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Horrific reports from France of angry farmers burning British lambs
alive in their lorries have refuelled public concern about the welfare of
animals in transit after 1992. As the ‘lamb war’ continues, the debate over
European Community legislation on the welfare of livestock on their way
to slaughterhouses is approaching its final stages. Many fear that Britain
will be forced to dilute some of its hard-won animal protection laws in
the interests of the new free market.

Animal welfare organisations such as the British Veterinary Associations’s
Animal Welfare Foundation and the Farm Animal Care Trust (FACT) are campaigning
for the general principle that farm animals should be slaughtered as close
as possible to the point of production.

Their demands are supported by a growing body of research that has charter
the stress suffered by farm animals in transit. Many studies have shown
that meat quality, and therefore producers’ profits, can be badly affected
by poor transport conditions. Recent research also highlights the scope
for improving travelling conditions for livestock, particularly pigs and
poultry destined for slaughter, no matter how short their journey. The suffering
endured by farm animals transported within Britain is often forgotten in
the controversy over the treatment of the minority that are exported alive
to mainland Europe.

Yet as it now stands, the draft of a new European Community regulation,
which is designed to replace as existing directive covering the welfare
of animals in transit, does little to acknowledge the special needs of different
species. On the contentious issue of how long farm animals should travel
without feed and water, for instance, it goes no further than a blanket
requirement that this should be administered ‘at suitable intervals’ and
at least once in 24 hours, or 12 hours in the case of poultry. Although
more detailed rules could be made in future, provisions fall far short both
of the 12-hour limit laid down in current British legislation and the 8
hours now suggested by many researchers.

Technology exists to chill meats so it may be exported on the hook instead
of the hoof and still be safe to eat: New Zealand lamb, for example, has
been an established British Sunday joint for years. But to satisfy consumer
demand for freshly killed and dressed carcasses, in continental Europe,
992,235 sheep, pigs and cattle, mainly calves, were exported for slaughter
in 1989. The total for the first seven months of 1990 was 32 per cent up
on the same period last year. In Britain, another 550 million animals, including
poultry, are slaughtered, nearly all after transport from the farm where
they are reared.

Live exports have increased as a result of a slump in home-grown lamb
sales in Britain and the ban on the use of veal crates at the beginning
of 1990. As the discredited veal crate has been phased out, calves have
been sent abroad for fattening, while Britain has imported veal raised in
French and Dutch crates instead.

Conditions on these fatal journeys vary dramatically. Sheep on consignment
to mainland Europe may be unloaded and packed into new vehicles without
food and water in a French car park, then driven on their exhausted way
into Spain, Belgium or Germany. In 1985, the Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, which opposes the export of live animals for food
altogether, presented a 100-page report to the European Community documenting
cases in which existing European welfare directives were flouted.

The RSPCA’s inspectors trailed consignments of calves and sheep from
Calais to regions of southwest France, Belgium and Germany, involving journeys
of up to 30 hours without rest, food or water. Animals were not taken to
resting posts as required by law and they arrived at their destinations
without documents.

Last year, a field study carried out for the European Commission, by
two researchers in the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries’ Veterinary
Service, substantiated the RSPCA’s findings. The inspectors found that major
European frontier points seldom or never carry out inspections of livestock.
More than a quarter do not have the facilities demanded by existing welfare
legislation. They have no facilities for unloading, feeding and watering
livestock.

For practical reasons, most of the detailed physiological and psychological
research into the impact of transport on farm animals has looked only at
the experiences of animals transported relatively short distances within
Britain. Researchers have tried to define the relative importance of stocking
density, temperature, ventilation, time of last feed and handling procedures
at the time of loading – as well as journey time – in making transport damaging,
both in terms of welfare for the animals and economics for the industry.

