The animal welfare standards of the EU are far superior to North American standards and especially our antiquated Canadian standards (I read a comparison once) and there are supposed to be inspectors on the floor of slaughterhouses and yet abuses are common. As the camera's are not going to be open for the public or any AR group to monitor, only veterinarians who are hired on by governments with tight budgets, I cannot help but wonder if they will be any more effective than the inspectors on the ground were.
I listened to an interview of an undercover AR videographer once in an American turkey processor and besides the examples of expected abusive treatment, he mentioned that the inspectors that he saw in the months that he worked there cruised through the plant which took about 5-10 minutes of their day and then were gone. How many slaughterhouses will a vet be monitoring and who will be monitoring the vet who monitors the cameras? Will there be an increase in the number of prosecutions for animal cruelty as a result of this because of 'monsters' being caught doing terrible things? And if there is no increase in prosecutions, will it be because 'the vet wasn't looking' or 'because the monsters quit being so monstrous'?
I think this is a step in the right direction, but I'd be more impressed if people who had no vested interest in the industry (non meat eaters) were also monitoring those cameras.
