Can Remote Video Auditing Replace In-Person Auditing of Animal Welfare?

By Temple Grandin
Dept. of Animal Science
Colorado State University

COVID-19 has forced both independent third party auditors and representatives from companies that buy large amounts of meat to do many audits by remote video. Would the video methods learned during the pandemic make it possible to eliminate all in-person visits to plants for either animal welfare or food safety audits? My prediction is these new video technologies will make it possible to reduce the number of in-person visits but not eliminate them. Some plant managers would like to eliminate all the in-person visits. However, there are some large meat buyers who would not trust total elimination of in-person visits.

For years, many large meat companies have installed video cameras that are monitored by an auditing company such as Arrowsight. Stationary cameras are located at the unloading ramp, crowd pen, stunning area, and bleed rail. Auditors in a remote location can measure falls, electric prod use, percentage of animals stunned correctly, and insensibility (unconsciousness), One advantage of these cameras is that the plant employees never know when the auditor is watching. This prevents the problems of the employees acting good when they see a person with a clipboard. When these cameras were first installed, they resulted in some great improvements in handling and stunning. To be effective, the cameras must be monitored by people working for an outside firm that sends the managers reports. Monitoring by plant management is less effective. I have observed that when the novelty wears off, they often stopped watching them. They have to be monitored by a person who actually performs numerical scoring of the different animal based measures. The daily scores are tabulated and sent to plant management.

New Camera Technology

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, it became obvious that these stationary cameras would not be sufficient to take the place of a complete audit performed in person. Employees know exactly what the camera can and cannot see. I have watched some of these remote videos. There was one scene at a stun box entrance where the cattle would jump into the frame. It was obvious they were being poked with an electric prod but there was no way to score it because it was not visible.

To replace a person visiting the plant, a third party auditor sitting in their home could direct a plant employee to walk with a camera and show them what they wanted to see. One method is to use a police body camera that automatically reports to a cloud server when the camera is on and when it is off. This provides a report that is date and time stamped.

If I was a meat buyer, I would be willing to use this to replace many in-person audits in plants I was familiar with. I can think of six plants where I know every nook and cranny and I could direct the camera person to show them all to me. I would absolutely not trust this for plants I have never visited. Somebody said to me that they could send me a floor plan. The problem is that I would have no way of knowing if the floor plan was genuine. During my career, I have seen every possible method to create fake paperwork.

Future Prediction on In-Person Visits

After the COVID-19 pandemic is over, I predict that the number of in-person auditor visits will be greatly reduced. If I was in charge of meat buying and supply chain management, all new suppliers would have to be visited in person. Any plant where there has been a history of problems would also have to have in-person visits. For new suppliers, another safeguard I would implement is to have the in-person auditor videotape all the production areas that my audit program covers. The reason for doing this is so that I have a record of what the plant looked like that nobody can temper with. If the manager made a change in the plant design or layout to hide something, I would be able to compare the archived video with the new audit video. I may also start using an artificial intelligence program to verify that my archival footage matches the video that I received from the audit. This is the only way to determine if the plant had modified their facilities to prevent me from seeing something. An added wall or re-routing of the line could be detected. Technology can do a lot of great things but it cannot replace all in-person visits.

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