Two surveys undertaken by Paul Warriss and his colleagues at the Agricultural
and Food Research Council’s Food Research Institute at Langford, Bristol,
aimed to find out how long, on average, sheep and pigs destined for slaughter
travel and how long they spend in lairage, or resting pens, before slaughter.
Although some pigs were not slaughtered until 32 hours after they left the
farm, this long wait was not typical of the five abattoirs surveyed in the
south of England. Nearly three-quarters of the pigs travelled 96 kilometres
or less and spent three hours or less in transit.

In contrast, three-quarters of the sheep travelled for 300 kilometres
or less, in journeys taking over six hours. Sheep typically travel further
because a quarter of the 16 million slaughtered each year pass through abattoirs
in the south of England, although 84 per cent of production is in others
parts of the country. Also, as the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), the
government’s watchdog on welfare, noted in its report on markets in 1986,
90 per cent of pigs are contracted directly to bacon factories, whereas
70 per cent of lambs go through live auction systems.

For the 480 million chickens slaughtered each year, the picture is more
variable. A FAWC report on poultry handling and transport published in February
this year pointed out that the broiler industry is organised so that travelling
times to processing plants need rarely last longer than a few hours. Spent
hens, whose meat is used in processed food such as chicken pies, fare far
worse. There are only six major processing plants in Britain which take
the birds, usually culled at the end of their laying life at around 74 weeks
old. None of these plants is in Northern Ireland, so a sea journey is involved
for hens to be slaughtered in Britain.

To decide whether animals suffer poor welfare on these journeys, researchers
look for signs of stress, either psychological – which can be particularly
difficult to quantify – or physiological. They also look for signs of physical
injury, which is assumed to cause a degree of pain or discomfort.

The FAWC report on poultry transport highlighted a survey carried out
the the Bristol-based Food Research Institute, which showed that 29 per
cent of spent hens studied at two typical processing plants had broken bones
by the time they reached the stage of pre-slaughter stunning. A quarter
of the breakages were sustained while birds were removed by hand from their
battery cages – housing that makes their bones unnaturally fragile anyway.
A 1985 estimate put the financial loss resulting from injury and death of
broilers in transit at up to 30 million Pounds a year.

In sheep, higher percentages of animals may be bruised by the time they
are slaughtered than has hitherto been realised, according to Michael Cockran
from the University of Edinburgh. In a study to be published in the British
Veterinary Journal, he and a colleague found that 69 per cent of carcasses
at the slaughterhouse studied over a six-week period were bruised, with
a higher proportion among lambs than ewes. Of the lambs affected, a fifth
of those severely bruised had passed through markets and only 12 per cent
had come directly from the farm. From their observations of incidents at
the slaughterhouse that could have led to injury, they estimated that 74
per cent of bruising happened before the animals got there.

Behaviour that suggests an animal is stressed – fighting in pigs or
calves’ failure to ruminate – can often be linked to biochemical changes
in levels of glucose, corticosteroid hormones, various fatty acids and beta-endorphin.
In all species studied, stressful situations have been found to be followed
by a rise in blood levels of one key hormone, cortisol.

In a series of experiments with six-month-old calves at the University
of Liverpool’s department of animal husbandry, Roger Ewbank of the Universities
Federation for Animal Welfare used this kind of evidence to show that calves
were stressed by transport, not just by the disturbance of loading. Blood
samples were taken at intervals during a six-hour journey. Levels of stress
hormones in the blood were at their highest two hours after departure, even
though cortisol in the blood has a half-life of only 10 minutes. Stress
after the journey also takes its toll. Ewbank also found that, three weeks
after transport, the calves whose growth rate suffered most were those introduced
to a new living environment, rather than those who returned to their previous
accommodation.

In later studies, Ewbank found, rather surprisingly, that transport
appeared to cause less stress in younger calves. Three-month old calves
did have raised blood corticosteroid levels related to transport, but not
so high as the older animals. They also lay down and ruminated more. Even
less stress was caused to calves between one and three weeks old. In both
the younger groups, there was little to suggest that an 18-hour journey
caused them more stress than a six-hour one.

