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A downer is an animal, usually livestock, that cannot stand on its own and therefore is to be killed. A downed animal, one that is unable to stand, is not necessarily a downer.
The animal's inability to stand may be caused by illness or injury. In nearly all cases it is considered by most farmers to be both humane and cost-effective to kill the animal when it becomes a downer, rather than keeping it alive and unhealthy. Once killed, and depending on how the animal became a downer and how it was killed, the animal may then be incinerated, buried, rendered, or slaughtered. Because of mad cow disease, the slaughter of downer cattle is a topic of great concern.
There are many possible reasons for an animal staying down, including:
Use of certain animal feed additives has been linked to downers such as the use of ractopamine in pigs. [1] [2]
A longstanding issue is whether these animals are treated humanely or inhumanely by shippers, stockyards, and packers while they are being moved or held for slaughter. Legislation periodically is introduced in Congress to outlaw the sale or transfer of such animals, but livestock producer groups have long contended that their voluntary efforts to end harmful practices have already proven successful. The 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171, Sec. 10815) required the USDA to investigate and submit a report on nonambulatory livestock, and to issue and enforce regulations, if deemed necessary, to provide for their humane treatment. [3]
Different jurisdictions have different rules about what can be done with a downer cow. In some jurisdictions the cow may be slaughtered without question. In others, downer cattle may not be slaughtered even if the cause is a physical injury. In the United States, meat inspection is usually an interstate commerce issue, and is regulated by the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Now all livestock auction barns are not allowed to take sick or downer cows because of the rulings that originated with the BSE "mad cow" crisis.
In Canada, transportation of animals is federally regulated. The Health of Animals Regulations [4] state that an animal has to be fit for the intended journey and that a non-ambulatory animal cannot be transported because transport would cause additional suffering.
The Canadian authority responsible for the welfare of animals that are transported is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. [5]
The downer issue took on another dimension when bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which often makes infected cattle downers, was found in two North American cows in 2003. Many experts believe that nonambulatory cattle are at higher risk of harboring BSE. As a result, on December 30, 2003, the USDA announced an immediate ban on the slaughter of downer cattle for human food use. [6] At issue is how to monitor the hundreds of thousands of U.S. downer cattle (annual estimate) if they are no longer presented for observation and testing at meat packing plants; also at issue is what to do with their remains, and whether they have any non-food value. [7]
Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle. Beef can be prepared in various ways; cuts are often used for steak, which can be cooked to varying degrees of doneness, while trimmings are often ground or minced, as found in most hamburgers. Beef contains protein, iron, and vitamin B12. Along with other kinds of red meat, high consumption is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer and coronary heart disease, especially when processed. Beef has a high environmental impact, being a primary driver of deforestation with the highest greenhouse gas emissions of any agricultural product.
In livestock agriculture and the meat industry, a slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir, is a facility where livestock animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a meat-packing facility.
Advanced meat recovery (AMR) is a slaughterhouse deboning process by which the last traces of skeletal muscle meat are removed from animal bones after the primal cuts have been carved off manually. The machinery used in this process separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving, or pressing the meat from the bone without breaking or grinding the bone. AMR meat typically is used as an ingredient in products requiring further processing, such as hot dogs. Unlike mechanically separated meat, AMR meat is comparable in appearance, texture, and composition to meat trimmings and similar meat products derived by hand.
There are different systems of feeding cattle in animal husbandry. For pastured animals, grass is usually the forage that composes the majority of their diet. In turn, this grass-fed approach is known for producing meat with distinct flavor profiles. Cattle reared in feedlots are fed hay supplemented with grain, soy and other ingredients to increase the energy density of the feed. The debate is whether cattle should be raised on fodder primarily composed of grass or a concentrate. The issue is complicated by the political interests and confusion between labels such as "free range", "organic", or "natural". Cattle raised on a primarily foraged diet are termed grass-fed or pasture-raised; for example meat or milk may be called grass-fed beef or pasture-raised dairy. The term "pasture-raised" can lead to confusion with the term "free range", which does not describe exactly what the animals eat.
Pithing is a technique used to immobilize or kill an animal by inserting a needle or metal rod into its brain.
Stunning is the process of rendering animals immobile or unconscious, with or without killing the animal, when or immediately prior to slaughtering them for food.
The Humane Slaughter Act, or the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, is a United States federal law designed to decrease suffering of livestock during slaughter. It was approved on August 27, 1958. The most notable of these requirements is the need to have an animal completely sedated and insensible to pain. This is to minimize the suffering to the point where the animal feels nothing at all, instead blacking out and never waking. This differs from animal to animal as size increases and decreases. Larger animals such as bovines require a stronger method than chickens, for example. Bovines require electronarcosis or something equally potent, though electronarcosis remains a standard. The bovine would have a device placed on their head that, once activated, sends an electric charge that efficiently and safely stuns them. Chickens, on the other hand, require much less current to be efficiently sedated and are given a run under electrically charged water. To ensure that these guidelines are met, the Food Safety and Inspection Service inspectors at slaughtering plants are responsible for overseeing compliance, and have the authority to stop slaughter lines and order plant employees to take corrective actions. Although more than 168 million chickens and around 9 billion broiler chickens are killed for food in the United States yearly, the Humane Slaughter Act specifically mentions only cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep and swine.
