Cattle behaviours and stockperson actions related to impaired animal welfare at Swedish slaughter plants

Abstract

At a slaughter plant, cattle are sometimes exposed to rough handling which may reduce animal welfare (AW). In an observational study at four Swedish commercial slaughter plants, AW-related behaviours of cattle and actions of abattoir stockpersons handling the same animals were recorded simultaneously. The objective was to estimate the occurrence of different behaviours and actions related to negative AW during driving and stunning at large-scale cattle abattoirs, assess associations between such behaviours and actions, and analyse differences between plants and animal categories (dairy cows, beef cows, adult bulls and heifers/bullocks). Direct continuous observations of focal animals were made using laptops either in a section of the driving race to the stun box (132 animals) or in the stun box (313 animals), generating a total of 14.5 h of observations. The animals were stunned using a penetrating captive bolt gun or a rifle. Counts per animal of 14 behaviours and 16 stockperson actions were calculated. Sixteen percent of the observed animals displayed total behaviour counts >5 in the driving race, and 2% did so in the stun box; 32 and 8% of the observed animals received total counts >5 of stockperson actions in the race and stun box, respectively. We estimated that two-thirds of the animals were processed without displaying/receiving any of the behaviours/actions associated with severely negative AW. AW scores were acquired by adding together all observed behaviour counts (and action counts, separately) weighted by expert-assessed ratings denoting the degree of impaired AW. Spearman rank correlation was used to analyse associations between behaviour counts, action counts and AW scores. Only three moderate to strong correlations (p >= 0.4, P

Keywords

Abattoir; Cattle; Driving; Human-animal interaction; Slaughterhouse; Stockperson; Stunning

Published in

Applied Animal Behaviour Science
2014, volume: 152, pages: 23-37

SLU Authors

• Hultgren, Jan

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Wiberg, Sofia Elisabet

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Berg, Lotta

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Cvek, Katarina

  • Department of Clinical Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Lunner Kolstrup, Christina

  • Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Human-Animal Interactions

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2013.12.005

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/52009