Ewbank concluded that, although stress is affected by the length of
a journey, loading and unloading at either end are the main stressors. In
a study with sheep, Richard Rodway and his colleagues at the University
of Leeds’ department of animal physiology have found that blood levels of
at least one hormone associated with stress, beta-endorphin, are much lower
among animals transported after regular handling over a two-week period
than those rounded up in a field just before a journey. However, they found
that even in the handled group, cortisol levels still nearly doubled after
transport.

Trying to establish signs of psychological stress can be even more problematic.
But, with chickens at least, researchers have found a method of quantifying
fear responses by observing the animals’ behaviour. The measure used is
known as tonic immobility, a catatonic-like state induced by gently restraining
the bird. Researchers believe this unlearned response allows it to remain
totally still to avoid attack by a predator. Stressful events such as isolation
from its fellows, loud noise or other shocks prolong tonic immobility and
both the time it takes to manifest itself and its duration are taken as
measures of fear experienced.

Christine Nicol and her colleagues at the University of Bristol’s department
of animal husbandry have found high levels of fear – equivalent to the response
to high-intensity electric shocks – in both broilers and spent hens after
transport. In the broiler study, untransported birds stayed in tonic immobility
for about 4 minutes; in some it could not be induced at all. After transportation,
the mean duration of the state was around 12 minutes. There were wide fluctuations
between individuals, however, and five birds were affected for longer than
100 minutes. Among spent hens, the mean figure was about 11 minutes.

Many factors might have affected the birds’ response, such as the transport
system used, time spent in crates and position on the lorry, but the researchers
concluded that length of journey was the most important. With broilers,
they found levels of fear increased steadily over journeys lasting from
between 10 and 120 minutes. In the case of spent hens no longer laying eggs
at a high rate, fear was higher over short journeys, but there was no evidence
that they became used to travel, as fear did not decline with distance.

Stress not only harms animals’ wellbeing, it also results in financial
loss to the industry. Jane Guise of Cambac JMA Research, a unit established
by a farmers’ cooperative and its supermarket retailers, has estimated that
the pig industry could save 13.5 million Pounds a year in weight loss and
carcass damage if pigs were transported at lower stocking density. She believes
another 9 million Pounds could be saved by avoiding the practice of keeping
pigs in lairage for periods of 12 hours or more before slaughter at the
end of their journey.

Guise presented her estimates at a conference sponsored by FACT, called
‘It Pays to be Humane’, held by the University of Reading’s Centre for Agricultural
Strategy at the Royal Society this autumn. She told delegates it is immoral
to say that welfare should be judged in economic terms alone; but there
are financial incentives favouring humane transport.

Rush-hour travel

Her figures were derived from studies involving 1400 Cambac pigs in
which two groups were transported to slaughter at either high or low density.
High density, often found in commercial practice, was taken to be 0.3 square
metres of space per pig and low density was more than 0.4 square metres
each, in line with recommendations from Britain’s Meat & Livestock Commission
of between 0.4 and 0.5 square metres. Density levels are usually decided
by the haulier and are a delicate problem because although too little space
causes stress, too much leads to injury as pigs may be thrown by vehicle
movement.

After slaughter, the researchers measured the quality of pigs’ meat
with fibre optic probes and assessed damage to the carcass by the degree
of skin blemish. Pigs packed into lorries at high density clearly had more
signs of skin damage at unlaoding than those given more room, which later
measurements confirmed. Meat quality also suffered. Reporting her results
in the journal Animal Production, Guise says that high densities encourage
handlers to make more use of electric goads to move the animals, some of
whom may suffer rectal prolapse as they struggle to find space between other
animals. This can also happen when they are loaded via steep ramps, instead
of the hydraulic tail-lifts used by Cambac. Guise concludes that farmers
should give a pig weighing 100 kilograms at least 0.4 square metres of space.

Carcass weight as well as meat quality are affected by transport. Paul
Warriss and colleagues from the AFRC institute at Bristol have found that
transport stress in itself leads to lighter and so potentially less valuable
carcasses in pigs – in summer six hours of transport led to a weight loss
of just over 2 per cent. Even slight weight loss can be significant in an
industry that works to very tight financial margins.

