WAV Comment – congratulations to our friends and fellow campaigners at Equalia for their tireless work in establishing legislation that will require cctv to be installed in all Spanish slaughterhouses.  Wins such as this don’t come easy and they don’t arrive overnight; you have to show tenacity and have it in you to continue the fight until you win.  This has happened here – congratulations all you guys.

Spain becomes the first EU country to legislate the installation of video surveillance cameras in all slaughterhouses

31 August 2022

Equalia

Equalia has been pushing since the end of 2018 for better regulation in Spanish slaughterhouses, which was ratified last week with the approval of the royal decree in the Congress of Deputies.

Three years ago, the NGO Equalia started the campaign “Ley de Cámaras de Videovigilancia en Mataderos” (Law on Video Surveillance Cameras in Slaughterhouses), to call for the mandatory installation of video surveillance cameras in all Spanish slaughterhouses, with the aim of effectively and rigorously guaranteeing compliance with animal welfare and food safety regulations.

This royal decree makes Spain the first country in the European Union to establish a law for the protection of animal welfare and food safety in slaughterhouses. 

All abattoirs regardless of size will have to abide by the law. Large slaughterhouses will have one year to implement the change while smaller facilities will have two.

The NGO Equalia drew up an action protocol together with the veterinary services of the meat sector, which was presented to and adopted by several of the most important companies. It specified the three basic measures of the proposal: the placement of cameras in all areas where live animals are handled, the storage of the images for one month, in strict compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act, and access to the images by the Official Veterinary Service of the autonomous community in order to review them, apart from the operator.

In parallel, an initial law proposal, presented by Equalia, was approved through non-legislative propositions in the parliaments of the Balearic Islands, Navarre, La Rioja, Community of Madrid, Community of Valencia and the Canary Islands.

This work with institutions, entities and companies in the sector was accompanied by the publication of six investigative reports in Spanish slaughterhouses. In them, Equalia highlighted the need for a more exhaustive control of the practices carried out in these facilities. Following the publication of images of serious irregularities in animal welfare in a slaughterhouse in Ávila, where operators were seen cutting the legs off cows while they were still conscious, the meat sector, through ANICE, took a stand in favour of the installation of cameras in slaughterhouses. The same happened with other interest groups such as trade unions (Comisiones Obreras) and consumer associations (Facua).

The national and international repercussions of the images of the investigative report provoked the reaction of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, which, through AESAN (Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition), initiated a draft royal decree establishing measures for the control of animal welfare in slaughterhouses through the installation of video surveillance systems. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, on which AESAN depends, submitted the text for public consultation on 20 October 2020. After studying the allegations received from the interest groups that participated, the royal decree that has been approved today in Congress was drawn up.

In 2018, we started the debate on the need for video surveillance in slaughterhouses in Spain. Today, after positioning the meat sector, government, trade unions and consumer associations in favour of the proposal, this royal decree makes Spain the first country in the EU to require video surveillance systems in slaughterhouses.

Even though it is only a first step, we have to recognise that this royal decree has some weak points such as the viewing of the images. The treatment of the viewing will fall mainly on the operator (slaughterhouse), and not on the official veterinary service of the autonomous community, in addition to not specifying an exhaustive procedure for reviewing images in terms of the periodicity and time of viewing them.

Guillermo Moreno, Director of Equalia

Regards Mark

Largest Modern Pig Farm In The World – Million Dollar Pork Processing Technology & Cutting Line

Is ‘happy music’ supposed to dress this up as being ok ?

Regards Mark

New EFSA scientific opinion on pigs

26 August 2022

Written by Dr Elena Nalon

Severe animal welfare problems persist, but solutions are at hand, now it’s the time for action, starting with the abolition of sow stalls

The new EFSA scientific opinion on the welfare of pigs on farm analyses the latest scientific and practical evidence on the welfare challenges caused by the most common rearing systems in the EU and gives detailed recommendations on how to prevent or manage them.  

The opinion presents 16 highly relevant welfare consequences along with their possible preventive and remedial measures. Additionally, the panel selected several animal based measures (ABMs) – e.g. the presence of certain lesions or behaviours – that can be reliably used for monitoring or enforcement purposes. 

Measuring animal welfare has traditionally been considered a challenge but this new report makes it clear that there are tools available that can help the legislator go in the right direction.

The most frequent welfare challenges identified by EFSA across pig rearing systems and categories of pigs were: 

Group stress

Inability to perform exploratory or foraging behaviour

Soft tissue and integument damage

Prolonged hunger (affecting dry sows and gilts, piglets, and boars) 

Of these, the EFSA considered that inability to perform exploratory or foraging behaviour was the most relevant for all the pig categories under consideration, including for sows during lactation and suckling piglets. This point warrants a reflection because current EU legislation on pig welfare mandates that all pigs should have access to appropriate enrichment materials to keep them meaningfully occupied with rooting, foraging, and exploring, all activities for which pigs are highly motivated. Unfortunately, this norm has been systematically flouted by the vast majority of the pig industry, with the effect that pigs continue to be kept in predominantly barren conditions and tail docked to manage tail biting. 

