Day 114 - 04 Apr 95 - Page 48


     
     1        when you use 1.3 amps and you are using mains voltage,
     2        quite a number of pigs, I should think, are actually stun
     3        killed.  So, the process is being used almost unwittingly
     4        or you can use it wittingly.
     5
     6   Q.   So, in terms of welfare, you would be concerned if a
     7        slaughter plant was using a current of less than 1.3 amps
     8        and was wetting the surface of the pig?
     9        A.  Yes, our problems with this, if I could exemplify it
    10        with a very recent case, is the Americans trouble with
    11        electrocuting a human being who weighs about the same
    12        weight as these pigs and they cannot do that properly,
    13        although they have all this evidence of apparently
    14        satisfactory procedures.  So, I must emphasise that again
    15        one has -----
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Thankfully, they have much less experience,
    18        practical experience, of killing people with electric
    19        currents, do they not?  I would much rather you stuck to
    20        animals.
    21        A.  If I might say so, my Lord, when we are looking at the
    22        welfare in these things we have to draw as much evidence as
    23        we can from human experience.  In fact, the effects of an
    24        epileptic, effects on an epileptic from human beings give
    25        us very valuable information on what goes on in a pig or
    26        the best information that we have got.
    27
    28   MS. STEEL:   In terms of problems with tracking and the current
    29        going round the wet surface rather than going through the
    30        brain, are there any steps that slaughterhouses can take to
    31        improve -- sorry, even without the pig being wet, are there
    32        steps that a slaughterhouse can take to improve the chances
    33        of the current going through the brain and it being a rapid
    34        effective stun?
    35        A.  Yes.  The tongs should make very good contact with
    36        wherever they are applied.  They should be wetted with a
    37        saline solution, brine solution, so that they make very
    38        good contact.  If the tongs are dry, well, then that would
    39        be a failure and that might aggravate the very problem that
    40        you are referring to.
    41
    42   Q.   Is that applicable also when the pig is wet?
    43        A.  If the pig is wet, it would undo some of the effect
    44        that I have just mentioned because you want to provide as
    45        few alternative paths for the electricity.  You want to
    46        have a good contact and you want to have a dry skin, so
    47        that you have done your very best to get the maximum shock
    48        through the part that matters which, in this instance, is
    49        the brain.
    50 
    51   Q.   We have heard about fail-safe stunners; how long have they 
    52        been available, do you know? 
    53        A.  I have not seen one actually in operation.  I have seen
    54        some ad hoc arrangements.  I do not know at the moment if
    55        there is a commercially available equipment.
    56
    57   MR. MORRIS:  Just to finish off this point on slaughter and the
    58        stunning, I will read out a very short bit from the Farm
    59        Animal Welfare Council report 1984.
    60

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