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Industry Overview
Defined as multi-use animals, rabbits are raised for a wide variety of American markets, including pet sales, pelt trade, laboratory research, show circuits and food production. (1) The various rabbit sectors work in conjunction with each other.
Today, metropolitan grocery stores and high-end restaurants are the chief retailers of commercial rabbit meat. (2) Rabbit meat is also sold via the Internet (msn.com and amazon.com).
Americans consumed between 8 and 10 million pounds of rabbit meat annually (3). Each year over two million rabbits are raised and slaughtered for their meat across the country (4).
Breeding & Grow-Out Operations
For breeding purposes, does (female rabbits) and bucks (male rabbits) are individually housed in wire cages. (5) Social deprivation is a chief welfare concern in breeding adult rabbits. In the meat industry, each doe delivers 5 to 8 litters per year. (6) Typically, females rebred 14 to 28 days following the preceding litter. (7)
The rigorous pregnancy cycle is physically taxing on the mother rabbit and her kits (baby rabbits). The USDA reports that “mortality when the kits are in the pre-weaning stage can be up to 40 percent.” (8) Baby rabbits, known as kits, are weaned at an early age – resulting in sickness and trauma. After 18 months, breeding females are culled like ‘spent’ hens in modern egg production.
Pat Lamar, the President of the Professional Rabbit Meat Association, reports: “The rabbit meat industry operates much the same as the poultry industry in the classification of meats.” (9) Fryer rabbits are in high demand on the American market. (10) Post-weaning, kits are live to group grow-out cages until they reach ‘slaughter weight’.
The living conditions of meat rabbits in the grow-out phrase are akin to the living conditions of chickens in battery-cage egg production. Fryers are group-raised in wire cages for their 56 - 70 day lives. (11) The natural lifespan of a rabbit, in contrast, is approximately ten years.
The White New Zealands and Californians are the most common breeds used in the meat sector. (12) Both breeds are known for “fast growth and high dressing percentages.” (13) As well, these medium-sized breeds are more marketable to processors who can profit from the sale of white pelts and by-products (i.e. brain and blood serum) in the fur and research sectors respectively. (14)
High stocking densities of cages are a common feature of modern rabbit meat operations. (15) “Controversy over the confinement rearing of social species of livestock (calves, poultry, swine) has been a primary welfare issue. Although little attention has been focused on rabbits, it is reasonable to assume that the same complaints of space restriction…are tenable,” researchers at South Dakota State University report. (16)
“Rabbits are sensitive to the ammonia fumes created by their urine and the more densely packed the rabbits are, the more likely they are to develop medical problems related to concentration.” (17)
The Food and Agriculture Organization further determined “that the stress of cramped quarters…can contribute to ill health, including diarrhea and respiratory illnesses.” (18) Group confinement of rabbits can also frequently result in fur-plucking and ear-biting. (19)
Live-Haul Transport
Reaching market weight, meat rabbits are transported long distances via multi-tiered flatbed trucks. “The transport of rabbits to processing facilities can pose welfare questions similar to those raised for other livestock species. Separation, caging, crating and handling practices, mixing, food and water deprivation, noise, temperature, humidity, and other environmental changes are all variables that affect the physical and psychological welfare of animals.” (20)
Rabbit processing plants are few and far between. “Many growers are forced to ‘ship’ their fryer rabbits to the nearest processing plant, which may be several states away. Very few rabbit processors are able to hire ‘route men’ to pick up fryer rabbits, resulting in the rabbit meat industry being highly dependent upon volunteer ‘Bunny Runners,’” states Lamar. (21) A ‘Bunny Runner’ is a rabbit meat producer who hauls the fryers of other producers to the nearest processing plant. (22)
Slaughter & Inspection
Known primarily as a backyard industry, American rabbit meat production is largely unregulated by federal authorities. Meat rabbits are not protected by the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. The inspection of rabbits is not mandated by the Federal Meat Inspection Act or Poultry Products Inspection Act. (23) The regulation of meat rabbits falls within the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration.
According to USDA’s Animal Disposition Reporting System, rabbits are grouped with poultry for reporting purposes. (24) Merely 20 – 25 percent of rabbit slaughterhouses are inspected by the USDA. (25) “Rabbit slaughter facilities come in and out of production, and since 1985 there never been more than eight USDA-inspected facilities.” (26)
Rabbits are slaughtered by either cervical dislocation or blunt-force to the skull. (27) “The preferred method is dislocation of the neck. The rabbit is held firmly by the rear legs and head; it is stretched full length. Then with a hard, sharp pull, the head is bent backward to dislocate the neck. The rabbit can also be struck a hard, quick blow to the skull behind the ears. A blunt stick or side of the hand is commonly used to incapacitate the rabbit. After dislocation or stunning, the rabbit is hung by one of the hind legs above the hock joint. The head is immediately removed to allow complete bleeding.” (28) At processing facilities, the optimal slaughter rate of rabbits is 100 per hour. (29)
The American Veterinary Medical Association says cervical dislocation is a humane stunning/killing procedure only if a rabbit weighs less than 2.2 pounds. (30) Fryer rabbits are marketed at 4 – 6 pounds; thus cervical dislocation is not a viable method during rabbit slaughter. (31) “In larger animals the muscles are much thicker, making proper cervical dislocation difficult to do correctly." (32) Brain electrical activity is present for 13 seconds after cervical dislocation is performed. (33)
Lamar explains that “guidelines for the processing of rabbits intended for human consumption are often confusing and not well understood, even by the individual USDA and/or state facility inspectors. This unique limbo status of the rabbit has resulted in problems in the way of rabbit processing plants, since USDA inspection of rabbit meat is merely a very expensive option and without the government subsidization as provided for the processing of beef, pork and poultry.” (34)
References
1. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bi/emergingmarketcondition_files/RabbitReport1.pdf
2. Ibid.
3. “Agricultural Alternatives”, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Cooperative Extension. 1994.
4. http://www.hsus.org/farm/resources/pubs/stats_slaughter_totals.html
5. Davis, Susan & DeMello, Margo, Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, Lantern Books, 2003.
6. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bi/emergingmarketcondition_files/RabbitReport1.pdf
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. http://revolution.3-cities.com/~fuzyfarm/Meat-rab.htm
10. Ibid.
11. http://ars.sdstate.edu/animaliss/rabbits.html
12. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bi/emergingmarketcondition_files/RabbitReport1.pdf
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. http://ars.sdstate.edu/animaliss/rabbits.html
16. Ibid.
17. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bi/emergingmarketcondition_files/RabbitReport1.pdf
18. Davis, Susan & DeMello, Margo, Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, Lantern Books, 2003.
19. http://ars.sdstate.edu/animaliss/rabbits.html
20. Ibid.
21. http://revolution.3-cities.com/~fuzyfarm/Meat-rab.htm
22. Ibid.
23. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Rabbit_from_Farm_to_Table.pdf
24. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Science/Animal_Disposition_Reporting_System/index.asp
25. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/bi/emergingmarketcondition_files/RabbitReport1.pdf
26. Ibid.
27. http://www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/rabslau.htm
28. Ibid.
29. Davis, Susan & DeMello, Margo, Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, Lantern Books, 2003.
30. http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf
31. http://www.arba.net/processors.htm
32. Davis, Susan & DeMello, Margo, Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, Lantern Books, 2003.
33. http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf
34. http://revolution.3-cities.com/~fuzyfarm/Meat-rab.htm
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