Warriss and his colleagues have also shown that sheep transported for
up to six hours have slightly lighter carcasses than others not transported,
but given the same amount of food and water. These losses may be greater
on longer journeys under more stressful conditions, they suggest.

Researchers have also studied the common practice of making animals
fast before they are transported – an important factor in the debate over
what maximum travelling times without food and water should be permitted
in new European legislation. Fasting is often imposed to prevent contamination
of carcasses at slaughter, but the effects on different species are varied.
Pigs become more aggressive after a fast of 12 hours or more, while poultry
are better able to resist heat stress. Ruminants will often refuse to eat
when they are stressed, whether or not they have been made to fast.

The AFRC researchers found that nearly a quarter of 120,000 sheep killed
in two plants had left their farms 24 hours previously, suggesting prolonged
fasts. To test the effect of fasting alone on carcass yield and meat quality,
Warriss and his colleagues studied sheep slaughtered straight after feeding
and at intervals of fast up to 72 hours. Carcass weight was lost at a rate
of 0.085 per cent an hour; a significant effect was not seen until 48 hours
without food. Liver glycogen – the storage form of glucose – dropped rapidly
to a very low level after 24 hours and the animals were dehydrated even
though they had access to water at all times. As cortisol levels were not
greatly affected, the researchers concluded that fasting is not of itself
stressful.

In commercial situations, pigs may often be fasted for 14 hours before
transport, followed by a journey of up to 10 hours. The longer the journey,
the greater the tendency for pigs to be kept in lairage overnight, possibly
unfed. Although this may not be the norm, researchers have found it is not
unusual. Fasting times are reliably reflected in levels of liver glycogen
after slaughter and these can be used to predict length of time spent without
food. The AFRC researchers suggest that 18 hours between farm and slaughter
is the longest fasting time before economically significant losses – in
terms of weight loss and dark, firm, dry, meat which may be rejected by
retailers and consumers – are felt. They say that animals may also suffer
as a result of such depleted stores of body energy.

Water was always available during these fasting experiments and there
is as yet little equivalent information about the minimum drinking requirements
of individual farm animal species.

With so many variables at work controlling welfare, researchers are
turning their attention to the possibility of engineering an animal’s environment
from farm to slaughterhouse to provide the best conditions for the animals
as well as maintaining the quality of the carcass. This approach has been
adopted in a project funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Food (MAFF) carried out by Malcolm Mitchell of the AFRC Institute of Animal
Physiology and Genetics Research at Roslin, Midlothian, and Peter Kettlewell
of the welfare science division at AFRC Engineering in Silsoe, Bedford.

They have been measuring in turn each component of existing poultry
transporters – including temperature, humidity, vibration and noise levels
– while monitoring the birds’ responses, using techniques such as video
cameras and telemetric monitoring of birds’ heart rates. They plan to create
a model that will predict how chickens will respond to any given set of
environmental parameters.

A database has been compiled through a combination of laboratory studies,
simulation of transport in the laboratory and trials with working vehicles
over commercial runs in varying geographical and climatic conditions. Mitchell
says the team is now at the stage where it can identify where the thermal
core of a loaded lorry will be – for example in hot conditions when the
vehicle is closed and stationary – and where the birds will be subject to
heat stress.

‘A lorry may carry 5,000-6,000 birds, depending on their body weight,
with each producing approximately 10 watts,’ says Mitchell. ‘There may be
a lorry and a trailer each containing a similar number of birds, so you
have the equivalent of 30 kilowatt fires in each of these spaceswithout
a lot of air. The heat load is enormous.’ At the same time, the birds lose
water by evaporation while panting to cool down; the situation is worse
still if ventilation is poor.

The researchers combine measure of temperature and humidity to produce
an index of thermal loads in the vehicle, where they will occur and their
physiological consequences under real transport conditions. They can refine
the model to determine acceptable limits from physiological and behavioural
assessments.

