Day 3 of the Eyes on Animals International TASKFORCE meeting

On this last day of our TASKFORCE meeting, we headed out into the field. We visited two pig farms where the farmer had stopped with pig castration. Both farmers were very happy and satisfied with having stopped. They never want to go back to performing castration. Both also did not use gestation stalls for their breeding sows, but rather group housing on straw. We also visited Westfort slaughterhouse, one of the first slaughterhouses to stop slaughtering castrated male pigs. They hire professional sniffers to detect if any of the male pigs have boar taint, and then separate these few carcasses to use for pre-cooked products (via cooking the boar taint disappears). The taskforce participants learned about how these improvements took place and about how to make it also possible in their home countries. The Canadian TV team documented our tours, to show to the Canadian public back home that such progress is possible and to show how the Dutch industry and animal welfare organizations communicate to find solutions to animal welfare problems.