Animal Welfare, (formally TruckCare), is an audited quality assurance program for livestock transport. It covers animal welfare, food safety and traceability. It is fully auditable and is built around the quality assurance principles contained in international standards and also uses hazard analysis of critical control points.
Animal Welfare is focused on humane transportation of the stock, on how to prevent disease, stress and contamination problems when moving them, on making sure the ‘paddock to plate’ traceability for livestock is supported during the journey and on the eating quality and safety of the final meat product.
This is the only risk mitigation tool to manage your animal welfare compliance and reputation.
It covers:
- professional management procedures
- customer & subcontractor management
- resolving problems with customers
- training & induction for livestock transport
- stock crate maintenance
- planning for problems in livestock transport
- selecting stock that are fit to load
- proper handling, loading & unloading of stock
- consignment paperwork, load plans, NVDs & waybills
As of 1 January 2015, Animal Welfare is now a voluntary module of TruckSafe, which is managed by the Australian Trucking Association.
Meat & Livestock Australia have a video that explains best practice animal welfare when preparing, loading and delivering livestock for sale or processing.
Part of this informative video includes the “Is It Fit To Load” guide, a very important tool as used by TruckSafe members who have Animal Welfare as a part of their accreditation.
(Credit: Meat & Livestock Australia. For more information on the Is Fit To Load Guide visit www.mla.com.au/fittoload)
