When farm animals are killed at the slaughterhouse, they are exposed to various stress factors beforehand, for example separation from the herd, transport, meeting unfamiliar animals and people, often long waiting times in unfamiliar and close surroundings, and unfamiliar sounds and smells. One way to minimise stress is to kill the animals on the farm and transport the bled animals to a slaughterhouse for processing. On-farm killing and pasture killing have been permitted in Switzerland since July 2020 and in the EU since March 2021. Around one hundred Swiss farms have obtained the necessary approval for this so far.

A new FiBL study compares the slaughter of two groups of eleven and ten fattening animals from the same farm: the animals in the first group were killed in the slaughterhouse, those in the second group on the farm. The environmental conditions before the day of slaughter were comparable for all animals. The behaviour of the animals was observed shortly before stunning and blood samples were taken during bleeding.

Slaughterhouse: stress hormone cortisol up to twenty times higher

Levels of the stress-indicating parameters cortisol, lactate and glucose in the blood of animals slaughtered in the slaughterhouse were significantly higher than the levels of animals killed on the farm. Cortisol levels – the most important characteristic for measuring physiological stress – were on average twenty times higher in animals killed at the slaughterhouse than in animals killed on-farm. This is an unexpectedly large difference; a 2017 study had found an average slaughterhouse value ten times higher.

Calm behaviour immediately before stunning occurred only in farm killings, while restless and nervous behaviour occurred more than twice as often in the slaughterhouse than before farm killings. These results demonstrate that farm killing can minimise animal stress.

Source: FIBL