This winter has been one of the coldest in the last 20 years. While much of society is able to keep functioning throughout the stretch of extreme cold, there are some unique problems for those of us who are involved in livestock agriculture. There are specific problems related to the transporting of chickens to the processing facility.
Farmers, processors and transporters of live animals are concerned for the humane treatment of those animals. When the temperature outside drops to -20° and there is a wind chill, we recognize that it may be too cold to move birds. But it is not simply a case of canceling shipping on these nights. There is a procedure that takes place before birds are shipped. The chickens must be taken off feed before they are shipped in order to reduce the risk of contamination at the plant. For most processor this time period of being off feed is about six hours. Once the birds have been taken off feed, it’s isn’t simply a case of turning the feeders back on if shipping is delayed for a night, as that would greatly increase the risk of contamination at the processing plant. A second problem which may occur is that the farmer may not have much feed readily available if shipping is delayed due to weather conditions.
The processors also run into a problem when they have to cancel shipments. Processing lines may have 100 or more workers to process the birds and when shipping is canceled, the lines are standing empty and workers have to be sent home. For the birds that couldn’t be shipped a place needs to found in the schedule on another, already full night. And workers have to be scheduled often to come in either at night or on the weekend to catch up.
To add to all of this, many of the birds are scheduled to arrive at a restaurant on a just in time basis. The product is expected to be fresh. Birds are typically not processed on Saturdays or Sundays, so if a Monday shipment needs to be canceled due to weather conditions it results in three days in a row without processing. The result is that fresh product for some of these restaurants may be difficult to find.
All those conflicts explain why processors, farmers and transporters are reluctant to cancel a shipment of birds on any given night. However, we are committed to the welfare of the animals, so there were a number of nights this year when shipments did not take place. In addition to the development of a formal process to determine when to cancel shipments in the winter when it is too cold, there is also a procedure being set up to deal with logistics when it is too hot to ship birds in the summer. As farmers, processors and transporters of chicken we are committed to develop the best procedure that takes into consideration both the welfare of the livestock and the availability of product for the consumer.
Source: CFFO