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Globally, Japan’s livestock protection index is ranked at the lowest level. Japanese companies are rated at the lowest level in the BBFAW (Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare) for animal welfare, making investment in them high-risk. This lag is not just affecting livestock farmers but is also negatively impacting the Japanese food companies in the future. How can we catch up? Facing harsh realities In the summer of 2023, we investigated the proportion of laying hens raised in free-range systems. We discovered that only 1.11% (currently 1.12%) of them are free-range in Japan. At this rate, animals in Japan will continue to suffer for the next 10, 20, or 50…
The statistical data for poultry processing in fiscal year 2022 has been released. Unfortunately, the figures show a shocking number of chickens that were not properly processed and instead boiled alive. This resulted in their skin turning red and the chickens being discarded. The total number of such incidents was a record high of 616,864 birds, making it the worst year in terms of casualties. The extremely cruel act of boiling birds alive involves hanging chickens and ducks upside down by shackling their legs while they are conscious and attempting to cut their throats while they struggle and flail. This often fails to properly sever their necks, leaving them to…
Animals deserve water, even in their final days. A 2023 survey conducted by the Animal Rights Center Japan revealed animals in Japan are denied drinking water at 38% of cattle, and 72% of pig slaughterhouses. Pigs and cattle in Japan are transported for hours, often up to a day, before arriving at a slaughterhouse. There, they might endure an entire day before their slaughter takes place, and during all that time might not receive drinking water, even in Japan’s intense hot summers. According to a survey conducted from May to July 2023 by the nonprofit Animal Rights Center Japan, 37.82% of cattle, and 71.64% of pig slaughterhouses in Japan lack…
Companies that have contributed to the spread of animal welfare The Animal Welfare Award (AWA) is an annual* award to express our gratitude to companies that have made animal welfare efforts with animals in mind in Japan, a country that lags behind the rest of the world in animal welfare for livestock and aquatic animals. We evaluated initiatives that we believe had the greatest possible impact from the perspective of the Animal Rights Center Japan, which is involved in activities to protect farm animals in Japan. *April 2022 – March 2023
In Japan, pigs and cattle are basically stunned at slaughterhouses before being decapitated and bled to death. However, this process is not 100% complete. This is because it fails. If the fainting process works correctly, the animal will suffer less pain and fear in the final stages. Therefore, efforts to improve the accuracy and reduce the number of failures must always be ongoing. Even one failure from the human point of view is a 100% failure for the animal, and there is no way to recover from it. This Japanese video is from a very common slaughterhouse. Failures are very common. Some people who have visited slaughterhouses will say “it…
558,181 chickens were boiled alive in 2021, revealed by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) data. The number had continuously increased and hit the worst in 2021, which indicates there had been no efforts to minimize such errors at the slaughterhouses. There are two types of facilities when we talk about slaughterhouses for chickens. One is to slaughter chickens for meat, and the other is to cull laying hens. In 2021, the number increased in the facility to kill chickens for meat while we saw slight improvements in the facility for hens. The impact is huge for the former facility since over 700 million birds are killed for…
In recent years, we have been making films for the general public based on footage of animal farms sent to ARCJ and our investigation activities. This is an attempt to have many people become aware of and think about the issues of animal agriculture. At the “Labor Festa” held on December 25, 2021, the screened “Please give me water, or light” won the Jury Prize. In addition, this work won first place in the participant questionnaire announced at a later date, and it is the first time that the animal-themed work won the award and attracted the attention of the audience at a film event dealing with many hard-line social…
Mother pigs, who are used as machines for producing meat pigs, continue to be detained in gestation crates and farrowing crates from the age of 6 month till they are killed. This is the case for 90% of breeding farms in Japan. They are slaughtered after being detained, being robbed of their child 3 or 4 times. How? Meat pigs called growing-finishing pigs are killed within 180 days, so when they are slaughtered, they weigh about 110 kg. On the other hand, a fully grown mother pig weighs more than 200 kg, a size that does not fit in a general slaughter lane. At one slaughterhouse, they are slaughtered as…
What if it happened to you…? With their legs fixed, chickens are hung upside down before having their heads cut a little with a knife. While bleeding they are kept hanging for a few minutes, then they are put into boiling water headfirst. What if it happened to dogs? Cats? Or humans? Do you think the society that accepts such cruelty is healthy? However, people who stock, process, sell and eat chickens accept the cruelty.They go about their daily lives blocking out the cruelty on their doorstep as they believe it happens elsewhere. Since 2018, Animal Rights Center has been pointing out that chickens have their heads cut off while…
On 2020/11/5, avian flu broke out at a poultry farm in Kagawa Prefecture for the first time this winter. Since then, bird flu has spread to Fukuoka, Hyogo, Miyazaki, Nara, Hiroshima, Oita, Wakayama, Okayama, Shiga, Kochi, Tokushima, Chiba, Gifu, Kagoshima, Toyama, and Ibaraki, and the number of killing is currently (2021/3/10) 9,689,703 birds. The poultry killed are “egg-layer chickens”, “broiler chickens”, “breeder chickens (farms raising parents for eggs and meat chickens)”, and “ducks”. We doubt that anyone thinks this poultry depopulation for bird flu, requiring killing all poultry on the farm in a short time (as a guide, slaughter within 24 hours, carcass processing [buried and incinerated] within 72 hours)…
We’ve been following the issue of egg laying hens being abandoned for long hours at slaughterhouses since 2018.Unlike broiler chickens, egg laying hens have to wait overnight until they are killed at slaughterhouses. It’s a big animal welfare issue since chickens are not able to move their heads in a tiny cage for these hours. It was discussed in the diet and ultimately led to concerned ministries to release improvement notices. However, the Animal Rights Center confirmed the situations hadn’t improved so it was escalated in the diet again. As a result, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare finally conducted an on-site inspection in August 2018. Their finding was released in November…
