Thank you My name is Temple Grandin. I am professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Today we're going to visit the pork industry, starting out the day at the farm, loading the pigs onto the trucks, unloading at the plant, handling, stunning, slaughter floor. We're going to show things being done right, and this is a typical, very large plant.
And I'm really pleased that the American Meat Institute is working on putting these videos out, because I think we need to just show people what's done in the industry. when it's just done right in a typical large plant. Well, on modern pig farm biosecurity is important. So all the truckers, you know, wear coveralls. The truck drivers that are working outside here on the trucks, they don't go in the barn.
Biosecurity is important to keep disease out. You don't want to be bringing disease in from other farms. And it's really important when we did this video that we go to the farm first before we go to the plant. Because you see when you're at the plant, pigs are coming in from all over the place, from many, many different places. So you wouldn't want to bring plant germs out here to the farm.
What you see right here behind me is a finishing barn. This is where the pigs are fattened up for market. These animals are probably less than six months old and some of the pigs didn't want to come out of the building. It's cold today.
They're showing some really good handling. Yeah, they're just bringing them up there with a little rattle and they're walking up nice and quietly onto the truck. Okay, right here he's going to use the sort board to bring them up. You know, there's a variety of different driving tools you can use.
He's using a sort board and a rattle. One thing that's really important loading pigs is moving really small groups. You take too many pigs at a time, then they pile up and they're doing a nice job here just bringing out the small groups.
The pigs are kind of curious and they just walk up there by themselves. This particular truck is equipped with plastic panels that they can slide in here depending upon the weather. It's a cold day today, so you've got a lot of boards, but you still have to have some openings here for ventilation.
In the summertime, they take all these panels off of here so the pigs get lots of ventilation in the summertime. But depending upon the weather, they can adjust how many of these plastic boards they insert into that side of the truck. When the trucks come into the plant, they back up to the unloading bay and are unloaded.
This shows the truck perfectly aligned against the unloading dock door. This is one of the things that plants are audited for. Make sure that when they back in, the truck is right up against the dock so the pigs do not step down between the truck and the vehicle and hurt their leg. The pigs are unloaded calmly.
These animals are walking off the vehicle very calmly. ...only in small groups. Shows the proper way to unload them. This just shows a really good non-slip floor. They put some shavings down.
Non-slip flooring is just essential for animal handling. One of the things that they're scored for in the AMI audit is to make sure that the animals aren't falling. And if you have more than 1% of your animals fall down while you're unloading a truck or handling them at the plant, something is wrong with your handling and it needs to be corrected. It's really important to keep the pigs calm. And one of the things that we're really helps is they put solid barriers up so as the pigs come off the truck they don't see the people standing there and so they put a barrier up there and it wasn't quite high enough so they got some red boards and they made the barrier even higher so the pigs would not see the tops of their heads.
Right here we're showing a tattooing the animal. The reason why they do this is so that the pig can be traced back to the farm of origin. On cattle you can use ear tags but the problem you have with ear tags in a pork plant is later on the process the deherring machine rip off all the ear tags and you would lose the pig's identity. So they have to use what they call a slap tattoo and that number will still show up after the hair is removed from the pet. But it's important to be able to keep the animal ID.
They're nice and calm. They're kind of just wandering around and exploring. That's a really good sign to show that they are calm and they've got a very good non-slip floor in this alley.
You can see the non-slip flooring. It's a scored concrete. Now the pigs are moving out of the unloading area. area really calmly and quietly. The man is using a paddle correctly.
He's tapping the pigs in the correct manner. This man has a plastic paddle stick and he also has a large black flag that works kind of like a sort board. Out on the farm, used a heavy solid board because pigs respect a solid barrier.
But that's too heavy to carry around in the plant all the time. So here he's using a big flag that acts as a solid barrier. This shows pigs in one of the large holding pens at the plant.
All of these holding pens have water. In fact, it's a USDA regulation on the Humane Slaughter Act. Animals have to have access to water.
