Our innovative re-design of automatic electric pig stunning and improvement of handling procedures in order to enable the quick phasing out of painfulCO2 stunning, have been published in Vet Record. Vet Record is a respected veterinary journal published by the British Veterinary Association (BVA). These articles appeared after Vet Record attended our presentation at the UFAW conference in Switzerland in early March of this year.
Read the full articles below:
Over the past four years, Eyes on Animals has collaborated in renovating a major EU pig slaughterhouse that uses an automatic electric stunner. This was made possible thanks to the slaughterhouse itself and the Dierenbescherming. Together with the slaughterhouse and with online guidance from Dr. Temple Grandin, we redesigned the raceways, crowd pen and single files, drastically reduced the speed but not the capacity and completely changed the herding techniques. We also provide regular training sessions for staff conducted by both our team and the slaughterhouse management. The ultimate goal is to significantly improve automatic electric stunning so that it becomes an appealing alternative to CO2 stunning, both in terms of animal welfare and economically. Eyes on Animals strongly opposes CO2 stunning, which is not painless or instantaneous, and thereby not a real stunning method. CO2 causes pigs to experience 15-30 seconds of pain, breathelessness and panic. Now that a practical alternative exists, we believe there is no longer a justification for CO2 stunning to be accepted.
The improvements we have implemented are detailed (with illustrative photos and video’s) in the recently updated Industry Tips report. For specific insights, please refer to Chapter ‘Single-file raceway towards the electric stunner’ (pages 112-138) >>
