INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Dr Temple Grandin


“Covid-19 was a disaster for the pork industry”


“From both a sustainability and animal welfare standpoint, Covid-19 was a disaster for the US pork industry.” That is the conclusion of Dr Temple Grandin, professor in the department of animal science at Colorado State University, in a new research paper wherein she does not mince words.


BY TREENA HEIN, CORRESPONDENT D


r Grandin asserts that programmes must be put in place so that what happened in 2020 in the US – when large numbers of healthy pigs were destroyed on-farm because of severely curtailed slaughter plant capacity


– never happens again. Massive capacity reductions were caused by physical distancing requirements and by temporary plant shut- downs to stop Covid-19 transmission, worker illness and death. The situation was exacerbated because US pig production had grown to address the import needs of China, where African Swine Fever had ravaged the commercial pig population from 2018. “It was a complete mess, a terrible mess in terms of animal wel- fare,” Dr Grandin says, “and it was a horrible waste of food. There were food kitchens begging for food and we sent pigs to the dump.” It’s estimated that about 350,000 pigs were euthanised on US farms in 2020. In comparison, the US beef and poultry industries were less affected by the pandemic, notes Dr Grandin, because it’s easier to slow the growth of beef cattle, and chickens have a shorter life cycle. Dairy sectors in the US (and in other countries such as Canada) also had to dump milk in the early days of the pandemic because milk could not be exported to Mexico as usual.


Euthanasia Some of the euthanasia methods used to depopulate US pig farms were not aligned with those approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). As Dr Grandin states in her paper, for example, “There was a big controversy in the US about the use of ventilation shutdown as a method of killing pigs on the farm.” She adds, “The reference provided in the AVMA


14 ▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 8, 2021


depopulation guideline clearly showed that shutting off the ven- tilation systems with no additional interventions does not work.” Dr Grandin notes that the pandemic also had a detrimental effect on animal welfare inspection and the third-party auditing pro- grammes of large-meat buyers. Most in-person audits in slaughter plants were cancelled and done by video, but, in her view, video audits should never completely replace in-person audits. If large numbers of pigs ever have to be euthanised again on US farms, Dr Grandin believes portable electrical stunning systems may be the best option. These systems maintain the same high welfare standards required for electric stunning in a processing plant. “Research studies on electrical stunning methods used in commercial slaughterhouses have shown that when a sufficient current is passed through the brain, pigs… will become instant- ly unconscious,” she states in her paper. “There have been two demonstrations that illustrate the potential of a portable electric method to be an economical and humane method for mass euthanasia of pigs on the farm.” Indeed, one of Grandin’s former students (Dr Ruth Woiwode, now assistant professor of animal behaviour and wellbeing at Universi- ty of Nebraska, Lincoln) and Dr Benny Mote have designed and built a prototype portable stunning system. The work began in April 2020 with funding from the National Pork Board in response to the supply chain interruption caused by Covid-19. The Nebras- ka Department of Agriculture has secured a grant to purchase the unit, and Woiwode explains that it will likely undergo some modi- fications and refinement. She and her colleagues will continue to work with department staff to provide training. The private sector has also expressed interest in the system and, in future, it may become commercially available. Dr Woiwode believes that if the US pork industry wants to keep


PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK


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