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Time for united position on animal welfare (commentary)

July 24, 2007 — Stanley Curtis, Temple Grandin and John McGlone

The following is a commentary which appeared in the July 23rd issue of Feedstuffs regarding a common stance on farm animal welfare from three leading experts investigating these issues. I thought it important to reproduce the article here in its entirety.

The three of us do not always agree on matters of farm animal welfare. However, we thought it important to state in clear terms what our mutual position is on certain critical current issues in farm animal welfare.

Farm animal industry groups are making variable but steady improvement in farm animal welfare. The state of animal welfare on commercial farms and in processing plants is generally better today than it has been in the past. Improvements in farm animal welfare are and should be consistent with available science, professional judgment and common sense.

* The National Pork Board (NPB) has developed and begun implementation of the Pork Quality Assurance Plus (PQA-Plus) program. This is a good step forward in that producers are provided training, they assess some aspects of on-farm animal welfare and an audit component will be included.

The PQA-Plus program of training, self-assessment and auditing is not as comprehensive as some individual company programs, but it is a positive start. In the present absence of a more comprehensive animal welfare assurance program, we encourage the adoption of the PQA-Plus program by pork producers. We also look forward to NPB making improvements in the PQA-Plus program over time.

* Use of sow gestation stalls has become a contentious issue. Some states have banned gestation stalls, some producers have decided, for a variety of reasons, to implement the policy goal of using more group pens in their operations and some food retailers have instituted purchasing policies that include the goal of phasing out gestating sow stalls.

The scientific evidence shows that sow physiology and behavior are essentially equivalent in well-managed stalls and group pens. We understand the general public may not like gestation stalls. However, we are concerned that, as pregnant sows are moved from stalls to pens, some sows may have a reduced state of being due to social stress. With the only requirement that sows move from stalls to pens, sow state of being may actually decrease. We urge caution and a systematic, thorough, ongoing evaluation of effective group housing systems of pregnant sows bred and adapted for group housing.

* Use of controlled atmosphere stunning/killing (CAS) of poultry is being promoted by some animal welfare and animal rights organizations.

We are not aware that the distress chickens and turkeys experience when being handled and hung prior to electric stun has been scientifically compared with the distress of gas anesthesia induction. Religious slaughter procedures do not allow CAS in part due to the long gas anesthesia induction times.

The main animal welfare issues with euthanasia of poultry are the pre-stun handling and the ability to induce instantaneous insensibility. Current methods of CAS can solve some handling issues if properly implemented, but they may create new welfare issues. As such, CAS and electric stun systems, in their present forms, are in need of improvement.

To call for changing animal production and processing systems on the basis of erroneous premises ultimately will be of no use to any human or any animal. Until we know much more about the causation and function of the behaviors an animal exhibits and the correlated physiological responses in challenging settings, we should not change production systems willy-nilly.

On the issues of sow stalls and poultry stunning, among others, the entire food chain should actively work on developing viable alternatives. We believe that scientific investigation, engineering development and common sense can provide solutions to these and other animal welfare concerns.

When market forces provide incentive for changes in technology and oversight that promote scientifically justified improvements in farm animal welfare, we are in agreement with those forces, but when market forces demand changes that are neutral or negative in terms of the welfare of the animals, then we agree that adding such costs without a concomitant clear improvement of farm animal welfare would not be in the best interests of sustainable U.S. agriculture.

Source:
Feedstuffs, July 23, 2007

Drs. Stanley Curtis, Temple Grandin and John McGlone are considered leaders in the science of animal welfare. Curtis is with the animal science department at the University of Illinois, Temple Grandin is with the animal science department at Colorado State University and John McGlone is with the animal science department at Texas Tech University.