Stunning is one of the most delicate phases of the slaughtering process as it is intended to be used on animals which are still live and conscious. Throughout the short interval separating stunning from death, the main factors related to animal welfare are the negative emotions experienced such as distress, fear, pain and suffering. Effective stunning prevents animals from experiencing such emotions as it immediately makes animals unconscious. The correlation between animal welfare and health and food safety has been internationally recognized.

To this aim a regulation was issued to define the minimal stunning parameters: minimal current for each type of animal, frequency and, last but not least, work cycle and wave form.

Verderio has deeply examined the principles, the methods and the techniques closely
related to animal welfare during stunning and killing.
In accordance with the EC Regulation 1099/2009, on the basis of our 50-year-long experience and cooperating with some of the main producers, we developed our new head-only electrical stunning control board which is a further development of the already existing stunning system we launched the first some years ago.

This system is made up of a variable-frequency, sine-wave, counter-current generator which allows to set stunning current according to the type of animal to be processed, thus extraordinarily increasing stunning effectiveness since it automatically compensates, in a given range, those contact anomalies between animals and stunning electrodes which occur even in case of proper stunning operations.

The stunning control system complies with the EC Regulation no. 1099/2009 and allows to plan, carry out and verify the whole stunning process, both locally and (as an option) remotely. It consists of an implementation card, which is controlled by a PLC and by a Panel PC with touchscreen working as user interface.

The user interface allows to perform all the required operations: creation, display and storage of stunning parameters, export of stunning parameters and results as well as on-line trend display of instantaneous current delivered. The use of a database SQL allows to store all stunning parameters as required by Regulation EC no. 1099/2009.