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Animal Welfare Review Panel assembled to address alleged abuse
Story Date: 2/27/2012
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Source: Jack Duszynski, MEATINGPLACE, 2/24/12
Recent undercover videos inside livestock farms have surfaced in an attempt to expose abuses in the meat industry. In response to one of the most recent videos, shot inside a hog farrowing operation, the Center for Food Integrity—which seeks to “build consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system”—put together a panel of animal well-being experts, called the Animal Welfare Review Panel, to assess this and future videos and determine whether abuse is occurring and what, if anything, should be done.
CFI’s executive director Terry Fleck recently spoke with Meatingplace about the new panel, its process and its goals.
Tell us about the Animal Welfare Review panel.
Well the way the process works, once we discover that there’s video footage out there, we contact the animal protection organization or the activist organization [who shot the video] and request complete video footage. We would like for them to send us 2 minutes before and 2 minutes after each edited sequence that they have in the released video. If we can’t secure footage before and after the edited sequence then the panel will review the footage that is available. Then we will work with the panel in regards to observations that they have and put together a complete report that’s read then by the panel members to make sure that we capture what it is they want to communicate.
What happens to the report when it’s finished?
I might emphasize we would like to have the video review process completed within 48 hours after we receive video footage. We will then release the report to the media at the same time as we’re releasing it to the various industry groups, in this first case the National Pork Producers Council and the National Pork Board. Then we release it to several other groups that are either members or collaborate with us, such as the Food Marketing Institute, the National Restaurant Association and the American Meat Institute as well. Also we release it to the animal protection organization that supplied us the video.
Who is on these review panels?
Our independent panel consists of animal well-being experts: veterinarians, animal scientists and ethicists. We want one of each in the review panel so we’ve basically recruited a number of veterinarians, animal scientists and ethicists who are donating their time to provide credible feedback and to promote continuous improvement in farm animal care.
Do you contact a large number of experts and see who comes back to you?
Because we want to ensure that we review these videos in that 48-hour time frame, we’ve recruited a number of veterinarians, animal scientists and ethicists. So right now we have a list of about four veterinarians, four animal scientists and two ethicists, so we just go down that list and see who is available to review this fairly rapidly.
How do you select which videos you are going to address?
Right now this process has been put together for the pork industry so we’re relying on the pork industry to let us know when a video is being released. We have had some conversations with other industry segments and are willing to put together a process that would address other videos that come out beyond pork.
What would you say is the goal of the Animal Welfare Review Panel?
We believe if executed properly it will provide stakeholders in the industry a mechanism that they can rely on to objectively evaluate the video, find out where continuous improvement needs to be made and find out certainly if there are issues in that video that need to be addressed. We’re after continuous improvement, as we think that will build consumer trust and confidence over time.
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