Day 114 - 04 Apr 95 - Page 55
1 way and another. Perhaps I should explain, some animals
2 have a different hearing range from us, so if you had dogs,
3 for instance, dogs can go berserk because they can hear a
4 noise, are irritated by a noise we cannot hear, so you have
5 to make allowances for that in your assessments of noise in
6 slaughterhouses.
7
8 MS. STEEL: When you say "excitable", some people might
9 associate excitement with enjoyment. Can you explain what
10 you mean?
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I certainly am not treating that as the
13 meaning Dr. Long had in mind.
14
15 MR. MORRIS: Do you mean frightened?
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: They get more agitated.
18 A. Agitated is a good word, irritable.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: If slaughterhouses were concerned about the welfare
21 of the animal in a noisy environment in a slaughterhouse,
22 what would you expect the slaughterhouses to have done?
23 A. To have substantial changes in the equipment,
24 mechanical equipment. They would have to have substantial
25 changes in the metal. It is the clanging of metal that
26 causes a lot of trouble. They have to have metal for
27 hygiene reasons in many cases. You could overcome that,
28 I have discussed this with designers of markets and
29 slaughterhouses, of having coated metal, plastic coated
30 metal, but that is very expensive and that means that,
31 unfortunately, the amenities suffer because the market will
32 not pay for it.
33
34 Q. So there are ways of substantially reducing the sound in
35 slaughterhouses?
36 A. Yes. There are all sorts of noises. Must of the ones
37 I have been to have Radio One or some similar programme
38 blasting out at ghetto blasting levels. Well, I find that
39 appalling. I cannot actually say whether cattle like Radio
40 One, but I can understand that it upsets them, just the
41 sheer volume.
42
43 MS. STEEL: Just to finish off, can you fairly shortly indicate
44 how you feel the industry has moved in the last five to 10
45 years in terms of welfare and the reasons for that
46 movement?
47 A. I think it is very clear that the impulse has come from
48 the customer, motivated by evidence and testimony of animal
49 welfare societies and groups and organisations. It is also
50 been affected by the power of supermarkets and major chains
51 of food outlets responding to that consumer pressure and
52 their effect in going back along the retail markets, firms
53 like Marks & Spencer who have gone back to factories, they
54 have then gone back to slaughterhouses and they have gone
55 back to farms, and this agitation has made itself felt. It
56 has been particularly noticeable in the last six or seven
57 years. I think all of those factors have dominated it.
58 I would not think that much has happened from the farming
59 side and from the producers, if you like, nearer the live
60 animal side to take initiatives of their own accord. They