Animal cruelty, in treatment of any animals that humans deal with in society, is something that must not exist, either legally or morally, and it must be eliminated in industrial animals as well. Shinjiro Koizumi, Minister of the Environment This was clarified by a question from a member of the House of Representatives, Keinin Horikoshi (Gunma), at the Environment Committee of the House of Representatives on November 17, 2020. For many, this must be taken for granted. However, in the livestock industry, animal cruelty has become commonplace, and mistaken procedures have become commonplace, and the self-cleansing action to correct them has not worked, and the animals used for livestock have…
Animal Rights Center Japan has collected signatures and submitted the petition calling for improvements to slaughterhouse animal welfare, and has worked on various slaughterhouses 1 2 3. But at the moment there is almost no information suggesting improvements. The problem of inadequate drinking water at slaughterhouses has not been solved. Animal welfare education for slaughterhouse staff is not provided, either. Dragging immobile cows with chains, not caring for lactating dairy cows (not milking etc), moving to slaughterhouse weak animals with hernia etc not suitable for transportation, twisting cows’ tails to move them… these present practices violate the animal welfare standards of the OIE (World Animal Health Organization) to which Japan is…
Many hens in Japan have a short miserable life in a battery cage. The result of an investigation conducted by the Animal Rights Center shows their condition is much crueler than the center had expected. ▾MOVIE | ▾Whistle-blowing and Vilification | ▾The Conditions of Hens at Night | ▾Why is this happening? | ▾Violating Global Standards AND Domestic Law | ▾Shift for Change | ▾Get on with improvements! After hens are used as egg-laying machines for one or two years, they are called waste chickens or mature chickens. They are slaughtered for meat. The meat is used for canned meat products, processed food, frozen food, ground meat, chicken extract, and chicken ham. Their big, but unhealthily white-color bent combs are used for…
Stunning may not be allowed in religious slaughter, such as with Islamic halal. Animal Rights Center Japan has been addressing this issue in some cases where religious slaughter is performed in Japan without stunning. Currently (May 2020), 6 companies are performing halal slaughter of cattle for export. Halal beef export destinations are Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar (one company has meat export certification for several countries). Of these, stunning was already used for halal slaughter for Malaysia and Indonesia even before ARCJ started getting involved. Of the remaining 5 companies exporting beef to UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar, 4 companies are currently using stunning. (However, some companies do not perform…
Companies that contributed to expanding animal welfare Animal Welfare Award (AWA) is an award annually* selecting and giving thanks to companies that consider animals and work on animal welfare in Japan which is lagging behind the world in terms of animal welfare for livestock and aquaculture animals. In the view of Animal Rights Center Japan that works to protect livestock animals in Japan, efforts resulting in the biggest impacts have been recognized. * The first round covers efforts from 2019 through March 2020. The Results
December 2019, midnight. At a slaughterhouse in Japan, this cow was tied with a very short rope passed through the nose ring, awaiting slaughter the next morning. The length of the rope was so short that the cow could not lie down, and even limited his ability to move the head up or down. The cow with his behavior severely restricted continued to stand there, stepping and licking around the mouth with his tongue. Not even a water drinking facility. Even if there were, his mouth probably couldn’t reach there with the short rope. He is in this state until he is killed the next day. Ability to drink…
What is Cattle’s Individual Identification Number? You may have seen “Cattle’s Individual Identification numbers” on packages when you buy Japanese beef at a supermarket. These Cattle’s Individual Identification numbers are attached to cow’s ears as well as displayed on the meat package at supermarkets. Since Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was first observed in 2001 in Japan, there has been a huge demand of traceability about where the cattle were born and transported. Thus, the Law for Special Measures Concerning the Management and Relay of Information for Individual Identification of Cattle came into effect in 2003. Consumers can obtain information of the trace by looking up the individual identification numbers displayed…
There are various support systems for the livestock industry implemented by the country, but one of them is Comprehensive Subsidies for Developing Strong Agriculture & Leaders. As previously reported in another article, from 2018, when using this grant to establish a local meat production center (slaughterhouse), consideration for animal welfare has become required. In the case of implementing the maintenance of local meat centers among livestock product processing facilities, efforts shall be made to effectively utilize the recycling of slaughter residue, etc., and handle livestock in consideration of animal welfare. Although it is not specific, it was a step forward in animal welfare that such a sentence was added to…
n November 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Wealth (MHLW) released an investigation report on the matter of slaughterhouses cramming chickens in cages and abandoning them for long hours. 72 hours of Abandonment The investigation by the MHLW was mentioned during the deliberation for the Ministry of Forestry, Agriculture, and Fisheries (MAFF) in the Diet on 21st November 2018. According to the report, the MHLW investigated 28 slaughterhouses out of 32 (as of 2016) in the country, excluding three houses in Okayama and one in Fukuoka. Investigations conducted by the MHLW typically focus on sanitary issues. Therefore, the results don’t present the facts that chickens cannot raise their heads…
The multi-partisan parliamentary group aiming for zero killing of dogs and cats has established a project team for amending the Animal Welfare Act. Since its launch on August 25, 2023, the PT has held 21 meetings to hear from stakeholders and deliberate on the direction of amendments. Out of these 21 sessions, however, only one touched on livestock animals, and just one on laboratory animals. Despite 1 billion livestock animals being killed annually, the issue remains far from the priorities of lawmakers. In the sole PT meeting addressing livestock, the discussions showed promise, but it is unlikely to expect significant amendments by 2025 at this rate. 17th PT: Hearings on…
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