Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 25


     
     1        cattle in relation to the prevalence of imperfect stuns
     2        were that it causes pain and suffering.  He said:  "That is
     3        an obvious question of ill-fare rather than welfare."
     4
     5        On page 54, Mr. Long was asked to summarise the life     of
     6        cattle destined for slaughter for beef and he
     7        said: "I would say that it is quite needless and relentless
     8        exploitation." (Pause)  Obviously, in relation to slaughter
     9        of animals in general, he said that litanies of
    10        recommendations and efforts at reform continue to give the
    11        lie to 'humane killing' as an honest description.
    12
    13        On day 115, page 32, talking about the stress of the
    14        stunning process and prior to the stunning, he said:  "If
    15        the animal is in the stunning box, it is a metal box with a
    16        lot of noise and a gate comes down behind it.  Now, often
    17        that startles the animal, it backs into it and makes a lot
    18        more noise.  There is an animal just waiting behind to come
    19        in and that startles the next animal.  Now, technically,
    20        the one behind cannot actually see the one in front but it
    21        is still being frightened by the noise and the commotion
    22        that is caused by what is going on with the one in front."
    23
    24        I think this is the last one for Dr. Long, which I think
    25        was, sort of, partly covered this morning with a similar
    26        reference anyway.  On day 115, page 33, line 12, I asked
    27        him:  "Two days ago there was a reference made to the
    28        indications of an effective captive bolt stun.  In your
    29        experience do the people in the slaughter house have
    30        sufficient time to carry out these tests and observations
    31        to check for effective stunning?".  And he said:  "No".
    32
    33        Moving on to Mr. Lyman, who was raised on a four generation
    34        farm, or farm and ranch, in Montana and was the owner of
    35        the Lyman Ranch and Lyman Cattle Company from 1965 to 1983,
    36        which was one of the top five percent in size farms, and
    37        obviously he had a great deal of experience of the cattle
    38        rearing and slaughter industry.  He said that the most
    39        cattle, or the maximum number of cattle that he had had at
    40        any one time was 1,000 cows and calves and 5,000 head
    41        feedlot.  He said:  "So at one time I would have as many as
    42        7,000 head of cattle", and obviously he was also growing
    43        the food to feed the cattle, grain and so on.
    44
    45        He had visited thousands of farms, he said.  This was on
    46        page 4.  He said he had probably visited thousands of
    47        different farms, met with thousands of different farmers.
    48        This was whilst he was a senior lobbyist for the National
    49        Farmers Union between 1987 and 1992.  He also said he had
    50        been to hundreds of slaughter houses and probably as many 
    51        as 50 processing plants, and the hundreds of slaughter 
    52        houses which he had visited included companies that 
    53        supplied McDonald's.
    54
    55        He said that the slaughter houses that he had visited which
    56        supplied McDonald's were basically typical of the industry
    57        as a whole, and he referred specifically to one, which was
    58        Monfort in Colorado, which was one where he actually
    59        supplied meat to.  He said that he believed he visited
    60        about 50 of the slaughter houses which supplied

Prev Next Index