Transport of pigs to slaughter and associated handling

Faucitano, L.; Goumon, Sébastien

doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-101012-9.00009-5

Cited by 35 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 111 publications

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“…1099/2009 [23], according to which animals should be unloaded as quickly as possible after arrival and subsequently slaughtered without undue delay, the pigs of our study were immediately conducted inside the slaughterhouse for the stunning phase, without a resting period. This situation could have contributed to the higher cortisol levels recorded in our study at exsanguination than those documented after a recovery time spent in the lairage facilities [10,44]. Warriss et al [39] demonstrated that cortisol levels were significantly higher in pigs slaughtered on arrival at the abattoir compared with pigs held in the lairage for 3 h before slaughter.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Pilot Study of the Relationship between Deck Level and Journey Duration on Plasma Cortisol, Epinephrine and Norepinephrine Levels in Italian Heavy Pigs

Bozzo

Padalino

Bonerba

et al. 2020

Animals

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The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the relationship between journey duration, deck level and activation patterns of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPA) and sympathetic adrenal medullary system (SAM) in pigs. A total of 90 pigs were examined. The animals came from three different Italian farms associated with the same slaughterhouse located in Bari (Apulia region-Italy). A group of thirty animals was transported from Pordenone (11 h journey); a second group was transported from Terni (6.5 h journey); a third group was transported from Benevento (3 h journey). The animals were transported in the same vehicle, which complied with the structural characteristics indicated in the Council Regulation (EC) No. 1/2005. The truck was composed of a lorry and a trailer, each one divided into three decks. Only the animals transported in the trailer were tested for the study. Before transportation, blood samples were collected on each farm, at 6:00 a.m., from 30 pigs randomly selected out of 135 pigs ready to be transported. Blood samples were also collected during slaughter to evaluate plasma cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine, around 6:00 a.m. A journey duration of 11 h was associated with significantly higher plasma concentrations of stress hormones compared with shorter journeys. This increase was proportional to the journey duration, with the pigs travelling for 6.5 h displaying intermediate concentrations between those noticed after 3 h and 11 h journeys. The interaction between deck and journey distance was not significant on epinephrine, norepinephrine or cortisol levels collected at arrival. There was a significant effect of deck level on norepinephrine levels (p < 0.0001), a tendency to influence epinephrine levels (p = 0.073) but no effect on cortisol levels (p = 0.945). Overall, we observed that an 11 h-long journey seemed to impact negatively on pigs’ HPA-SAM activity, likely requiring the animals to spend more time in the lairage facilities to recover.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Pilot Study of the Relationship between Deck Level and Journey Duration on Plasma Cortisol, Epinephrine and Norepinephrine Levels in Italian Heavy Pigs

Bozzo

Padalino

Bonerba

et al. 2020

Animals

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“…Under commercial conditions, common tools for moving pigs at loading are plastic paddles and boards, electric prods, and flags. These tools do not have the same efficiency and the same effects on pig behavior and physiology during handling (Faucitano and Goumon, 2017). The electric prod appears largely used on farm and on the truck to speed up the procedure of loading and reduce the workload of handlers through the alleys and ramps (Griot and Chevillon, 1997;Faucitano, 2001;Correa, 2011).…”

Section: Moving Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Secondly, the abattoir is responsible for the optimization of lairage conditions (layout, ambient control, and handling systems) in order to maintain acceptable welfare conditions for pigs and ensure optimal, consistent, and uniform carcass and meat quality. Furthermore, responsibility for animal losses during transport may be either equally shared among the producer, trucker, and abattoir (in the case of integrated production systems) or shouldered alone by the trucker who can be fined up to $6,000 under Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations for having three to four dead pigs in the truck load (Faucitano and Goumon, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preslaughter handling practices and their effects on animal welfare and pork quality1

Faucitano

2018

Journal of Animal Science

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At all times, prior to slaughter, pigs may experience stress from a range of handling practices, such as fasting, loading and transport, mixing, and interaction with humans. These factors can affect the welfare of pigs and carcass and meat quality, both individually and collectively. Preslaughter stress is both an animal welfare and a meat quality issue. Behavioral and physiological studies have revealed that poor handling practices at the farm, during transport and at the slaughter plant, have an adverse effect on pigs and may result in the loss of profits due to animal losses during transport and in lairage. Also, poor preslaughter handling can also lead to losses in carcass value as a result of reduced yield, the presence of lesions and bacterial contamination, and meat quality defects (e.g., pale, soft, exudative and dark, firm, dry pork). These economic losses can be limited by improving the design of facilities, controlling the environmental conditions, and implementing training programs for the correct animal handling at any stage preslaughter. The objective of this review was to review research findings on the effects of preslaughter practices on ante-mortem behavioral and physiological response in pigs, including muscle metabolism, and to provide recommendations aimed at limiting the impact of preslaughter handling on animal losses and pork quality.

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“…Frequent measures of pig body weight (BW) can enable precise estimation of individual animal growth curve and assess intergroup and intragroup variability. However, consecutive manual measurements of BW are not feasible in practice since it is labor-intensive, costly, and may increase animal stress leading to reduced animal performance and even animal loss (Grandin and Shivley, 2015;Faucitano and Goumon, 2018). To acquire frequent measures of BW, one alternative is via the use of automatic scales installed in each animal pen.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel automated system to acquire biometric and morphological measurements and predict body weight of pigs via 3D computer vision1

Fernandes

Dórea

Fitzgerald

et al. 2018

Journal of Animal Science

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Computer vision applications in livestock are appealing since they enable measurement of traits of interest without the need to directly interact with the animals. This allows the possibility of multiple measurements of traits of interest with minimal animal stress. In the current study, an automated computer vision system was devised and evaluated for extraction of features of interest, as body measurements and shape descriptors, and prediction of body weight in pigs. From the 655 pigs that had data collected 580 had more than 5 frames recorded and were used for development of the predictive models. The cross-validation for the models developed with data from nursery and finishing pigs presented an R 2 ranging from 0.86 (random selected image) to 0.94 (median of images truncated on the third quartile), whereas with the dataset without nursery pigs, the R 2 estimates ranged from 0.70 (random selected image) to 0.84 (median of images truncated on the third quartile). However, overall the mean absolute error was lower for the models fitted without data on nursery animals. From the body measures extracted from the image, body volume, area, and length were the most informative for prediction of body weight. The inclusion of the remaining body measurements (width and heights) or shape descriptors to the model promoted significant improvement of the predictions, whereas the further inclusion of sex and line effects were not significant.

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Transport of pigs to slaughter and associated handling

Cited by 35 publications

References 111 publications

Pilot Study of the Relationship between Deck Level and Journey Duration on Plasma Cortisol, Epinephrine and Norepinephrine Levels in Italian Heavy Pigs

Pilot Study of the Relationship between Deck Level and Journey Duration on Plasma Cortisol, Epinephrine and Norepinephrine Levels in Italian Heavy Pigs

Preslaughter handling practices and their effects on animal welfare and pork quality1

A novel automated system to acquire biometric and morphological measurements and predict body weight of pigs via 3D computer vision1

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