World meat industry news

The public organization “Voices for animals” disagrees with the new version of the rules for the slaughter of livestock, set by the Order No. 181 of the Ministry of Agriculture of November 18, 2022. On January 24, the animal rights organization reached out to the Ministry of Agriculture with a comment letter regarding the new rules.

Reminder: Prior to that the Ministry of Agriculture introduced amendments to the rules for the slaughter of cattle. The amendments refer to preslaughter handling of animals.

The previous version of the rules, which was in force as of September 1, 2022, contained the following requirement: “Livestock is handled using the most humane ways, preventing animals from facing stress and protecting animal welfare at slaughter”. The words “preventing animals from facing stress” have been removed by the new Order of the Ministry of Agriculture.

“No standard outlining methods that prevent animals from facing stress at slaughter has been established by the technical regulations of the EAEU,” the Ministry of Agriculture said in response to the letter of the “Voices for Animals”. The ministry’s officials added, that humane treatment involves methods that rule out injury of animals, causing them to become overexcited and leading to the excess release of adrenaline in the blood, which keeps animals from facing stress.

At the draft discussion, representatives of the “Voices for Animals” spoke out against the amendments.

The letter to the Ministry of Agriculture of January 24 said, that “the exploitation of animals in Russian agriculture isn’t controlled by any humane legal regulations”, which, in the opinion of the organization, “allows for implementation of extremely painful methods of animal maintenance and slaughter”.

Yet again, the animal activists offered a joint discussion of the project, offering a painless loss of consciousness before slaughter. To do that, organization representatives proposed to introduce the term “stunning” into veterinary rules. This term is meant to describe “painless and complete loss of consciousness and sensitivity with a beating heart”. This state should be preserved in animals until death, says the letter.