News From : DagangHalal.com (22 Jun 2009)
LUXEMBOURG, June 22 (Reuters) – Slaughterhouses across the European Union will have to change the way they stun and kill millions of cattle, pigs and poultry after farm ministers agreed on Monday to tighten the rules and improve animal protection. Every year, nearly 360 million pigs, sheep, goats and cattle and several billion turkeys and chickens are killed in the EU for their meat. A further 25 million animals are killed for fur and hatcheries also kill around 330 million day-old-chicks.
Welfare and safety rules governing how this may be done date from 1993 and, experts say, are in serious need of an overhaul.
From January 2013, stunning and killing criteria for slaughterhouses will be updated, and the general parameters for using electricity to knock out animals, for example, or gas for birds, more concretely defined than now.
Slaughterhouses will also have to appoint a specific person responsible for animal welfare and make sure all staff are properly trained and certified. The updated rules will not ban any major method of stunning, although the use of certain techniques will be limited.
Carbon dioxide for pigs and poultry, for example, may still be used despite some scientists’ reservations, and using waterbath stunners for poultry will remain permitted — to the annoyance of the Dutch, who wanted a ban.
Slaughterhouse operators will see their responsibilities increase, regularly monitoring the efficiency of stunning techniques to ensure animals do not “wake up”.
“We have a duty to take care of animals. Their welfare is crucial, not only for ethical reasons but also to ensure animal health and the quality of food,” EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said in a statement.
The agreement would make “a real difference to the way animals are treated at the time of slaughter”, she said, adding that distress would be minimised in the slaughtering process. (Reporting by Jeremy Smith)
Source: guardian.co.uk