Meat + Poultry - February 2010 - 85

From the Corral
BY DR. TEMPLE GRANDIN
meatpoultry@sosland.com

Global input
The World Animal Health Organization (OIE) has completed animal-welfare guidelines for livestock
transport, slaughter and killing of
animals for disease control. It also
has draft guidelines under review for
welfare on the farm for broiler chickens and beef cattle. Draft guidelines
for pigs, sheep and laying hens are
under development. More than 100
countries are members of the OIE
and it includes both developed and
developing countries. The Parisbased OIE is the same organization
that sets the international standards
for animal-disease control. It issues
the international guidelines that are
used around the world for determining disease control practices for
serious diseases such as foot-andmouth disease.
The OIE guidelines are basic minimum standards that every
country should comply with. In
many countries, government regulations, industry guidelines or private standards that are required for
large meat buyers may be stricter.
The 2007 American Meat Institute
standards have no conflicts with OIE
guidelines except for electric prod
use. The OIE states that electric
prods should be battery-operated
units only and that they should not
be used on horses, small piglets or
sheep. The 2007 AMI guidelines allow electric prod use on sheep and
wired in non-battery-operated electric prods are allowed.
The use of numerical scoring is
encouraged by the OIE. Chapter 7.3
of the slaughter guideline states, "In
properly designed and constructed
facilities with competent animal handlers, it should be possible to move
99 percent of the animals without
their falling."
OIE standards are created by a
process that starts with the ad-hoc
committees for each specific guideline, such as slaughter or transport.

The ad-hoc committee creates the
fi rst draft of each specific guideline
and then comments are reserved
from all the member countries and
incorporated into the draft standard. The standard then leaves the
ad-hoc committee and goes through
an overall animal welfare committee
for further additions and changes.

Establishing clear
guidelines
I had the opportunity to serve on the
ad-hoc committee for the slaughter
guideline. In all of my work on the
committee, I have been an advocate for establishing guidelines that
are not vague. There are some bad
things that people should not do in
any country. Most of my input into
the slaughter document was on handling issues. The slaughter guideline
clearly states that animals should not
be thrown, dragged or dropped. It
also has wording prohibiting animal abuse that is similar to the act
of abuse in the American Meat Institute Guidelines. It also has strong
language against the use of horrific practices that occur in some developing countries, such as cutting
tendons on live animals to restrain
them and poking out eyes. The additional rules on electric-prod use
were added after the document left
our committee.
In the stunning section, the rules
for the captive-bolt and electric stunners are very similar to the AMI
guidelines and the guidelines from
the Humane Slaughter Association
in the United Kingdom. Religious
slaughter is specifically allowed under the OIE guideline, but abusive
methods of restraint should not be
used. The guidelines for gas stunning
poultry are marked "under study"
because there is so much controversy between scientists on the correct
gas mixture.
In the draft versions of the beef

and broiler-chicken standards, there
is an emphasis on animal-based outcome standards, such as measuring
damage on the birds caused by poor
litter conditions. I am
very much in favor of
the use of animal-based
outcome standards such
as measuring lameness,
bruises, broken wings,
body condition score and
other things that can be
directly observed. One
Grandin
of the reasons the AMI
scoring system has been effective
is because it is very objective and
simple to implement. The numerical scores are outcomes of many
different problems. Both the beef
and chicken draft documents are
very vague and I recommended listing specific animal-based outcome
measures such as broken wings,

"OIE standards are
created by a process
that starts with the
ad-hoc committees
for each specific
guideline, such
as slaughter or
transport."
breast blisters, hock burn, bruises,
lameness, body condition score and
others. Animal-based outcome measures are also the basis of the massive
European Union Welfare Quality
Project. I support the use of animalbased outcome standards, coupled
with some clear prohibitions against
practices that need to be stopped. ■
Dr. Temple Grandin operates Grandin Livestock
Systems Inc., Fort Collins, Colo., and is a faculty
member in the animal science department at
Colorado State Univ.
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