Today we presented the very first Jan Voordouw Award for Humane Progress. It went to a slaughterman in Turkey that was one of the first few in the country to accept and learn from us how to stun cattle with a captive-bolt stunner.
This moment feels especially meaningful now, as Jan Voordouw sadly passed away last year from cancer. Jan was a humane butcher from the Netherlands who regularly volunteered for our animal-welfare charity. His compassion, skills, and dedication helped us bring humane handling practices into places where they were desperately needed.
Today we witnessed again why his volunteer help back then was so useful. A downer cow arrived at the slaughterhouse that was in great pain. Normally in Turkish slaughterhouses injured animals like this are dragged out at slaughterhouses by chains while fully conscious, regardless if they have broken legs, hips, pelvis, backs…. Without a stunner one cannot put animals like this quickly and humanely out of their misery. Because this slaughterhouse is equiped with a captive bolt stunner and has a slaughterman that is trained and uses it, this cow’s suffering could at least be quickly and humanely ended before unloading.
The same went for the mobile cattle arriving at this plant. Instead of being forced to fall in a trip-floor restraint box and dragged up to the ceiling by a leg pulley to have then their neck sawed, they were first rendered unconscious.
Jan’s legacy lives on — not only through the equipment he helped introduce, but through the people he helped train here in Turkey. We are grateful to him but also to the staff at this plant and main slaughterman. They put welfare into practice. The father of the main slaughterman is a local Imam of the region who also supports his son’s decision to use a captive bolt stunner. He says if the stunner makes slaughter less painful for the animals and also safer for the staff, then it is right to use it.
