January 8, 2013, The Poultry site, News: CANADA – Research conducted by the University of Manitoba has shown, from an animal welfare perspective, nitrogen is a better alternative for mass euthanasia than carbon dioxide, writes Bruce Cochrane.
Dr Qiang Zhang, a professor in Biosystems Engineering with the University of Manitoba, describes in a radio interview with Farmscape online that the current emergency response systems use carbon dioxide where as the new system uses nitrogen:
‘We actually compared CO2 with our new system. We were looking at the two aspects, one is the animal welfare, the other one is the public perception. Animal welfare is strictly looking from the animal’s point of view.
We actually use video tape to observe the behavior of the animals and with a panel of experts we actually score the welfare behavior.
Also we did the same thing with the public perception. In quick summary, the nitrogen actually scored much better than the CO2 in terms of animal welfare but from the public perception point of view the two were pretty much equal.’
Listen to the entire radio interview:
Read the article of January 8, 2013 in the Poultry site:
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/27718/using-nitrogen-for-euthanasia-improves-welfare
