RED DEER – After 35 years teaching and practising the humane treatment of animals, Temple Grandin has seen major improvements for livestock from the farm to the final destination at processing plants.
“I have worked 35 years to improve this industry,” Grandin told the annual meeting of Alberta Farm Animal Care.
“We finally have some big improvements in plants. I am not going to say it is perfect … all the talk on internet is on the bad stuff.”
Grandin said despite improvements, the slaughter industry can expect more undercover video showing abuses when handling animals at slaughter plants or during shipping.
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“The industry has done a lousy job of defending itself,” she said in an interview April 4.
She would prefer it if processing plants were more open and permitted live cameras to record and post what is happening on the internet.
“We’ve got a lot of younger people coming into animal advocacy where their background is lawyering rather than animal behaviour. We are getting a whole generation of young people in North America who have no contact with practical things,” she said.
Despite her overall view that the industry is doing a good job, she said there is room for improvement.
“One of my biggest welfare issues is you have got to put a fit animal on the trailer. I don’t care what species you are working with, it has got to be a fit animal,” she said.
Since 1999, Grandin has worked with corporations like McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s to develop humane animal audits in slaughter plants.
If slaughter workers performed badly, they were corrected.
“Now they know how to act good during an audit. Then, they act badly as soon as you leave,” Grandin said.
Downers at plants need to be banned and clear regulations are needed to ensure that everyone working in a facility understands the law.
“We have enough inspectors. The biggest problem we have is the training of inspectors. A lot of the regulations are extremely vague,” she said.
She said that facility design with proper sorting systems for optimum animal care is important, but abuse can also occur in those places.
“I’ll take the adequate facilities with the superb management,” said Grandin.
“Good management is details of all the things you need to be doing.”
