Slaughter: The Problem

One of the pork producers in our network has an on farm slaughter facility where the hogs are double-stunned, once to the brain and once to the heart.  When an animal is stunned to the brain you have about 90 seconds to hoist it and exsanguinate it before it begins to regain consciousness  - that's not a lot of time if you have issues with the hoist etc.  - double stunning ensures that it will not regain consciousness.  A double stun with cattle is not an option so the efficiency lies in a skilled stun gun operator with equipment in good working order. Inefficiency on kill lines and faulty equipment in the mega processing facilities means that animals can and do regain consciousness - the lines are too fast and are sometimes operated by inexperienced workers - the onsite USDA inspectors are too few to adequately inspect, and anyway their main job is to inspect food safety not to ensure animal welfare (despite the Humane Slaughter Act).

Discomfort, stress, pain and fear leading up to slaughter are huge factors in poor animal welfare.  Animals often travel long distances from the feedlot/CAFO or farm to the processing plant – extreme temps often leave animals in a distressed state during transport and on arrival. In really hot temperatures animals can die from heat exhaustion, in the winter it is not uncommon for pigs to get frozen to the sides of the transport truck, which means they are literally ripped from the sides of the truck on their arrival.  These are extreme examples of animal abuse, but the general stress placed on livestock from long journeys, overcrowding, and a heightened sense of fear are daily happenings that would not be reported as animal abuse as they are less tangible and an accepted part of the meat packing process.   Temple Grandin has suggested guidelines that are inexpensive to put in place at existing facilities and that can at least alleviate some of the stress once at the plant. Transportation is a huge problem that needs to be addressed but due to economies of scale will be a difficult one to tackle.

We need smaller and local processing facilities (the kind of plants that have been bought out and shut down by some of the big plant operations) where slaughter-man and farmers have a relationship, where the farmers are guaranteed that their humane raising standards are not nullified by an inhumane kill, where they can ensure that the meat they collect from the processing facility came from their own livestock.

A farmer can have the best animal welfare in place at the farm but unless we address the inadequacies and poor animal welfare standards within the slaughter system, then there can be no such thing as humanely produced meat.

~ THE ACTIVIST