Today Eyes on Animals visited an Austrian pig and cattle meat company that, 4 years ago, built a new multi-million euro slaughterhouse with “animal-behaviour and emotions” as their main focus. Their goal was to set up the most humane slaughterhouse possible. They visited 38 other slaughterhouses around Europe to come up with the best design to keep stress and pain low. The raceway and stun box for the pigs was designed and built by themselves, because what is on the market today is not at all satisfactory. They especially wanted to refrain from CO2 stunning and improve the electric stunning procedure. The lairage and raceway are made out of pine wood to lower the noise level and to keep the style familiar to the farms where many come from (label “Fair Hof”, which are pig farms that go a few steps beyond conventional and have pig pens out of pine wood). We had a first good meeting with the owner and chief veterinarian and will stay in touch with them to further spread their in-house developed better practices in the hope to inspire other slaughterhouses to also make “ welfare” more central in their business.
Home » Our inspections » slaughterhouses » Visit of Huetthaler slaughterhouse, Austria
