Poultry deaths in transit put the spotlight on transportation practices

Monday, March 5, 2012

Charges have been laid against Maple Lodge Farms, but the company says it takes all reasonable measures to safeguard animal welfare

by SUSAN MANN

Clinton-area chicken farmer John Maaskant remembers a fierce winter storm when he was growing up in the 1960s, during which a truckload of chickens got stuck within sight of his family's farm after leaving for the slaughter plant.

"In those days they really didn't have adequate tarps," says Maaskant, who emphasizes he is talking personally and not as a representative of any of the farm organizations he's on. The truck was trapped in the storm for hours. By the time it got to town six hours later, he recalls, half of the chickens were dead.

Chicken transportation has improved a lot since then and the industry continues to work on improvements. But animal welfare organizations argue more dramatic changes are needed after 60 charges were laid by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) against Canada's largest chicken processor, Maple Lodge Farms Ltd., for causing undue suffering to chickens through exposure to inclement weather during trucking. The charges were laid under Health of Animals Act regulations.

The hearings began last September, continued in January and February and are scheduled again for April 25 and May 8. Both the CFIA and Maple Lodge said in separate emails that they can't comment about specific matters related to the charges while the court proceedings are ongoing.

Carol Gardin-Frazer, Maple Lodge corporate communications officer, says the charges relate to two loads – one transported on Dec. 30, 2008, and the other on Feb. 23, 2009.

News reports stated that, on the Dec. 30, 2008 truck, 711 broiler chickens from a load of about 10,000 were dead on arrival at the processing plant, while on Feb. 23, 2009, 1,181 spent laying hens from a load of 11,000 arrived dead.

University of Guelph Prof. Tina Widowski, Egg Farmers of Canada chair in poultry welfare, says the numbers of dead arrivals in these two cases are more than twice as high as what would be considered acceptable under present welfare standards.

Gardin-Frazer says the Brampton-based company's position is that it complied with industry guidelines and "took all reasonable measures within our capacity to protect the chickens in question from inappropriate exposure to inclement weather and attendant suffering." In addition, the company, North America's largest buyer of spent hens that are trucked from Ontario, Quebec and the United States to its plant, strictly adheres to the industry-developed Codes of Practice for the Care and Handling of Poultry. The broilers in question were trucked from southern Ontario.

Maple Lodge is distressed and concerned that these incidents occurred, she says in the email. "To have birds perish during transportation represents a very regrettable situation from a humane perspective and an economic loss to our company; therefore we are committed to doing everything in our control to ensure birds' health and well-being."

The company recognizes the critical need for improvements in transportation. During the past three years, it has invested more than $35 million and worked with industry experts, including the CFIA, to improve transportation equipment, facilities and processes aimed at reducing stress to chickens during trucking.

Maaskant says Ontario broiler farmers are paid based on the weight of the chickens on the farm before they're loaded onto trucks destined for slaughter plants. But farmers do care what happens to their birds after they leave the farm. Everyone involved, from the farmers to catchers, truckers and processors, tries to do the best job they can "to make sure the birds arrive at the plant in good condition and are comfortable," he says.

Gwen Zellen, Chicken Farmers of Ontario vice-president for food quality, operations and risk management, says the industry is developing a loading decision tree to help people determine when birds should be loaded. The document was out for consultation early this winter.

Guelph's Tina Widowski admits that at times chicken transportation can be tricky, especially during unpredictable events like storms. And spent laying hens are very fragile, hardly have any feathers and are pretty susceptible to stress.

Extreme temperatures put animals at risk during transportation, she says, because the trucks don't have heating or ventilation systems. "All of the airflow that occurs within transport vehicles has to depend on the truck moving." Maintaining a comfortable or acceptable temperature throughout the truck, particularly in poultry trucking, is an extreme challenge, she notes.

Prof. Trever Crowe of University of Saskatchewan's chemical and biological engineering department and associate dean of the College of Graduate Studies and Research, says truck ventilation is possible but it comes down to additional costs. A ventilated truck has been developed in the United Kingdom, but it's not widely used in Europe, probably because of the additional costs for the infrastructure and maintenance.

Would that truck work in Canada? Crowe says it would require more maintenance because it's colder here and Canada gets way more snow than the United Kingdom.

For the past 14 years, the poultry transport research group at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon has been studying cold weather transportation of broiler chickens. Crowe, the group's main investigator, says their research shows supplemental heating on trucks isn't needed. "What we need to be focusing on is to have the birds well prepared for transit." In particular, birds should be healthy and dry before they're loaded onto trucks.

What is also needed are systems on trucks that are able to better distribute the heat the birds produce and remove moisture created by the birds in the load.

After ventilation, some type of heat exchanger or fan would be worth considering. As for the costs, Crowe says they don't know yet "because I'm not sure we have envisioned what the system would actually be."

But any consideration of costs might be secondary to the need for producers, processors and truckers to do a better job of transporting birds safely and humanely. Crowe says "it has to happen regardless of the costs," otherwise the industry will not be able to survive.

Will death losses in transit ever be reduced to zero? Crowe doesn't think so because some weak birds, or ones whose physiology simply can't handle the stress, are being loaded. Those birds may have died in the barn if they weren't scheduled to be transported.

The poultry transport research group wants to develop a technique, system or device to measure bird feather wetness.  Crowe says "bird wetness is the key to many of our challenges."

Animal welfare organizations are using the Maple Lodge trial as an opportunity to push for changes, including some that may not be practical for the industry.

Liz White, director of Animal Alliance of Canada, says she is at the hearings to learn how the industry works. "If we get the information from the court we can go and, I think, impact things like the codes of practice and regulations."

White says the industry needs to slow down and "stop processing the volume of animals it is processing, because it is really problematic."

Maaskant says these groups are really trying to shut down animal agricultural production and incidents like the Maple Lodge one give them ammunition to pursue their agenda. BF