After the live poultry slaughter ban, who is to blame for not being able to buy chicken during the Dragon Boat Festival?
Less than a month after the ban on slaughtering live poultry in markets took effect, the Dragon Boat Festival had already brought the predicament of slaughterhouses being unable to kill enough chickens to meet supply and vendors having no chickens to sell. Yet Chen Bao-ji, chairman of the Council of Agriculture, said: "This is just a special case during a major holiday; slaughterhouse capacity is absolutely sufficient." But industry operators do not accept this explanation. This afternoon, chicken farmers' associations around the country, the Taiwan Rural Front and related transport operators will rally ten thousand people to protest at the Council of Agriculture.
Many chicken farmers and vendors say helplessly that they are not refusing to cooperate with the policy, but slaughterhouses are unevenly distributed, and concentration in large slaughterhouses raises concerns about monopoly and the elimination of small farmers; some groups believe the slaughter ban has been pushed for ten years and the industry should have prepared for it long ago and cannot simply blame the government; but for the public, being able to buy fresh, healthy free-range chicken is what matters most.
All kinds of views are contending, yet the public is left bewildered. From the perspectives of disease prevention, freshness, small farmers' right to survive, free-range chicken culture and animal welfare, we examine the various arguments in the hope of promoting dialogue among all sides and finding the slaughter policy best suited to Taiwan.
1. How can disease prevention be made safe?
Disease prevention is the most important basis for banning live poultry slaughter in markets. Many experts have confirmed that the interface for bird-to-human transmission of avian flu in China comes from traditional live poultry markets. Disease prevention authorities believe that manual slaughter in traditional markets makes it easy for chicken feathers and droppings to spread the virus and affect other vendors as well: "Once avian flu breaks out, people will not even dare to step into the market." Slaughterhouses have professional veterinarians checking chickens before and after slaughter, and electric slaughter can effectively reduce contact between live poultry and people.
But free-range chicken scholars, related operators and the Taiwan Rural Front believe that there are currently only 83 slaughterhouses in all of Taiwan, and there is even only one slaughterhouse in Greater Taipei, so 120,000 chickens poured in the day before the Dragon Boat Festival, causing a major backlog. Some slaughterhouses have to process tens of thousands of chickens a day, and if a small number of chickens get sick, centralized slaughter can easily lead to cross-infection; moreover, because slaughterhouses handle large volumes, veterinarians did not enforce checks strictly and actually handed the labels for electrically slaughtered chickens directly to the operators sending the poultry for slaughter, so the disease prevention effect is questionable.
The Taiwan Rural Front and free-range chicken operators believe that the government should open more small and medium-sized slaughterhouses in various places, and if necessary could even follow the United States and set up isolation rooms in markets to slaughter live chickens. In addition, in 1997, because of the avian flu epidemic, Hong Kong, China closed markets once a week for disinfection and completely cleared live poultry from markets, and to this day it still maintains slaughter in markets; when the epidemic situation was tense this year, live poultry markets were temporarily closed and no cases were reported.
But the Taiwan Animal Society Research Association, which has promoted electric slaughter for ten years, believes that if slaughter areas are set up in markets, there will still be a certain risk of transmission during the movement of chickens, and veterinary inspection can be improved, so this cannot be used as an excuse to oppose electric slaughter. The Taiwan Rural Front stresses that it is not opposing electric slaughter, but hoping for more choices.
Whether banning live poultry slaughter can effectively prevent disease still needs to be clarified, and this involves two levels: one is the slaughter method, and the other is slaughterhouse management. There is still no consensus among all sides on on-site slaughter versus electric slaughter; some operators believe that if small slaughterhouses are opened, the risk of concentrated infection caused by concentration in a few slaughterhouses can be eased, and the two sides have more common ground on this point; but whether among civil groups, disease prevention agencies or public health scholars, all agree that source management at chicken farms is the most important.