Horse slaughter is the practice of slaughtering horses to produce meat for consumption. Humans have long consumed horse meat; the oldest known cave art, the 30,000-year-old paintings in France's Chauvet Cave, depict horses with other wild animals hunted by humans. Equine domestication is believed to have begun to raise horses for human consumption. The practice has become controversial in some parts of the world due to several concerns: whether horses are managed humanely in industrial slaughter; whether horses not raised for consumption yield safe meat, and whether it is appropriate to consume what some view as a companion animal.
Beef cattle are cattle raised for meat production. The meat of mature or almost mature cattle is mostly known as beef. In beef production there are three main stages: cow-calf operations, backgrounding, and feedlot operations. The production cycle of the animals starts at cow-calf operations; this operation is designed specifically to breed cows for their offspring. From here the calves are backgrounded for a feedlot. Animals grown specifically for the feedlot are known as feeder cattle, the goal of these animals is fattening. Animals not grown for a feedlot are typically female and are commonly known as replacement heifers. While the principal use of beef cattle is meat production, other uses include leather, and beef by-products used in candy, shampoo, cosmetics, and insulin.
Animal slaughter is the killing of animals, usually referring to killing domestic livestock. It is estimated that each year, 80 billion land animals are slaughtered for food. Most animals are slaughtered for food; however, they may also be slaughtered for other reasons such as for harvesting of pelts, being diseased and unsuitable for consumption, or being surplus for maintaining a breeding stock. Slaughter typically involves some initial cutting, opening the major body cavities to remove the entrails and offal but usually leaving the carcass in one piece. Such dressing can be done by hunters in the field or in a slaughterhouse. Later, the carcass is usually butchered into smaller cuts.
Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to animal husbandry designed to maximize production while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. There are issues regarding whether intensive animal farming is sustainable in the social long-run given its costs in resources. Analysts also raise issues about its ethics.
Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company was a California-based meat packaging company. It was forced into bankruptcy due to costs from a meat recall and ensuing litigation.
Specified risk material (SRM) is any of various tissues of ruminant animals that cannot be inspected and passed for human food because scientists have determined that BSE-causing prions concentrate there. The term was referred to in the United Kingdom's Specified Risk Material Order 1997, in the United States Department of Agriculture's, and in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's regulatory response to the first confirmed U.S. BSE case in December 2003.
The 2008 US beef protest in South Korea was a series of protest demonstrations made between 24 May 2008 and mid August 2008. against president Lee Myung-bak in Seoul, Korea. The protest involved several hundred thousand and at its height up to one million people. The protest began after the South Korean government reversed a ban on US beef imports. The ban had been in place since December 2003, when mad cow disease was detected in US beef cattle.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. Later in the course of the disease the cow becomes unable to function normally. There is conflicting information about the time between infection and onset of symptoms. In 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested it to be approximately four to five years. Time from onset of symptoms to death is generally weeks to months. Spread to humans is believed to result in variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD). As of 2018, a total of 231 cases of vCJD had been reported globally.
The Virus-Serum-Toxin Act or VSTA was United States Federal legislation designed to protect farmers and livestock raisers by regulating the quality of vaccines and point-of-care diagnostics for animals. Initially, the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act was created due to significant losses from unregulated manufacture and distribution of anti-hog cholera serum. The Act's intended purpose is to ensure the safe and efficient supply of animal vaccines and other biological products. The United States Secretary of Agriculture is responsible for licensing and regulating the manufacture, importation, and exportation of affected agents. The act and its applicable guidelines are managed by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
United States Animal Identification Plan (USAIP) — Officials from approximately 70 animal industry organizations and government agencies have been working since early 2002 on a plan for a national system to identify that might follow food animals from birth to slaughter. The primary purpose is to trace animals back from slaughter through all premises within 48 hours of an animal disease outbreak, in order to determine the disease's origin and to contain it quickly. The plan calls for recording the movement of individual animals or groups of animals in a central database or in a seamlessly linked database infrastructure.
The term Feed ban is usually a reference to the regulations that have prohibited the feeding of most mammalian-derived proteins to cattle as a method of preventing the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Feeding of infected ruminant material back to ruminants is believed to be the most likely means of transmission of the disease.
Michael Herschel Greger is an American physician, author, and professional speaker on public health issues, best known for his advocacy of a whole-food, plant-based diet, and his opposition to animal-derived food products.
The United Kingdom was afflicted with an outbreak of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and its human equivalent variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), in the 1980s and 1990s. Over four million head of cattle were slaughtered in an effort to contain the outbreak, and 178 people died after contracting vCJD through eating infected beef. A political and public health crisis resulted, and British beef was banned from export to numerous countries around the world, with some bans remaining in place until as late as 2019.