Humane Audit of Canadian Packing Plants
Dr. Temple Grandin
Grandin Handling Systems, Inc.

In June of 1993, I was hired by Agriculture Canada, the Canadian Meat Council and the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies to conduct an animal welfare audit of the eleven largest federally inspected packing plants in Canada. My overall impression was that Canada is way ahead of the United States when it comes to dealing with animal welfare issues. The fact that the Canadians were willing to conduct this audit indicates a willingness of the Canadian beef and pork industry to police itself and correct problems.

One large beef plant and one pork plant had the best handling practices I have ever observed in North America. Electric prods were eliminated in the yards and crowd pen. The only place an electric prod was used was in the single file chute to the stunner. Animals were moved through the crowd pen at a slow walk and light whips were used to gently tap them. There was no yelling or whip-cracking. Each group of animals was brought into the crowd pen in perfect timing in order to take advantage of following behavior. Perfection of these excellent handling skills takes time. They were not just putting on a show. It was obvious that both the employees and management had spent many days on steady incremental improvement of handling practices. At a third pork plant with old fashioned facilities, handling was excellent. The hogs were moved with light plastic push boards and slappers were used to hit the boards instead of the hogs.

The managers in the plants were cooperative and open to ideas. In two plants, there were some problems with animals balking and being difficult to move due to a lack of illumination at the restrainer entrance, visual contrasts between metal and concrete flooring and a ventilation system that blows smells towards approaching animals. Simple changes such as moving or adding a lamp will reduce balking problems caused by a restrainer entrance that looks like a black hole or sparkling reflections off of water on the floor. Ventilation systems must be designed to suck smells away from approaching livestock. Reactions to smell appear to be reactions to a novel stimulus rather than a fear of the smell of blood.

There were two problem areas: handling of downer animals and electric hog stunning. Overall, the handling of downer animals in Canada is much better than the U.S. Crippled downer cattle or pigs are always stunned on the truck. This is Agriculture Canada policy. Unfortunately, in the U.S., the USDA requires that animals be removed from the truck prior to stunning. This causes welfare problems. The large Canadian plants I visited have stopped accepting downers. There is concern that the downer cattle problem is being pushed underground into plants under provincial inspection. As I have stated many times before, the emphasis has to be on preventing downers. Seventy-five percent of downer cattle are dairy cows. Approximately 75 to 80 percent of dairy cow downers could be prevented with good management, such as proper use of calf pullers, use of ease of calving information, good nutrition to prevent milk fever, non-slip flooring and careful handling. Broken legs are a very small percentage of downers. Three plants had problems with improper placement of electric stunner electrodes on hogs. This was due to a lack of technical knowledge. They just did not know that they had a problem. Part of the problem was due to a lack of translated technical manuals on foreign-built stunning equipment.

In conclusion, I was very impressed with the position of leadership that the Canadian packing industry has taken on the animal welfare issue. They are to be commended.