Animal welfare

Poultry unit achieves excellence in animal welfare

Aurora Coop – one of the largest agro-industrial conglomerates in the country – was one of the first Brazilian companies to join the National Humane Slaughter Program in 2009, a pioneering initiative in animal welfare policy that has now become a priority in the industry of meat processing.

Now, the Frigorific Aurora Coop Mandaguari, in Paraná, has just received a rigorous audit that certifies the use of animal welfare guidelines. This was the first audit of its kind carried out in a company in Brazil and was based on the  Global Animal Wellness Standard – Poultry Slaughter protocol , from  NSF International.

The audit proved that the chicken slaughtering and processing unit at Aurora Coop in Mandaguari achieved an exceptional compliance rate, between 95% and 100%, fully satisfying the expectations of the protocol.

Vice-president of agribusiness  Marcos Antônio Zordan  noted that “the excellent result achieved in the audit shows the Cooperative’s solid commitment to animal welfare in the production system.”

The manager highlighted that the practices audited in Mandaguari are similar in all Aurora Coop units. The nine poultry slaughtering and processing plants, together, have an installed capacity to slaughter 1.607 million chickens per day. In 2023, these industrial plants slaughtered 320.8 million heads of chickens, registering an increase of 11% in relation to the total number of birds slaughtered in 2022. Animal welfare practices involve the entire production base in the field, formed by 2,236 properties of cooperative poultry farmers located in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná.

An identical situation occurs in the pig area, where the eight plants have a slaughter and processing capacity of 32,092 pigs per day. The pig industrial units installed in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul slaughtered 7.376 million heads last year, a volume 3.2% higher than the previous year. The 3,625 rural producers (cooperatives) integrated in the field participate in animal welfare actions, constituting the basis of Aurora Coop’s pig production structure.