Today we talked to slaughterhouse inspectors from the Dutch government (NVWA) about how we, together with Dr. Temple Grandin in our team, helped redesign a large pig slaughterhouse to drastically improve automatic electric stunning in order to create a viable, realistic and more humane stunning method to CO2 gas stunning so that we can finally phase out the need for CO2 gas stunning in the future. Inhaling CO2 causes pain from burning of the mucous membranes, a feeling of suffocation and panic among the pigs, and it takes 20 – 30 seconds to render them unconscious. In the new design the time pressure has been reduced by 400% by having 4 stun lines instead of 1 and we got rid of all noisy, scary driving aids, shadows, colour contrasts and scary distractions. Pigs can now enter simultaneously with double entrance instead of just one.
We would like to thank the NVWA for their interest and good questions today as well as the slaughterhouse that took on this challenge and the Dierenbescherming for facilitating this important project.
