The impact of production system on animal welfare of cattle prior to slaughter : from loading on-farm to stunning at the slaughterhouse
Abstract: The slaughter process, from loading the animals on the transport on-farm until stunning at the slaughterhouse, makes our production animals exposed to stressful situations and unknown environments. Animal welfare prior to slaughter has been questioned for several years and science behind how animal welfare is affected is lacking. The aims of this master thesis were to develop and evaluate protocols for animal welfare assessment of cattle prior to slaughter and map variation in animal welfare indicators within and between different production systems, namely KRAV-certified and conventional production systems for cattle. Animal based indicators were observed at loading on-farm, unloading at the slaughterhouse, during lairage at the slaughterhouse and at driving to the stunning box. Both behaviour of the animal and the interaction between the stock person and the animal were observed. Loading time, transport time, unloading time, lairage time and time for driving animals to the stunning box were recorded as well as animal welfare indicators. The farms included in the study were one KRAV-certified beef farm, one conventional beef farm, and one KRAV-certified dairy farm. Semi structure interviews with farmers, transporters and slaughter personnel were performed during the study to assess their opinion of animal welfare prior to slaughter. After performed observation and evaluation of this animal welfare protocols it is suggested to include fewer categories of animal behaviours and human-animal interactions for the protocols to be easier to use with direct observations. The human-animal interactions like e.g., slapping and beating should be defined in different ways to assess the impact on the animal welfare. Observations at individual level could make the results more valuable. The observation position and the identification of the individual observed should be determined before the observation starts. Based on the results from this study, there are indications of variations in animal behaviours and human-animal interactions between animal categories and production systems of cattle. In the current study, KRAV-certified beef production had the lowest stress-related behaviours at loading and shortest loading time when compared with conventional beef production and KRAV-certified dairy production. The highest count of stress-related behaviours per animal in all production systems was during driving to stunning. The observations in lairage at the slaughterhouse indicated that the animals could not rest and recover during the time at the slaughterhouse.
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