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Dr. Temple Grandin
- Colorado State University |
| Farmscape for July 16, 2002 (Episode 1022)
An internationally renowned animal behavior expert says standardized guidelines adopted by American grocers and restaurateurs will expand the number of US slaughter plants audited for animal welfare.
Last month the National Council of Chain Restaurants and the Food Marketing Institute released their first set of standardized animal welfare guidelines.
Colorado State University Associate Animal Science Professor Dr. Temple Grandin wrote the 1997 American Meat Institute document which set standards for US slaughter plants.
Those standards were adopted, as written, as part of the new FMI-NCCR standards.
Dr. Grandin says audits conducted by companies like McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King have led to substantial improvements at US slaughter plants.
Clip-Dr. Temple Grandin-Colorado State University
In the meat packing plants the audits have already been taking place so probably FMI and NCCR are just going to help maintain what is already going on and they are going to pick up some smaller plants.
There's a number of small slaughter plants that are not being audited now because they're too small to sell to the large hamburger restaurants.
When FMI starts doing audits they'd be audited.
There's been great improvements in the slaughter plants since McDonalds started doing their auditing in 1999.
For a long time, people kind of ignored that end of the plant and having restaurant companies out there auditing it has brought about great improvements.
Some of the good news is that a lot of these improvements just required better management and small changes.
They did not require a lot of big capital improvements.
Dr. Grandin says the animal welfare issue is not going away so it's a matter of coming up with reasonable animals welfare standards that are sensible, practical and economical.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council |
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| Keywords: animal welfare |
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© Wonderworks Canada
2002 |
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