Tyson seeks more gas-to-stun-birds data
Posted on Friday, October 6, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/168858/
Tyson Foods Inc. said Thursday that it’s researched an alternative method of slaughtering chickens and now wants the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to conduct a second study.
Springdale-based Tyson, the world’s largest meat company, said it has finished a two-year preliminary study of controlled atmosphere stunning, in which plants use a gas mixture to put chickens to sleep before they’re slaughtered.
Animal-welfare groups charge that chickens are conscious during the current production process.
“While our research has concluded controlled atmosphere stunning may be an acceptable alternative, we have not currently found it to be more humane than conventional electrical stunning,” Bill Lovette, senior group vice president of Poultry and Prepared Foods for Tyson Foods, said in a statement.
Tyson Foods processes 43 million chickens a week.
“We’re going to continue to use the conventional method of stunning in our poultry plants because we believe it’s humane and effective,” Lovette said. “However, we also believe there’s merit in the continued study of CAS and other technology. We’re going to ask the agricultural science officials at the University of Arkansas to initiate their own CAS study, using their own scientists and methods, to see if they reach the same conclusion.”
The research will be coordinated by the newly created and unfilled chair of Food Animal Well-being in UA’s Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and shared with the departments of poultry science and animal science, Tyson said.
Tyson has committed $ 1. 5 million to establish the chair position.
The university hasn’t started a faculty search yet to fill the job, said Greg Weidemann, dean of the Dale Bumpers College. But the research will be conducted independently, he said.
“Universities can conduct research of this nature and evaluate research as a source of unbiased information,” Weidemann said. “The value of public-sector research is that the information is widely distributed to other scientists and evaluated, so there’s checks and balances.”
Animal-welfare group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals submitted a shareholder proposal last year for Tyson to issue a report on the feasibility of using the gas process. The resolution failed by more than 95 percent of the votes.
PETA said it advocates the method because it eliminates electrical stunning and the chance that birds are conscious during slaughter. Matt Prescott, manager of factory-farming campaigns for PETA, said other published studies by other groups and companies, including McDonald’s Corp., have “concluded hands down that controlled atmosphere killing is more humane than current slaughter methods.” “ Seventy-five percent of turkeys and 25 percent of chickens in the UK [United Kingdom ] are killed using controlled atmosphere killing, ” he said.
To contact this reporter: ccody@arkansasonline. com