Meat + Poultry - December 2004 - 54

Poultry welfare
Preparing for the inevitable
By Keith Nunes
knunes@sosland.com

he issue of animal welfare is the meat and poultry industry's soft, white underbelly. No matter how
hard slaughterers try to improve and refine their ani-

mal welfare practices, there is always the possibility an individual
or group will charge a company with animal cruelty. Given the dramatic nature of the slaughtering process, it's difficult to counter such
charges in the court of public opinion. The best defense against
such claims is a proactive, well-organized animal welfare program.
It may be too late for a company like Pilgrim's Pride Corp., Pittsburg, Texas, to gain the high ground when it comes to animal welfare issues, but that company's experience should serve as a wakeup call for everyone else in the poultry industry. Video taken by a
person working for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
at the company's Moorefield, W.V., facility and released to the media
led to the firing of 11 Pilgrim's Pride employees and brought the is-

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sue of animal welfare squarely to the poultry industry's front door.
Animal welfare issues are not new to the poultry industry. KFC, Inc.,
Louisville, Ky., has been a target of PETA for a long time. In fact, since
Pilgrim's Pride is a KFC supplier, the foodservice chain was caught up
in the frenzy surrounding the video. In response, KFC announced they
would not accept product produced at the facility where the video was
taken until they were assured that no instances of animal abuse were
occurring; KFC placed an inspector at the facility to monitor its efforts;
and asked Pilgrim's Pride to place security cameras in the Moorefield
facility to further assure abuse does not happen again.
However, they are not the only company feeling the heat from this issue.
On Dec. 1, PETA filed a shareholder resolution with Kansas City, Mo.-based
restaurant chain Applebee's, focused on having its chicken suppliers phase
in a slaughter method known as controlled-atmosphere killing.
As PETA describes it, "currently, chickens raised for Applebee's
are hung upside-down by their legs in painful metal shackles and run
through an electrified stun bath that often gives them shocks without
rendering them insensible to pain. Many are still fully conscious when
their throats are slit or when they are dunked into tanks of scalding-hot
water for feather removal."
That kind of rhetoric is what prompted the National Chicken Council,
Washington, D.C., to develop animal welfare guidelines for the raising,
transportation and slaughter of chicken. The National Council of Chain
Restaurants and the Food Marketing
Institute have both endorsed N.C.C.'s
guidelines for broiler chicken slaughter and are in consultation to resolve
differences regarding production,
transportation and euthanasia.
In 2003, N.C.C.R. and F.M.I. announced that the first group of auditors
had been certified to conduct slaughter
audits under their Animal Welfare Audit Program. "We are now in the process of scheduling the first audits," says
Eric Hess, vice president of SES, Inc.,
Lenexa, Kan., the company selected to
oversee the auditing program. "Our pilot testing program went smoothly and
now we're ready to ramp up."
Animal welfare audits can provide
several advantages. In addition to improving a company's animal welfare

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Meat + Poultry - December 2004

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