Kettlewell says that what the research team is working towards is developing
a sensor in the lorry that can transmit information to the driver, or better
still in the long term, activate an automatic control system of vents and
fans, for example.

Vibration, another important parameter than can cause stress, is measured
by placing accelerometers in the vehicle in typical transport conditions.
These real-life frequencies are then simulated in the laboratory and the
birds’ responses to them are measured. To avoid anthropomorphic assumptions,
the researchers use measures such as tonic immobility and passive avoidance
– in which an animal avoids something it dislikes by learning not to make
a certain behavioural response – to find out just how aversive the birds
find certain conditions.

In creating the new, ‘ideal’ transport system, many factors will have
to be balanced. To take a simple example, it might be shown that to allow
ambient air through the vehicle would be a boon to the animals, but to do
so would also increase drag and thus compromise fuel efficiency.

Future commercial systems should ideally involve some form of mechanical
broiler harvester at the farm, a loading method that has been shown by Kettlewell
and other researchers to be much less stressful than human handling, particularly
when combined with a modular, rather than fixed, crate loading system. Under
such a regime, birds are picked up and placed on a conveyor belt by soft
rubber ‘fingers’ attached to rotors that sweep through the flock. Two companies
have now been licensed to develop harvesters using the AFRC patented concept.
Such a system has been strongly recommended by FAWC which was critical in
their February report of the use of untrained catching teams to unceremoniously
grab birds by the legs.

At Cambac, research is taking a similarly holistic view towards the
transport of pigs. Guise says that mixing pigs from different social groups
can lead to turmoil, ending in carcass damage and dark, firm and dry meat,
yet it remains standard commercial practice. Experiements at Cambac have
shown that it is much less stressful to keep together animals of different
ages in farm social groups right through to the slaughterhouse. They are
now trying to develop an integrated handling system from farm to slaughter,
using a flexible penning unit for pig transporters designed at the AFRC’s
institute at Silsoe. As the AFRC is doing with poultry, Cambac is attempting
to characterise the environment experienced by pigs in transporters, using
techniques such as remote sensing to measure heart rate.

Researchers are also studying behaviour differences between distinct
genotypes to discover if handling systems should be adapted for each type:
in recent years there has been an increase in the number of pigs susceptible
to stress. Determining the relative importance of breeding and background
includes the study of varying rearing methods on farms – the indoor pig
seems to have a different temperament to the outdoor pig, which welfarists
regard as the ideal condition. Guise comments: ‘Some farms may produce pigs
that are very difficult to handle and others produce them like pets. We
need to find out how they do it and if it is repeatable elsewhere.’

Projects aimed at improving the welfare of farm animals in transit are
now urgent: journey times are expected to increase markedly after 1992 in
the wake of new European legislation demanding exacting standards on slaughterhouse
buildings and facilities. As many as three quarters of Britain’s 900 abattoirs,
particularly the smaller businesses, are expected to close as a result.

At the same time, other approaches are aimed at eliminating unnecessary
journeys altogther. The Humane Slaughter Association has created the concept
of a versatile mobile trailer unit, capable of docking into existing farm
animal handling systems with the ability to slaughter, dress and chill cattle,
sheep and pigs to EC licence standards.

Miriam Parker of HSA says the unit could be particularly valuable for
nonintensive farmers, perhaps operating through a cooperative, who wish
to slaughter animals close to home for welfare reasons and distribute carcasses
through farm shops or other small retail outlets. Farmers in remote places
such as the Scilly Isles could avoid the stress involved in a rough sea
crossing. So far only one unit has been built, a specially adapted version
for deer slaughter.

In Scotland, where long journeys to market and slaughter are common,
a solution is being sought through electronic auctions, an idea imported
from Canada in 1989. Instead of sending their animals to market, farmers
supply information about their livestock to buyers’ personal computers,
linked by modem to a mainframe. Prospective buyers then take part in competitive
bidding via the telephone: they make a bid by pressing the return key and
their offer appears simultaneously on every buyer’s screen. Animals can
then be despatched direct to their final destinations.

