Animal Health & Welfare

Around 40% of the time required to perform routine husbandry procedures in a crush is taken up by simply moving cattle from one part of the handling system to another. Improving the ease of movement can dramatically reduce the labour requirement when performing routine tasks as well as improving animal welfare by reducing fear and the risk of injury.

In two large UK surveys, bruising sufficient to cause down-grading at slaughter was found on between 4.1 (Weeks et al., 2002) and 6.5% (McNally and Warriss, 1996) of carcasses. Whilst some of this bruising undoubtedly occurred after leaving the farm, injuries have an economic impact at each stage of the production process.

Stress resulting from handling can also cause dark cutting and pale, soft exudative meat, which may be an even greater cost to the beef industry than bruising (Eldridge, 1982; Grandin, 1990). Stress can also cause the mobilisation of body tissues thereby reducing the animal's growth rate.  Calm movement of cattle can therefore yield other significant and direct economic benefits.