May 23, 2023

 

Petition seeks for installing video cameras at certain US swine slaughter establishments

 

 

Multiple organisations have jointly petitioned the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for a policy change.

 

Their petition requests that FSIS conduct rulemaking to require swine slaughter establishments that use carbon dioxide stunning to install video cameras inside their stunning areas. The petition argues that rulemaking is necessary to ensure that pigs are stunned in compliance with the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

 

The request is being considered as a petition for policy change under FSIS' regulations on petitions (9 CFR part 392).

 

Animal activist groups want FSIS to require slaughter establishments to install video cameras inside gondolas used in CO2 gas slaughter systems employed to stun and kill pigs.

 

They claimed that such a requirement is necessary to ensure that the interiors of the gondolas and all of the pigs inside of the gondolas can be examined and inspected during stunning or killing so that FSIS inspectors are able to evaluate whether the animals are being slaughtered humanely, as required by law.

 

According to the petition, the use of CO2 gas for stunning pigs in connection with slaughter has been permitted in the United States for more than a century. Its use for killing pigs for slaughter was authorised by FSIS in 1994.

 

USDA data regarding the number of slaughter establishments that use CO2 to stun or kill pigs, and the numbers of pigs stunned and killed, is not publicly available. The petitioners requested this data by asking FSIS, but the agency declined to provide the information.

 

The petition said it is clear that in the US, "CO2 stunning of pigs is the major method that is used in large slaughter plants."

 

According to unpublished data from the Pig Improvement Company, the use of CO2 gas to stun pigs has increased dramatically in recent decades. In 1999, CO2 was used to stun 2% of all pigs and 2.2% of pigs in establishments that slaughtered more than 4,500 pigs per day.

 

By 2020, those numbers had risen to 86.2% and 96.2%, respectively. Today, according to FSIS enforcement records, at least 32 slaughter plants use CO2 gas slaughter systems.

 

As CO2 gas is used to stun and kill a large number of animals annually, the petitioners argued that it is particularly important to ensure that it is deployed in a manner that is compliant with humane slaughter requirements.

- Food Safety News