Page 135 - The Welfare of Cattle

112 the WeLfare of CattLe

selling their product in California (Duggan, 2017). Whether this ballot initiative is voted into law
in California remains to be seen but regardless the pressure for changes on how farm animals
are cared for will do doubt continue. In contrast to the US use of the legal system, industry-led
voluntary compliance programs have played a much greater role in Canada (von Keyserlingk and
Hötzel, 2015).
While some believe that improving animal welfare is guaranteed through state or federal
mandates, there are concerns with the “legislative approach,” primarily due to challenges of
appropriate enforcement that undermines confidence (e.g., Ventura et al., 2016) and the lack of
harmonization between different jurisdictions (Fraser et al., 2018). For example, in the UK, a 2014
report found that the 2013 EU regulation 1099/2009 aimed and protecting the welfare of farmed
animals was not being implemented (Commission E., 2014). Although the U.S. Humane Methods
of Slaughter Act (HMSA) (USDA, 1978) was passed in 1978 to provide protection of animals from
undo suffering during slaughter, it was rarely enforced over the first 20 years and research clearly
demonstrated that serious issues remained (Grandin, 1997; GAO, 2004).

Industry Led animal Welfare Standards

In North America, the development of animal-welfare standards was initially driven primarily
by the food animal industries, with the first program funded, developed, and administered by the pig
industry, Pork Quality Assurance (1989), followed by the Beef Quality Assurance (1991) program
and the United Egg Producers (UEP) who initiated the process of publishing animal husbandry
guidelines in 1999 (for complete history of the UEP process please, see Mench, 2011). These indus-
tries created books, videos, and on-farm training programs aimed at promoting best practices.
However, while many of the best practices were related to animal welfare the communication and
incentive was largely focused on the quality of the end product, not the quality of life of the animal.
This was not surprising given the links animal health has with food safely (CAST, 2012) and the
historic emphasis placed by farmers and veterinarian on biological function and health (Te Velde
et al., 2002; Lassen et al., 2006; Vanhonacker et al., 2008). These voluntary industry programs
have been argued by some industries as ones that improve farm practices that affect carcass quality
(Garcia et al., 2008), but some have questioned whether these industry-led programs will effec-
tively improve animal welfare on farms in the long run (von Keyserlingk and Hötzel, 2015; Wolf
and Tonsor, 2017). However, there is some evidence that the industries do respond more broadly to
increased pressure to improve animal welfare; in 2011, the pig and beef sectors both substantively
modified their original programs designed nearly two decades earlier, placing much more emphasis
on animal welfare compared to the first versions. The newest version of the UEP guidelines has also
been modified and now explicitly considers cage-free systems (UEP, 2017).
Additional examples of industry efforts focused on the welfare of cattle are the Dairy Farmers of
Canada (DFC) and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) who each partnered with Canada’s
National Farm Animal Care Committee (NFACC) to work together to create code of practice for
the care and handling of dairy cattle (DFC-NFACC, 2009) and the code of practice for the care and
handling of beef cattle (CCA-NFACC, 2014). The development of the NFACC codes of practice is
a multistep process that begins with a scientists committee preparing a review of the contentious
issues that is then sent for peer review. Once the committee has addressed the reviewers com-
ments the document is then distributed to a range of stakeholders, including producers, scientists,
government officials, veterinarians, grocery-chain distributors, and representatives of the humane
movement that use it to develop a consensus based code of practice (NFACC, 2013). A draft version
of the “Code” is posted for public comment; with the comments referred back to the code develop-
ment committee for consideration before the final version is published. The intent of the National
Farm Animal Care Code development process is that they are to be reviewed every 5 years and
revised once every 10 years (NFACC, 2013).