Poultry transportation and its effects on bird productivity, welfare and health

肉类动物（牛肉、猪和家禽）的运输是一个挑战。消费者越来越了解他们购买和消费的食物是如何生产的，并期望食用动物得到人道的对待。因此，消费者的意见正在影响畜牧业的运作和生产。虽然家禽业参与了指导鸟类运输的业务守则的制定，但这些守则大多数是利用集体智慧和专业意见制定的。缺乏科学数据来支持和指导这些守则的制定和维护，使现行守则和条例受到批评和辩论。不久将对这些业务守则进行审查，并将由政策制定者、管理机构、加工者和生产者小组进行修订。这一审查进程和各委员会将期望得到科学数据形式的援助，以支持守则的修订。** 萨斯喀彻温大学的研究人员是家禽运输相关工作的领导者，重点是在广泛的典型加拿大草原天气条件下表征运输车辆内的环境条件和鸟类反应。基于现场的研究可以最准确地复制测试条件，但它也是耗时的，昂贵的，并受到不可控因素的变化，如环境温度和湿度。此外，加拿大大草原目前的环境条件不包括全国范围内的条件。需要持续开展工作以支持规范修订，建议使用实验室家禽运输模拟器，以便在更广泛的环境条件下更有效地生成数据，更好地控制接触条件，并支持更严格的监测。** 拟议研究的第一阶段将是表征商业家禽运输拖车内的振动水平，其规模相当于肉鸡的单个抽屉。振动数据将与已经收集的温度、湿度和风速数据结合使用。接下来（第2阶段），将使用能够重现第1阶段中测量的条件的运输模拟器来生成商业环境中经历的条件范围。这一阶段将研究温度、湿度、持续时间和禽类大小对肉鸡反应的影响。这些反应将通过监测禽类参数进行量化，如活禽收缩、血液参数、核心体温、行为和肉质指标。这项研究的结果将开始确定安全和人道运输的市场年龄肉鸡的暴露限值。

The transportation of meat animals (beef, swine and poultry) is a challenge. Consumers continue to become increasingly aware of how the food they purchase and consume is produced, and expect food animals to be treated in a humane manner. As such, consumer opinions are influencing how animal agriculture operations and production occur. Although the poultry industry has participated in the development of codes of practice to guide the transportation of birds, the majority of these codes were developed using collective wisdom and professional opinions. There is a lack of scientific data available to support and guide the development and maintenance of these codes, leaving the current codes and regulations subject to criticism and debate. These codes of practice will soon be under review, and they will be revised by groups of policy developers, regulatory agencies, processors and producers. This review process and the committees will expect assistance, in the form of scientific data, to support the code revisions. ******Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are leaders in work related to poultry transportation, with a focus on characterizing the environmental conditions and bird responses within transport vehicles during a wide range of typical Canadian prairie weather conditions. Field-based research allows the test conditions to be most accurately replicated, but it is also time consuming, expensive and subject to variations in uncontrollable factors such as ambient temperature and humidity. Further, the environmental conditions present on the Canadian prairies don't encompass the range of conditions that will be present across the country. Ongoing work will be required to support the code revisions, and the use of a lab-based poultry transport simulator is proposed to more efficiently generate data under a wider range of environmental conditions, to allow greater control of exposure conditions and to support more intense monitoring. ******The first phase of the proposed research would be to characterize vibration levels within a commercial poultry transport trailer at the scale of an individual drawer of broiler chickens. Vibration data will be used in combination with temperature, humidity and air velocity data already collected. Next (phase 2), a transport simulator able to re-create the conditions measured in phase 1 will be used to generate the range of conditions experienced in a commercial setting. This phase will investigate the effects of temperature, humidity, duration, and bird size on the responses of broiler chickens. These responses will be quantified by monitoring bird parameters such as live shrink, blood parameters, core body temperature, behaviour and meat quality measures. The results of this research will start to define exposure limits for safe and humane transportation of market-age broiler chickens.