CRIMES WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES - gpvec

Crimes Without ConsequenCes
They also set limits for fasting and water withdrawal prior to slaughter. However, the
guidelines do not address either handling or stunning of hens during the actual slaughter
process. 241 In fact, to date, no U.S. industry quality assurance program or third-party
humane food program—aside from AWI—has published guidelines on the humane
slaughter of egg-laying hens.
The voluntary guidelines of NCC address the handling and stunning of meat chickens at
slaughter. They require that slaughter facilities have animal handling training programs
for all employees, as well as emergency plans that address bird welfare in the event of a
power failure. The guidelines recommend that 98 percent of birds be effectively stunned,
and allow for up to 2 percent of birds to be killed manually due to improper killing by
slaughter equipment. They also allow up to 50 broken wings in a sample of 500 birds. 242
According to animal handling expert Grandin, “There is a need for the poultry industry to
make their own guidelines more strict.” For example, Grandin feels allowing 5 percent of
broken wings is too lax and prefers a broken wing limit of 3 percent for heavy birds and 1
percent for light birds. 243
Under the NCC guidelines, acceptable methods of in-plant culling include rapid
decapitation, rapid cervical disarticulation and use of nitrogen, carbon dioxide or other
approved gases. While the use of gas is mentioned as acceptable for culling birds not
intended for slaughter, the description of approved slaughter methods is limited to
electrical stunning. Shackling, hoisting and hanging of conscious birds are allowed. 244
9.3 Food service industry guidelines
The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and the National Council of Chain Restaurants
(NCCR) are the national trade associations for retail food stores and chain restaurants,
respectively. They have cooperated to offer their combined memberships a quality
assurance-auditing program for assessing the animal care delivered by suppliers. Since
2001 FMI-NCCR has worked with producer trade associations to develop and/or refine
their animal care quality assurance guidelines. FMI-NCCR has developed its own
auditing program based on the quality assurance guidelines of the various producer
groups. In doing so they accepted the guidelines of AMI for the slaughter of cattle,
calves, pigs, sheep and goats. They also eventually accepted the slaughter guidelines of
NCC, after expressing a preference for a higher stunning effectiveness limit (99 percent
vs. 98 percent) and a lower limit for broken wings (3 percent vs. 5 percent) and dislocated
wings (1 percent vs. 5 percent). 245
241 See United Egg Producers, UEP animal husbandry guidelines for U.S. egg laying flocks, 2006.
(http://www.uepcertified.com/abouttheprogram.html) UEP notes that hens are being killed at the production site
due to slaughter plants no longer taking spent hens. (See Guidelines, p. 12)
242 National Chicken Council, NCC animal welfare guidelines and audit checklist, 2005.
(http://www.nationalchickencouncil.com/aboutIndustry/detail.cfm?Id=19)
243 Grandin T. 2004 restaurant animal welfare audits of stunning and handling in Federally inspected U.S. and
Canadian beef, veal, pork, lamb, and poultry slaughter plants. (http://www.grandin.com/survey/2004.restaurant.
audits.html)
244 NCC animal welfare guidelines and audit checklist.
245 See the Animal Welfare section of the FMI website. (http://www.fmi.org/animal_welfare)
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