And even in the alleyways, they have a water nipple. installed for the pigs. This shows one of the large holding pens where all the pigs are resting.
It's really important to rest pigs for a minimum of one hour, but preferably from two to four hours before they are brought up to the stunner. This allows them to calm down. cool off from the unloading and enduring hot weather it's really important on reducing a meat quality problem called PSE or pale soft meat. They've got a really good stockyard here with plenty of space so they can rest the pigs.
This shot saw some pigs that appear to be crowded and activists might say that they're crowded but actually when it's cold pigs like to bunch together and when you open up the shot you can see that the pigs have plenty of room they have just chosen to lay together. This shows large holding pens in the stockyards stocked correctly and these yards are laid out in a herringbone. So the animals come in one end and they go out the other and that greatly improves traffic flow because you have one-way traffic going through the yard. They go in one end of the pen, they come out the other end.
This is showing a group of pigs walking up into the first part of the staging area that goes up to where the CO2 stunner is located. Right there he's just bringing up a really small group, using the driving aids correctly. It's really important to bring animals...
calmly up to the stunning area because the last five minutes before stunning is critical. If you get them all excited, get them electric prods on them, get them crazy, you are going to have pork quality problems. That last five minutes is absolutely critical.
to have good pork. Now they're moving the pigs up the alley into the CO2 chamber and they have a power gate that brings them up the alley but the man is controlling that gate. In fact it has what's called a proximity switch.
He can control that gate just by touching it and that's important because it's against the Humane Slaughter Regulations to drag pigs and you must make sure that the powered gates never ever drag pigs. The way the CO2 machine works is the pigs get into a conveyance called the gun. It's sort of like getting on an elephant.
They walk into this gondola, and maybe five or six pigs will fit in the gondola, and the sliding door shuts down, and then it's lowered down into the CO2. And it goes about 30 feet into the ground, to 90% CO2, and then it comes back up, and after the pigs are anesthetized, they're dumped out. By law, pigs must be stunned before they are slaughtered.
Stunning makes them insensible to pain. And when you use a method such as CO2... stunning or electrical stunning it must induce a state of surgical anesthesia that is the law.
On the other side of the chamber the anesthetized pigs will dump out and they'll be very very loose and floppy. Plants use electrical stunting instead of CO2. And in electrical stunting, electric current is passed through the brain and through the heart, render the pig unconscious and stop the heart.
When it's done correctly, insensibility is instantaneous. One of the differences between the CO2 stunting and the electrical stunting is after electrical stunting, you are going to see a lot of kicking. And part of that kicking is the ground mal epileptic seizure.
It's essential with electric stunting that you induce a ground-mull epileptic seizure, and when you hang the pigs up on the line, there will be a lot of kicking, similar to what you see in cattle after captive bolt. If that is normal, that will happen in properly stunned animals that have been rendered insensible. Right here, they're putting the shackles on the one back leg of the anesthetized pigs, and then after they hang up, there'll be a person that will bleed the pigs.
This shot right here shows bleeding the pig, really typical bleeding, doing a really good job. It's really important to get a good bleed. This plant employee is doing a really good job.
Here you see a plant employee who is doing an internal audit to make sure that all of these pigs are being rendered insensible. And she's checking for eye reflexes, checking for writing reflex, checking for rhythmic breathing, or any other sign of return to sensibility. because at this point these pigs absolutely got to be unconscious before they go into the skull. And there's very little kicking in these CO2 pigs. If these had been electrically stunned pigs, that free leg would be doing a lot more kicking, similar to the kicking that you see in captive fold after doing a cap.
After the pigs are bled out, they go into the scalding tank to soften up the bristles. This shows the pigs emerging from the scalding tank. And the pig carcass will drop into the de-hairing machine where it's tumbled.
There's a series of paddles that, as a pig is tumbled, its pigs are discharging out of the de-hairer. They go in with the hair on and they come out naked with no hair. This is called the singeur and this removes any little extra hairs that are left. This was originally invented, this was invented a long, long time ago.
