If they survive the farms and transport, the animals—whether factory-farmed or free-range—are slaughtered.

Animals in slaughterhouses can smell, hear, and often see the slaughter of those before them.

As the animals struggle, the human workers, who are pressured to keep the lines moving quickly, often react with impatience towards the animals.

Common mammal stunning methods:

• Captive bolt stunning – A “pistol” is set against the animal’s head and a metal rod is thrust into the brain.Shooting a struggling animal is difficult, and the rod often misses its mark.¹⁶
  
  
• Electric stunning – Current produces a grand mal seizure; then the throat is cut. According to industry consultant Temple Grandin, PhD, “Insufficient amperage can cause an animal to be paralyzed without losing sensibility.”¹⁷
  
  
• Ritual slaughter – Animals are fully conscious when their carotid arteries are cut. This is supposed to cause unconsciousness within seconds, but because of blood flow through the vertebral arteries in the back of the neck, some animals can remain conscious as they bleed for up to a minute.¹⁸ Additionally, Temple Grandin, PhD notes “Unfortunately, there are some plants which use cruel methods of restraint such as hanging live animals upside down.”¹⁹ This can cause broken bones as the heavy animal hangs by a chain attached to one leg.

An article in The Washington Post noted: “Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water.”²⁰

To induce paralysis in birds for ease of handling, electric stunning is normally used. However, it is not known whether stunning renders the birds unconscious;² the shock may be an “intensely painful experience.”²¹ Each year, large numbers of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese reach the scalding tanks alive and are either boiled to death or drowned.^{22, 23}

In February of 2007, a Mercy For Animals (MFA) undercover investigator took a job at one of the largest poultry slaughter plants in the country. There he found workers:

- Punching live animals for fun.
- Ripping eggs out of their vaginas to throw at other workers.
- Ripping the heads off of turkeys who had gotten their feet stuck in the transport truck cages.
- Throwing turkeys.
- Letting birds lie on the ground flapping in misery for hours at a time.

Video at: mercyforanimals.org/hor/

MFA's investigation comes on the heels of a February 2005 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals undercover investigation at a large Tyson plant in Alabama, where the investigator found:

- Workers ripping the heads off birds who had missed the throat-cutting machines.
- Birds frequently mutilated by throat-cutting machines that didn't work properly; one bird had her skin torn entirely off her chest.

Video at: torturedbytyson.com/

From October 2003 to May 2004, an undercover investigator working for PETA, took footage at a Pilgrim's Pride chicken slaughterhouse in Moorefield, West Virginia. Workers were filmed violently and repeatedly throwing live chickens into a wall, picking chickens up by their legs and swinging their heads into the floor, and kicking and jump up and down on live chickens. This was documented in the New York Times ("KFC Supplier Accused of Animal Cruelty," July 20, 2004, and the video can be seen on Peta's dedicated website.

The USDA oversees the treatment of animals in meat plants through meat inspectors. Arthur Hughes, Vice Chairman of the National Council of Food Inspection Locals, a union of 6,000 federal meat inspectors, states: “Drastic increases in production speeds, lack of support from supervisors in plants, new inspection policies which significantly reduce our enforcement authority, and little or no access to the areas of the plants where animals are killed, have significantly hampered our ability to ensure compliance with humane regulations.”²⁴

Even when problems are reported by inspectors, the government often ignores them. For example, no action was taken against a Texas beef company despite 22 citations in 1998 for violations that included chopping the hooves off live cattle.²⁰

On May 24, 2000, King5.com new service in Seattle, WA, broke a story about undercover footage taken at a nearby IBP slaughterhouse. According to their report, “The video shows fallen cows being trampled and dragged, others are tortured with electric prods. One cow has fallen and workers stick an electric prod on its head, then place the prod down its mouth. Still other cows are hung on chains, fully conscious, blinking and kicking. The worker who shot the tape said one cow was already at a station where legs are removed. ‘It would be horrible if someone were to cut off your leg without anesthesia.’”²⁵ (See also this report on "Kosher")

According to Steve Cockerham, a USDA inspector at Nebraska slaughterhouses, and former USDA veterinarian Lester Friedlander, some U.S. slaughterhouses routinely skin live cattle, immerse squealing pigs in scalding water, and abuse still-conscious animals in other ways to keep production lines moving quickly.

The men stated that the federal law requiring slaughterhouses to kill animals humanely has been increasingly ignored as meat plants grow bigger. Cockerham said that he often saw plant workers cut the feet, ears, and udders off cattle that were conscious on the production line after stun guns failed to work properly. "They were still blinking and moving. It's a sickening thing to see," he said.²⁶

In 2007 and 2008, a set of investigations (with video) came to light regarding a large, widely-praised slaughterhouse in California. The Des Moines Register pointed out: "The undercover videos were bad enough: packing-plant workers abusing sick or disabled cattle and dragging at least one of the cows to be slaughtered, a violation of federal food-safety standards. But consumer advocates say what's also disturbing is what happened within days of that video being shot at a California slaughterhouse. Independent inspectors from two auditing firms visited the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant and gave it glowing marks."

Investigator Gail Eisnitz writes about widespread violations of the Humane Slaughter Act in her 1997 book Slaughterhouse.²⁷ One of many such stories: “It was a plant where squealing hogs were left straddling the restrainer and dangling live by one leg when workers left the stick pit for their half-hour lunch breaks; where stunners were shocking hogs three and four times…where thousands of squealing hogs were immersed in the plant’s scalding tank alive.”

Brutal Harvest

It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was “second-legger,” a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour. The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.

“They blink. They make noises,” he said softly. “The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.”

Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller.

“They die,” said Moreno, “piece by piece.”

Under a 23-year-old federal law [which exempts the slaughter of birds], slaughtered cattle and hogs first must be “stunned”—rendered insensible to pain—with a blow to the head or an electric shock. But at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with cruel consequences for animals as well as workers. Enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughterhouses, ranging from the smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated establishments such as the sprawling IBP Inc. plant here where Moreno works.

“In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis,” said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant.

“I’ve seen it happen. And I’ve talked to other veterinarians. They feel it’s out of control.”

The Washington Post “Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest,” 4/10/01

Behind the Walls