The Continuing of Sorrows
"Why do you need the bloodshed of innocent animals? Why are you so denatured that you cannot satisfy yourselves without violence?" —Plutarch
"A record goes up to Heaven, and a day is coming when judgment will be pronounced against men who make themselves demons by their dealings with God's creatures." —E. G. White
I
realize we have already covered some really heavy and unpleasant
information, but we have one more major and unavoidable area still to
talk about. This isn't going to be a fun area to look at for either
of us, but I promise I will not share all that I could. This will
only be a very small peek into an incredibly sad area over which
heaven itself must weep.
To get started, let's see if we can guess from the following job description what kind of employment this person might have:
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Exactly right, a slaughterhouse worker, helping to fill the misguided appetite of the average American population.
What happens every day in a modern slaughterhouse? Sue Coe, in her book, Dead Meat, describes what she saw firsthand in one:
A white sheep with a blue brand on her side and black feet is let in. The door closes. She runs around the kill floor. The foreman comes over to tell me they don't want any of their faces in my pictures. The sheep waits, her hooves and legs are covered with the blood of other animals. The door opens again, and two more sheep are pushed in. The outside worker doesn't realize the killing has temporarily stopped. The sheep start to bleat, soft, terrible, piteous cries. Streaming water from the hoses runs the old blood down the drain. And the killing starts again.&ldots;Sheep bleat even after their throats are cut. They writhe. Every part of my being says to stop it, save them, which is impossible. 1
The following are reports from many slaughterhouse workers:
The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat it to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute....
[If a cow is unable to walk] they put a chain around her neck then drag her all the way up to where we are. Usually she's dead by then. Strangled...
When [workers] are in a hurry, they scoop [disabled hogs] up on a dead run with the bobcat....if the hog stays in the bucket, he stays in. If he falls out, he falls out. Or you run him over with the bobcat, if he's able to run some more....Pin him up against the wall. Finish busting the rest of his legs so he can't run any further. 2
The animals are excessively prodded with pipes, chains and
pitchforks, with no consideration for aim. Prods are often jammed in
the animal's eyes, ears and down their throats. 3
It doesn't get any better down the line either. The
"knocker" or "stunner" has to kill as many as
1,100 animals per hour. 4
That is only three seconds for each. Now that might not be too bad if
the animals patiently stood there waiting to get hit, but, needless
to say, they aren't. Often the equipment is not working properly
either, thus rendering accurate stunning impossible, but the line
keeps on moving whether the creature is unconscious or not.
...I would estimate that one out of ten cows is still alive when it is bled and skinned.
I've found [cattle] alive clear over to the rump stand. It takes about ten minutes to get to the rump stand....They've been completely legged and run through an electrical shock system too. They're up their sucking in air and bellowing. Their eyes [are] bugging out.
I'd estimate that about 10 to 12 hogs an hour go into the scalding tank conscious. These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water, and just start screaming and kicking. Sometimes they thrash so much they kick water out of the tank.
When workers open the cows' skin and grab their legs, the cows try to kick us but we've already spread their legs open. And they're looking at us and they're sticking out their tongues. They make a "mmmmrrrrrr" noise. It's a look like, "Don't do this to me," you know, "You're cutting me alive!" They blink their eyes and they stare up at us like, "Help me!" 5
I have seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive since I have been at the plant.... 6
...as many as 20 percent of all slaughter animals are conscious—exhibiting righting reflexes, kicking, blinking, looking around, and vocalizing—when their skin is removed. Many animals also remain conscious as they are immersed in scalding tanks or as plant employees remove their legs, tails and other body parts. 7
In case you are thinking, as I did, that kosher meat would be humane, shattering news awaits. This was the original intent of the ritual slaughter laws. But today, due to the Pure Food and Drug Act, the fully conscious animals must be suspended upside down by a leg before they are slaughtered so that they do not fall in the blood of other animals. This is, of course, very uncomfortable, to say the least. 8
The animal, upside down, with ruptured joints and often a broken leg, twists frantically in pain and terror, so that it must be gripped by the neck or have a clamp inserted in its nostrils to enable the slaughterer to kill the animal with a single stroke, as religious law prescribes. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, pg.155
Animals being ritually slaughtered in the United States are shackled around a rear leg, hoisted into the air, and then hang, fully conscious, upside down on the conveyer belt for between two and five minutes—and occasionally much longer if something goes wrong on the "kill line"—before the slaughterer makes his cut. Ibid.
Obviously not an enviable way to die. Only certain parts of the meat are acceptable as kosher, so there is lots of extra meat which is sold as regular meat, yet it was obtained in the same barbaric way. 9 This is completely going against the very purpose of the ritual laws, given for both health and humanitarian reasons. The animals were to be completely healthy, and death was to be instantaneous, both for the animals' sake and so that any poisons and hormones would not be excited and rushed throughout the entire body of the animal and thus transferred to the consumer.
My apologies for the vivid pictures. But so often we fail to stop and
think of what is really going on multiple times every day in
slaughterhouses all across the country. Is this something we really
want to continue to support?
All rights reserved Copyright © 2006 By J. Lee