Aberdeen and Northern Mart, a farmers’ cooperative, launched this system
as a pilot scheme last autumn and formed a subsidiary company to take on
the European rights from its originators, Ontario Livestock Exchange. Other
auctioneers are adopting the system and a national network should be established
by early next year. It could help to put into effect the BVA recommendation
that young calves should not be offered for sale at more than one market
within four weeks.

Meanwhile, progress of the EEC’s Council Regulation on the Protection
of Animals during Transport is almost completed. In its amended form – possibly
as a directive to be implemented through individual national legislation
– it is expected to gain final approval by the Council of Ministers at the
end of the year, or early in 1991. Apart from the problem of journey length,
both the MAFF and the welfare organisations are concerned that the British
rule on resting animals for 10 hours before export will disappear, putting
animals’ lives at serious risk. Three- and four-tier transporters, currently
banned by British law on cross-Channel journeys because of ventilation problems,
could also be permitted.

John Pratt, chief veterinary officer to the Meat and Livestock Commission,
highlights other welfare loopholes: ‘We would like to see specific stocking
density allowance for each species, but the legislation just says ‘adequate
spacing should be allowed’.’ He also condemns the provision for animals
to be kept in their transporters for two hours in the event of delays at
check points: ‘If there is a check, animal transporters should go to the
front of the queue.’

Enforcement is to be through a proposed European inspectorate, but as
the RSPCA’s investigations have demonstrated, it is not easy to monitor
welfare law in practice. A number of important amendments suggested by the
European Parliament were rejected, including a limit of eight hours on journeys
to slaughter, but the European Commission has agreed to produce a report
on how the legislation is working three years after it comes into effect.

Pratt believes the proposed EEC regulation will do nothing to reduce
live exports, but the demand for freshly killed lamb may in future be served
in part by British abattoir owners establishing businesses in northern France
or Belgium, with the welfare advantage of avoiding long on-going journeys
from the Channel coast.

Research results already provide substantial evidence about what conditions
farm animals in transport need. It will take political will to ensure the
welfare implications are taken fully into account before the current chapter
in European legislation is finally closed.

* * *

Some animals are more equal than others

Solipeds such as horses and deer appear on the same footing as their
cloven hooved brethren under the proposed European legislation on welfare
in transit. But British perception puts them in a class of their own.

Under Britain’s Minimum Values Order, which would be made obsolete by
a European regulation, only horses that achieve a certain price level can
be exported abroad. This is to protect from the European horse meat trade
those too young, too old or in some other way unsuitable for breeding, sport
or active work. The International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH)
estimates this trade involves around 890,000 animals a year. But if BSE
is confirmed in continental cattle, this is likely to increase both demand
and resistance to British market restrictions.

Advocates of Britain’s current legislation say many horses exported
under free market conditions would be native ponies, unused to handling
and particularly vulnerable to the traumas of sea transport. Others, such
as David Morris, an MEP who pushed hard in the European Parliament for a
ban on all long journeys to slaughter, argue that welfare control should
apply to all farm animals.

A project to study the effects of sea travel on horses, funded by the
ILPH, has just been started by Desmond Leadon of the Irish Equine Research
Centre at Naas in Ireland. His extensive field study data is soon to be
published.

Leadon took blood samples from three groups of horses transported by
road after intervals of between 4 and 48 hours. The groups were made up
of thoroughbred yearlings, mature horses accustomed to transport, and a
group of retired racehorses. Inexperienced horses lost electrolytes (salts)
from their blood more rapidly and had higher levels of cortisol in their
blood than those used to travelling. Significant biochemical changes took
place between 6 and 8 hours, and even at 10 °C, horses lost as much
as 20 kilograms in weight. Between 12 and 14 hours, the animals became clinically
dehydrated.