Visit of Vion cattle slaughterhouse in Tilburg (NL)

Today the Eyes on Animals/Animal Welfare Foundation team that is working on getting welfare improvements at the Turkish slaughterhouses, met in Tilburg to get a tour of the Vion cattle slaughterhouse. The purpose of today´s visit was to see the equipment used, to get ideas for how we could reduce the suffering of cattle being handled in the Turkish slaughterhouses. Although no slaughterhouse is a nice place for animals, the conditions inside Vion were significantly calmer, less stressful and less painful for the cattle than what we saw inside the slaughterhouses visited in Turkey. We are eager to make recommendations based on today´s visit to the Turkish slaughterhouses when we return in December. 

A serious problem that we saw in Turkey was the mounting of bulls. They do this when they do not know each other and want to establish a new hierarchy. Unfortunately, it lead to several of the bulls falling down on the slippery floors and hurting themselves. At Vion they have installed anti-mounting bars above the bulls. This prevents them from mounting each other and thus avoids injury. 

     

Turkey: bulls mounting each other and risking injury            Vion Tilburg: anti-mounting bars to prevent injury

The floor at Vion was constructed so that defecation and urine could slip through, keeping it dry and anti-slip. Unfortunately in Turkey the floors were so wet and slippery that many cattle fell down.

         

Turkey: sippery wet floors caused animals to fall down               Vion Tilburg: the floor is anti-slip and kept relatively dry

At Vion we also noticed that they placed solid panels along the corridor to ease the movement of the cattle (prevent shadows from being created which make animals balk, avoid legs getting caught…). In Turkey the corridors were not solid and it caused stress because some animals did not want to move forward due to the distractions.

         

Turkey: shadows and other distractions                              Vion Tilburg: Solid sides help ease movement and keep animals calm

 

When a cow or bull suffers an injury during transport to Vion, he or she is rendered unconscious with a captive bolt pistol on the truck and only then dragged out with hydraulic chains towards the kill floor to be slaughtered. Sadly in Turkey, they do not have the right equipment or installations to humanely handle seriously injured animals nor will they accept using the captive bolt pistol due to the meat no longer being considered Halal. Injured animals are dragged out when they are still fully conscious. We are going to encourage the Turkish plants to set up emergency equipment so that the injured animals can at least be bled out from the edge of the truck instead of being forced to go through the slaughter process, which caused so much pain.
 

          

Turkey: animals arriving at slaughterhouses that are seriously in pain are still forced out while conscious and suffer greatly.   

Vion Tilburg: emergency equipment to handle animals arriving in pain- after being rendered unconscious on the truck, this chain and
trolley drags the unconscious animals towards the kill floor. This avoids forcing the injured animal to walk himself there and to experience the pain.

This visit showed the team again clearly that with proper equipment and good handling one can at least greatly reduce the suffering animals experience at slaughterhouses before being slaughtered. It left a much better impression on us than did the plants in Turkey that we visited in June. We would like to thank Vion for opening their doors to us and we hope to assist the Turkish plants in putting these ideas into practice. As long as people insist on eating meat and dairy from animals, we feel it is of utmost importance that everything is done to reduce the pain and stress during their slaughter.