Abstract
Poor production and handling practices continue to persist that are both detrimental to animal welfare and financially burdensome. These practices continue to persist for three reasons: (1) a segmented marketing chain where a producer is not held financially accountable for losses; (2) failure to measure and assess chronic painful problems such as lame livestock; and (3) repeating old mistakes, such as housing fattening cattle for long periods of time on bare concrete. Two examples of the first type of losses are bruises caused by poor handling and sick cattle at feedlots caused by failure to vaccinate and precondition weaned calves at the farm of origin. In some segmented marketing systems, there is no economic incentive to vaccinate. When the animals get sick, the responsibility gets passed to the next person. Buyers of meat products can reduce these “passed on” losses by source verification. The first step to reducing problems, such as lame livestock, is to measure the percentage of lame animals and work with the producers to reduce them. Also, transportation payments should be changed and contracts should be based on the condition of the animals at delivery.
Subject
General Veterinary,Animal Science and Zoology
Reference52 articles.
1. Human-Livestock Interactions: The Stockperson and the Productivity of Intensively Farmed Animals;Hemsworth,2010
2. Farmer attitude toward improvement of animal welfare is correlated with piglet production parameters
3. Bruises on Southwestern feedlot cattle;Grandin;J. Anim. Sci.,1981
4. Handling and Transport of Cattle and Pigs in South America;Paranhos de Costa,2014
5. 0067 Behavioral analysis and performance response of feedlot steers on concrete slats versus rubber slats
Cited by
30 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献