Chickens: Europe increases welfare regulations step by step

Monday, March 5, 2012

The European Union is progressively tightening the rules for transporting chickens to slaughter in an effort to reduce the number of deaths on the road

by NORMAN DUNN

Just before a series of improvements to chicken welfare during transport were introduced in 2007, it was estimated that 11 million birds were dying during that last journey every year in Europe – and that was the lowest estimate. On the positive side, this shock statistic kick-started reforms in bird welfare that are still continuing.    

In 2007, the European Union (EU) Council distilled the results from years of scientific consultation and introduced new welfare legislation in its 27 member countries for poultry being transported to slaughter. Space per bird in the truck crates stays at the former level of 180-200 square centimetres per kilogram. But, from then on, truck drivers had to be trained and certified. Documentation was increased and all routes and times taken on the road had to be recorded.

Exactly 12 months later came the first amendment to the welfare regulation. This  involved the truck driver (or a certified assistant) having to examine the birds and obtain an "Animal Transport Certificate" (ATC) that the chickens are "fit for transport" (e.g. no leg or foot problems, broken bones or open wounds).

In 2009 came yet another amendment, this time for electronic surveillance of each and every truck on the road carrying chickens to slaughter. GPS tracking systems were installed to make sure the mandatory "shortest route from farm to processing plant" was followed.

In 2010 and 2011, there has been no new amendment, but another is certainly on the way. This covers the ventilation on board, although the major north European processors, such as Atria in Finland and Sweden, Vion in the Netherlands, Germany and Britain and Lantmannen-Danpo in Sweden and Denmark, already insist on power ventilation for chicken collection trucks. Atria, for instance, says its vehicle bodies are insulated and equipped with ventilation and heating facilities.     

A scientific advisory group has already advised the EU Council that the wide range of temperatures to which the birds are subject when transported in conventional passive ventilation trucks is a significant factor in high levels of birds dead on arrival (DOA) at the processing plants.

The scientists want legislation making an air exchange rate of up to 60 m3/h/kg of bird weight mandatory. In simple terms, with 2 kg birds on board that would be 60 m3/h air throughput for every 50 birds.

The air system should have the ability to sustain interior temperature reasonably uniformly at 20-23 C (or lower, depending on outside temperature). The ventilation should also be capable of operating independently for at least four hours, should the truck be stopped somewhere en route. Another new point: roofs of trucks must now be light in colour to reduce interior heating-up through solar gain.

And that's not all. EU legislation advisers on animal welfare want the GPS systems on transport trucks to be modified so that the temperatures in various points of the load can be continually measured and recorded to ensure welfare conditions are met right along the route.

Since the introduction of the new EU legislation, there have been few reliable estimates for mortality during transport. But information from the processing sector indicates that 0.2 per cent deaths could be an accurate reflection of the average situation. Maybe this doesn't sound like too much. But think of it this way: 0.2 per cent of the 6,800 million chickens trucked to EU processing plants in 2011 would equal 13.6 million birds – or 20,000 tonnes of potentially top class meat, or around 55,000 tonnes of wasted chicken feed!

Certainly the experts throughout Europe seem to agree that uneven ventilation, and non-uniform temperature within the load, are the main killers now and therefore the welfare factors to tackle most aggressively.

One of the first factors covered back in the original legislation – length of journey – is a fairly small issue in most of Europe, where transits from farm to processing plant tend to take a couple of hours at the most. Poultry production is usually grouped closely around major slaughtering facilities. For example, the main production area in France is within a radius of just 150 kilometres in Brittany, so the average journey time is 1.2 to 1.3 hours with a maximum of three hours. In Britain, the average time for this journey is 3.6 hours.

Scandinavia's largest chicken processor, Lantmannen-Danpo, with four abattoirs and one processing factory in Denmark and Sweden, is one of the few such organisations in Europe that actually publicizes its approach to transport of chickens. First of all, typical transport time to slaughterhouse takes between one and two hours. Before this, the chickens are lifted by an Airflow harvesting system so little or no manual catching is involved. As anyone who has worked in chicken production knows, it's often the manual catching and crating of the birds that causes the most damage, weakening them and lowering their resistance to the stresses of the journey ahead.

The good news now is that automatic harvesting and crating systems are taking over. One of the best known systems in Europe, Anglian Autoflow, automatically harvests and packs broilers in crates with 17 to 25 birds per crate. This gives stocking rates much the same as that demanded in the recent EU legislation, a sign that many within the poultry industry now realize the ever-closer relationship between premium chicken welfare and maximum profit. BF