Evidence showing an animal welfare preventive measure is effective

Introduction

It is the responsibility of the slaughter establishment licence holder to develop written preventative measures as part of the animal welfare Preventive Control Program (PCP) that are effective at controlling the animal welfare risks in that establishment, beginning with the receiving of the food animals until their slaughter. CFIA inspectors verify compliance through inspection onsite at the establishment.

Your written preventive measures must be supported by the necessary evidence to demonstrate they are effective at reducing and controlling animal welfare risks during all slaughter activities.

The amount and type of evidence required to support a given preventive measure will be influenced by the level of risk.

General principles

The evidence required to support a given preventive measure may belong in one of the following categories, at a minimum:

Resource or management based preventive measures
- Facility design and construction
- Equipment design and maintenance
- Employee training and scheduling of slaughter tasks
- Scheduling of transportation conveyances arrivals
- Equipment and protocols to control risks of temperature extremes for animals
- Support of the development and implementation of an effective animal welfare Preventive Control Plan, including providing full, unobstructed support to the employees who conduct all of the animal welfare monitoring, verification and auditing procedures
Slaughter activity based preventive measures
- Handling of individual food animals or groups of food animals (including shackling of poultry)
- Handling of crates or cages containing food animals
- Stunning of individual food animals or groups of food animals (including poultry)
- Bleeding of individual food animals (including poultry)

You can find historically accepted best practices and recommendations for developing management or animal based preventive measures in CFIA guidelines:

You can adapt these recommendations to your establishment and slaughter activities to develop your PCP
In addition, these guidelines provide references for these recommendations that can provide a source of evidence or validation for your PCP preventive measures as long as this evidence or validation applies to your facility and equipment design as well as slaughter processes and activities
You may choose to develop alternative preventive measures, using novel equipment or procedures
You must validate that this alternative approach will work in your establishment through, perhaps, a trial, pilot or scientific validation study that demonstrates its effectiveness in your establishment

The process

The process for obtaining evidence to prove the effectiveness of a preventive measure requires that you:

identify your animal welfare risk
obtain the evidence showing the preventive measures are effective
document the evidence, including where and how it was obtained

1. Know the animal welfare risks in your establishment and preventive measures needed to control them

Identify the risks that need to be controlled

Describe the risks that you have identified for which a preventive measure is required. For example, you include the risk of poor stunning technique due to improperly functioning stunning equipment, inadequate training or skill levels of the employees conducting this task or employee fatigue from long shifts.

Identify the preventive measure

Describe the preventive measure to control the risk of avoidable suffering, injury or death to the food animals.

For example, you require that any of your employees who conduct stunning of bovines using captive bolt/gun techniques must carry out this task to achieve a performance criterion of at least 98% accuracy or better to prevent suffering and pain from missed stuns.
Another example might be that you require a rigidly followed maintenance and testing protocol based on the manufacturer's recommendation for the captive bolt equipment, in order to prevent them from failing when in use on live animals.

2. Obtain the evidence that shows each preventive measure is effective

For each preventive measure:

Establish your quantitative performance criteria where used or standards of acceptability where descriptive performance criteria are used.

You can obtain these criteria from:

the instructions provided by the manufacturer of equipment
- For example, the manufacturers of captive bolt equipment will often provide maintenance instructions that should be included as part of the standards of acceptability in the equipment maintenance protocols and to be followed by your employees as part of the preventive measures for stunning equipment failures
best practice guidelines published by reputable animal welfare associations, industry organizations, committees and working groups
- For example,
  - Guidelines and Audits | Animal Handling provides best practice performance criteria for audit methods of slaughter activities that carry an animal welfare risk, included as part of the Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization program
  - National Farm Animal Care Council Codes of Practice for the care and handling of farm animals provide recommended best practices, including standards for animal care and handling of food animal during production
government guidelines and standards
- For example,
  - EU regulation No. 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing has the European Union Member States' mandatory settings for electrical stunning parameters of the most common species of slaughtered food animals that can be used as parameters to follow
  - CFIA published Objective performance criteria for humane slaughter - red meat species and poultry has recommended performance criteria for monitoring, verification and audit procedures for common points of animal welfare risks
results of studies by equipment manufacturing companies which are available online or from the company
- For example, gas stunning trials and data should be available from the equipment manufacturer as valid evidence of the parameters to use for effective stunning
Results of a study, trial or experiment conducted under laboratory or slaughter establishment conditions that are scientifically valid

Determine the approach you will follow to obtain evidence

There are different ways to obtain the evidence to validate the effectiveness of an animal welfare preventive measure that include recommended best practices:

For example, using recommended best practices:
- CFIA publishes Food-specific requirements and guidance - Meat products and food animals recommended humane care, handling, stunning and slaughter best practices on the CFIA website for the slaughter industry
- The Humane Slaughter Association publications guidelines for best practices for stunning principles and techniques, including construction and design tips for the main methods of stunning of food animals
- EFSA Journal published scientific articles regarding monitoring methods for the assessment of unconsciousness after common stunning techniques of commonly slaughtered food animals
- Diarel website published recommendations for ritual slaughter without stunning to help improve animal welfare

3. Revalidation of preventive measures

Several factors could result in the need for you to re-validate a preventive measure or obtain new evidence on the effectiveness of a given preventive measure. These factors include, but are not limited to:

System failure
- When the preventive measures used demonstrate lack of control or a new one is introduced, then this must be validated as effective before each becomes acceptable
Slaughter process changes
- You introduce a new preventive measure, slaughter procedure/activity, species of food animal for slaughtering, facility construction changes or piece of equipment
New information from scientific, regulatory or in-house sources
- A new animal welfare outcome or performance criterion is set by regulations, best practices or scientific studies
- When the corrective action procedures demonstrate ineffective control of the original deviation, then the preventive measures must be reassessed and revalidated or changed

4. Document the evidence

It is important to document all the relevant information you reviewed and/or obtained as evidence to validate the effectiveness of your preventive measures. This should include where and/or how you obtained the evidence. This information is maintained as part of your PCP and should include the following (as applicable):

Objectives
- Description of the specific aspects of the preventive measures to which the evidence applies
- Slaughter type (conventional versus ritual without stunning); slaughter inspection program (modernized versus traditional; type or species of food animals slaughtered
- Name and qualifications of the person responsible
Information used
- All the literature (for example, scientific references) and other information and documents you used in the process
Study/trial/pilot design and methodology where applicable
- Specific preventive measure or procedure/protocol or performance criterion studied
- Names of technical experts consulted or who participated in the study
- Equipment used in the study
- Test methodology, including information why the method was selected for the particular slaughter method or slaughter inspection program
- How results were analyzed and assessed
- Reference to guidelines used for the study/trial/pilot design