L'ADÉQUATION ANIMAUX-MACHINES, UN FACTEUR DE CONVERGENCE ENTRE PRODUCTION ET PROTECTION ANIMALE EN ABATTOIR.

Mandatory since the mid-1960s, "humanitarian" methods of slaughtering farmed animals became widespread in French slaughterhouses in the second half of the 20th century, in parallel with the meat market modernization process. The techniques of stunning and restraining animals thus become a component of a production process which gradually presents all the serial industry attributes. If such techniques globally adapt into animal categories, it does not always allow to take charge of their singularities. The rise of animal welfare will trigger a technical paradigm change in slaughterhouses: whereas the stunning and restraining systems were based on a certain adaptation of animals to machines, the European Animal Welfare Regulation, in force since 2013 in slaughterhouses, leads instead to a certain adaptation of machines to animals. In support of a corpus of 67 interviews and observations in 16 slaughterhouses, we demonstrate that this change in approach has made animal-machine adequacy a key factor of convergence between productive requirements and animal welfare. In this process, the most technological and specialized slaughterhouses appear structurally advantaged to meet animal welfare requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]