UA slaughterhouse teaches food safety
By: Ian Cross
Issue date: 8/29/07 Section: News
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Recreation center, check.
Slaughterhouse, check?
The UA owns a meat sciences facility housing a self-sufficient slaughterhouse and meat-processing lab that teaches students about safety, animal composition and meat processing.
"We encompass all animal sciences as well as veterinary and microbiology students," said John Marchello, an instructor and employee at the facility, located at the UA Agricultural Research Center, 4101 N. Campbell Avenue.
The facility employs less than 10 full-time employees and is used by many departments at the UA, Marchello said.
"There are 60-some different parts of the university, high schools and middle schools that get parts and things like that for their science classes," he added.
Students studying animal sciences take part in all of the facility's functions, from processing animal carcasses to grading the meat to testing the meat for safety and quality, Marchello said.
To slaughter the animals, "we use two humane procedures. Captive-bolt … knocks them out, they have to be unconscious," he said. "Death is by bleeding - removing the blood."
The captive-bolt gun, which is used on cattle and larger animals, has a bolt that uses a .22-caliber shell without the lead, Marchello said.
"It fires that, hits them in the head and knocks them unconscious at 600 mph," he said. "They don't know what hit them."
After the animal is unconscious, the carotid arteries are cut and the animal dies from blood loss "within a minute or less," Marchello said.
The electrode method, used on hogs and smaller animals, sends an electrical current through the animal's body, knocking it unconscious, he said. Then it is bled.
Food Safety and Inspection Services periodically sends an inspector to check out the conditions of the facility and would report to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona if conditions were less than what is considered humane, he said.
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