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
