From next year, the slaughter process in French slaughterhouses will be closely monitored by CCTV. The images are kept for one month and may only be viewed by veterinarians and inspectors. The reason for this is to guarantee animal welfare during the slaughter process.
Last year, Stéphane le Foll, the French Minister of Agriculture, announced that from 2018 slaughterhouses in France will be permanently monitored by means of cameras. The reason for this is abuses in the slaughter process that came out in the media in 2015. From January next year, all process steps in a slaughterhouse will be recorded on video, so that slaughterhouses no longer have the freedom to interpret regulations based on their own point of view.
Following the French lead, the British are also pushing for camera surveillance in slaughterhouses. Animal Aid, a British animal welfare organization, has asked the British agriculture minister to monitor British slaughterhouses more closely. A recent poll shows that many Britons believe that welfare requirements should remain above the European standard or at least at least the same after Brexit. At least, that was the opinion of 8 out of 10 respondents.
Incidentally, camera surveillance is not entirely new in the slaughter world. The Dutch slaughterhouse Compaxo Zevenaar, for example, already has cameras installed in the slaughterhouse and has had good experiences with them.
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