloading facilities, he
has made arrangements with a Milk River rancher to use his facilities.
Malchow said the rancher has been forced to kill at least six animals
that were unable to continue the journey.
While many people point fingers at the truck drivers for transporting
weak animals, Malchow said the responsibility lies elsewhere.
“The problem starts with the producer,” said Malchow, who added that
farmers often hold onto their cattle too long.
He said few people realize how long a poorly conditioned animal can
stand around auction markets or assembly yards before being loaded onto
a truck for the U.S.
Peter Kelley, a CFIA veterinarian at the Coutts, Alta., border
crossing, said he doesn’t have statistics to show if the problem is
increasing, but there is an increasing awareness about the humane
transport of animals. About one million commercial animals cross the
border each year at Coutts.
“It is a high traffic area and it is a concern and a concern that is
getting attention.”
Malchow said when cattle buyers sit in auction markets buying animals,
they may not have a home for the cull animals but might know another
buyer who does. When the animals can be bought for as little as $100 to
$200, it is not a big gamble.
“A buyer isn’t out much money if he only pays bottom dollar for the
animals,” he said.
“There’s an ‘even if they do die, I’m not out much money’ attitude.”
Few auction market owners or truck drivers are willing to reject
animals for fear of losing future business. That’s why it’s up to the
producer, who knows the animal, to make the final decision on whether
it should travel.
“I’m trying to get it back to producers. I like to go back to the
producer and say ‘you shipped animals that aren’t fit to travel.’ “
Airey said the issue has become a real concern in the past few months
because of pressure from consumer groups that want the grocery store or
restaurant to ensure the meat is from animals handled in a humane way.
“It’s been going on forever. It’s just recently, in the past year, the
industry has been more aware of the problem. There’s got to be a
solution.”
Aart Okkema of Vermilion, Alta., said the dairy industry is working on
solutions to shipping culled dairy cows. It has developed a guide to
help producers decide what is and isn’t an acceptable animal to ship.
While still in the draft form, the industry has agreed it is not
acceptable to ship animals that have broken legs.
The grey area is what condition animals have to be in to leave the
farm.
If an animal isn’t in good strength, it should be killed on the farm or
kept at home until it can be shipped.
“We have nothing to hide in the dairy industry when it comes to cull
animals,” Okkema said.