It was just looked as a way to get the hair off cosmetically. But one thing that's been learned today is that this fire really takes a lot of pathogens and germs off the surface of the pegs. It uses a lot of gas, but it also helps a lot on food safety. This just shows a long shot down the line.
They've started to take the heads off. Down at the end of that line, they'll be removing the innards from the pegs. It's sort of like a Detroit assembly line in reverse. This is opening up the brisket so they can get access to the insides to gut the pig. This shows the beginning of the gutting process, just starting to take out the insides.
It's really important from a food safety standpoint that gutting be done correctly, that you don't cut the guts because you don't want any of the contents of the digestive system getting on the meat. And it's done in a series of steps. You know, one point in the line takes out the first part of the guts, and then another guy further down the line removes the rest of it.
Using a splitting saw. That's a heavy saw so it's on a spring-loaded balancer so the man doesn't have to lift up the whole weight of the saw. Splitting's a really skilled job.
It's got to be done really right. And that shows the inside of the blast drill. That's like arctic cold in there.
This shows after the pigs have gone through the blast chiller, they're just hanging up in the holding cooler before they go into the cut floor to be cut up. Normally you'd leave them in there for 24-48 hours. That just shows a very typical cooler with a whole big row of pig carcasses.
This is the main break where the pig carcasses is cut into three large pieces and then it's taken apart even further and this is all done in a refrigerated room. This shows a cutting the ham off that will go down the conveyor and go to the ham line. These are pork bellies and they are going to become bacon that's all sliced up.
Every night, all of those conveyors are washed, taken apart and washed. I've had people say to me, well, I thought they only cleaned a meat plant like once a week. Nuh-uh. Every single night, they've got to tear all those conveyors all apart and scrub them down, cold water, hot water, foam.
They really clean it up every single night. Well, they're wearing a hairnet to keep hair out of the meat. Also, this man has a belly guard on so he doesn't get cut by his knife.
Underneath his frock, he'll have a chainmail sleeve on for like a night, medieval night chainmail so he doesn't get cut. The blue thing on his arm is an arm guard to prevent his other wrist from getting cut. He'll have a cut-proof glove on to keep the employee from getting cut with the knives.
Hard hats are required in all meat packing plants so things don't fall on your head. Meat plants commonly use an auditing system that I developed for the American Meat Institute to evaluate criteria that measure animal welfare. In pork plants, we count to see how many pigs fall down.
We know this will happen from time to time, but if it happens frequently on a particular day, it may indicate a problem with the flooring or maybe a problem with the handle. In plants that use electric stunning, where the pigs are lined up in single file and go into conveyor restrainer for application of the stunner, we also count squealing. And this is tricky because pigs will vocalize a lot more than cattle. Cattle will only vocalize when you're handling them.
If you do something really terrible to them, like zap them several times with an electric prod, pigs sometimes will squeal even when you just tap them. But if you get too much squealing, then you've really got a definite problem. So if we see a definite problem that would make the pig squeal, such as getting pinched in the restrainer or electric prod use.
then we score vocalization. We also monitor frequently to make sure that animals are fully insensible and that there's no sign of return to consciousness. That is done with all types of stunning, but with electrical stunning, we have an additional measure, and that is placement of the stunning wand. A stunning wand has to be placed so the electrical current will go through the brain and make the pig unconscious.
Because if you place it wrong and the electrical current bypasses the brain, then the pig may die from a heart failure, but he's going to be feeling the shock. Plants started their very first auditing back in 1997, and I'm really proud of the progress this has made in the last 15 years. I get asked all the time, do you eat meat?
Yes, I do. I eat pork, I eat beef, I eat all of the meats. But I feel very strongly that we've got to treat animals right, we've got to do things right. That is just essential. I hope this tour gave you a better sense of how a large pork operation works when things are done right.
For more information, you can go to animalhandling.org on the American Meat Institute website, or you can go to my website, www.grandin.com.