REGINA (Staff) – Slaughterhouses should not be kept hidden from the public eye, according to an American livestock handling specialist.
Temple Grandin, of Colorado State University, told the Foundation for Animal Care Saskatchewan Inc. annual meeting that people today are too far removed from the cycle of life and death and need to understand that for one thing to live, another must die.
Grandin said the public perceives that slaughterhouses are bad places, but industry people who think packing plants should be covered up are wrong.
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“I think what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to clean up our house and then we’ve got to show our house to the public,” she said Jan. 26. “If we don’t show it, we’re not going to like the way some other people show it.”
Grandin said people are mainly concerned about packing plants treating animals humanely and that the plant is clean. If people don’t see the plant or hear that it is clean and animals are well-treated, they will think the worst, she said.
Proper management needed
“You can have the best facility in the world and that facility is useless unless you have good management to go with it,” said Grandin.
Half of the cattle in Canada go through plants which have facilities Grandin has designed, she said. Canadians are more progressive than Americans with animal welfare, but shouldn’t become complacent.
“Some of the worst stuff I’ve ever seen happen to animals, the cruelest, meanest stuff I’ve ever seen, happened right in one of my restrainer systems because the plant manager wasn’t there controlling employee behavior,” Grandin said. “I don’t buy the argument the employees are too stupid or too low-paid or whatever to be controlled.
“The buck stops at a manager’s office, and the manager better get his butt out of the office and get out to where the livestock are being handled and see what’s going on.”