In this updated opinion, the EFSA reinstates in no uncertain terms that pigs have an intrinsic need to explore and to forage and that bad welfare follows if they are denied this opportunity. Thus, pen floor design should allow for the provision of appropriate enrichment materials in sufficient quantities. Alternatively, rubber mats should be placed in pens with fully slatted flooring. The substrates most suitable as enrichment materials are straw, hay and silage. Other materials are suboptimal, as already clearly stated in the European Commission’s (EC) Recommendation on measures to reduce tail docking. The EFSA also concludes that during a tail biting outbreak pigs should be immediately given novel and attractive organic enrichment materials.

Another conclusion of the report, an aspect that animal advocates have been stressing for decades, is that intensive indoor rearing is the practice that causes the most welfare issues. This means that, to be impactful in improving the welfare of the 146 millions of EU pigs, revised legislation will have to introduce profound changes as alternative, higher welfare systems currently represent less than 1% of the total number of pig farms. In particular, the EFSA recommends giving growing pigs more space compared to the current minimum legal requirements as this will have a positive impact on animal welfare and even on growth rates. Part of the flooring should be solid to allow the animals to rest by lying down and to facilitate the provision of bedding and enrichment materials.

In response to the successful “End the Cage Age” ECI, the EC specifically required EFSA to assess the advantages, the welfare challenges and the mitigation measures associated with eliminating the use of individual stalls for gilts and sows and the report provides guidance on how this transition could occur. The EFSA concludes that gilts and sows should be permanently kept in groups. Hence, gestation stalls and conventional farrowing crates should no longer be used. As for farrowing and lactation, the EFSA concludes that, with the necessary adaptations in management and training of stockpersons, free-farrowing pens are as effective as conventional farrowing crates in terms of pre-weaning piglet mortality (14.2% for “fully crated” sows). Importantly, the EFSA highlights that temporary crating systems for farrowing and lactation should not be adopted unless their size is the same as free-farrowing pens and unless they can be easily converted into free-farrowing pens. This is a very important recommendation for the legislator to avoid the “enriched cage” escape route, an unscientific half measure that would cost sows and piglets yet more decades of unnecessary suffering. 

The opinion also stresses the importance of providing sows with nest-building materials, the most effective being those with longer structures provided in a deep layer, such as long-stemmed or long-cut straw or hay. Selection for large litters has several negative welfare consequences for sows and piglets alike and should be reconsidered. The EFSA recommends that selection for litter size should be limited to an average number of 12–14 piglets born alive.

The current minimum weaning age of 28 days for piglets should remain (and possibly increased based on further research). Additionally, the derogation allowing weaning at 21 days, which is largely used to maximise productivity, should be reconsidered. Piglets weaned at 28 days or later have better immunity and gut health and they may be less predisposed to tail biting later in life.

The opinion states that immunocastration and keeping entire pigs are preferable to surgical castration in terms of animal welfare and that in any case surgical piglet castration without anaesthesia and analgesia should no longer be performed. Additionally, tail docking should not be performed. The EFSA does acknowledge that these procedures can and should be avoided, stressing that effective pain relief protocols are mostly unavailable or impractical on farm. However, the report still offers recommendations on how to carry out these painful procedures when they are considered unavoidable. 

By contrast, we believe that – with the exception of individual animals or litters requiring veterinary care and if the procedures are carried out by a licensed veterinarian with adequate pain relief – revised pig welfare legislation should no longer include derogations to a full ban on pig mutilations, as there is a high risk that such derogations will become the rule (as is currently the case for tail docking).

On the specific request of the Commission, the EFSA also reached a consensus on seven ABMs that can be scored at the slaughterhouse to assess on-farm pig and cull sow welfare. At the moment, some indicators are already routinely collected for food hygiene and animal health purposes but they can also be very useful to monitor animal welfare on farm. Reliable classification systems and their harmonisation will be necessary in some cases to standardise the use of these AMBs in the future across Member States.

The widespread presence of chronic hunger, lameness and other injuries in some categories of pigs are also worrying and should be taken seriously in the upcoming revision of pig welfare legislation. In particular, chronic hunger in pregnant gilts and sows and the welfare of suckling piglets and breeding boars need to be urgently addressed, and in the case of boars also better studied.

This new EFSA opinion provides many useful indications on how to at least partially mitigate the serious animal welfare challenges in intensive pig farming. Of course, considering the opportunities ahead, it could have been even more ambitious. For instance, the mandate was limited to negative aspects of animal welfare. This is a missed opportunity as animal welfare science now recognises that kept animals should not only be spared suffering but should also experience positive mental states, which is the closest we can probably get to giving them “lives worth living”. The new legislation should definitely include this fundamental aspect, which lies at the core of our recent white paper on the revision of the EU animal welfare acquis. 

Regards Mark