Dark & Brutal Story Of USA Slaughterhouses

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The Dark & Brutal Story Of America's Slaughterhouses

CRIMES UNSEEN

CAN CONSUMERS RE-WRITE THE STORY OF AMERICA'S BIG SLAUGHTERHOUSES?

 

"Mohandas Gandhi said that a nation's moral progress can be judged by

the way it treats its animals. Animal behavior scientists have proven

unequivocally that animals are not machines but sentient beings that

experience feelings of pain, fear, anxiety, and despair. These

feelings matter to the animal and they should matter to us. If Gandhi

is right, we have an obligation to know what happens to animals when

they are killed to feed us, and to let that knowledge inform our actions."

 

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TO SATISFY THE PUBLIC'S ever-growing appetite for meat,

slaughterhouses in the United States killed ten billion animals last

year. That's 27,397,260 animals every day, 1,141,553 every hour,

19,026 every minute. Most Americans, largely disconnected from their

food supply, assume these animals met a painless end, if they think

about it at all. Even readers of books and articles about conditions

in factory farms may not be aware of what happens to animals at

slaughter. But every now and then that reality flashes briefly across

the public consciousness, as it did during last year's news stories

about mad cow disease, when television viewers glimpsed a sick cow

being dragged along the ground to a slaughterhouse. The media

attention was on food safety, not the welfare of the animals, but for

a brief moment the veil had been lifted on the brutality of the

process that turns living creatures into meat.

 

And why should anyone want to inquire further? Can't we just assume

that the same industry that maximizes profits by confinement so

extreme that chickens can't flap their wings and pigs are prevented

from turning around will also routinely mistreat animals at slaughter?

What sense is there in focusing on the final hours of animals whose

entire short lives are often a study in misery?

 

Mohandas Gandhi said that a nation's moral progress can be judged by

the way it treats its animals. Animal behavior scientists have proven

unequivocally that animals are not machines but sentient beings that

experience feelings of pain, fear, anxiety, and despair. These

feelings matter to the animal and they should matter to us. If Gandhi

is right, we have an obligation to know what happens to animals when

they are killed to feed us, and to let that knowledge inform our

actions. Yet from early childhood, Americans are taught to dissociate

picture-book scenes of cows and sheep grazing in a pasture from rows

of plastic-wrapped cuts of meat lining grocer's shelves. We eat "pork"

not pigs, "veal" not baby cows. Animals aren't killed in

slaughterhouses but "processed" in "packing plants."

 

Upton Sinclair's classic novel The Jungle, published in 1906, exposed

the brutal conditions for both animals and humans in Chicago slaughter

plants at the turn of the twentieth century. He likened the

slaughterhouse to a dungeon where horrible crimes were committed, "all

unseen and unheeded." The uproar over the disclosure of what people

were really eating prompted passage of the nation's first food-safety

law. There was to be no relief, however, for the workers who toiled

long hours under dangerous conditions for little pay, or for the

animals who were mercilessly bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers.

Sinclair was disappointed. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by

accident I hit it in the stomach," he lamented.

 

GAIL EISNITZ HAS STRUGGLED for the last fifteen years to compel the

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to enforce the Humane Methods of

Slaughter Act (HMSA), the forty-five-year-old federal law requiring

humane handling of animals killed in federally inspected

slaughterhouses. The law specifies the ways by which animals must be

made insensible to pain before slaughter. The most common method is

stunning. Electricity or gas is used to stun pigs, sheep, and goats

unconscious; horses and cattle are shot with a device known as a

captive bolt, which is designed to penetrate the skull and

incapacitate the brain.

 

Eisnitz was working as an investigator for the Humane Society of the

United States (HSUS) in 1989 when she received a tip from a USDA

slaughterhouse inspector about conditions in a Florida cattle plant.

The man said he had personal knowledge that the plant was skinning

cattle while they were still alive. Complaints to his superiors had

gone unanswered. After querying the USDA about the matter and

receiving no satisfaction, Eisnitz traveled to Florida, where she

frequented bars that swelled with slaughter workers at the end of each

shift. She listened to their stories about what was going on inside

the plant. What she learned propelled her on a long, lonely journey

through the American slaughterhouse, which she describes as "the

darkest place in the universe."

 

 

 

 

U.S. animal advocacy groups had campaigned to improve slaughter

practices in the 1950s, when HMSA was passed, and again in the 1970s,

when the law was amended to provide for enforcement. But no one was

actively working the issue when Eisnitz came on the scene. This was

due, at least in part, to the fact that access to slaughterhouses is

severely limited and animal advocates were unaware of much of what was

going on inside. It's not clear to what degree, if at all, the

treatment of animals at slaughter improved after the 1978 amendment.

In fact, in the late 1970s a revolution took place in the slaughter

industry, led by Iowa Beef Packers (IBP), which eventually became the

largest meat producer in the country. IBP busted meatpacking unions by

moving plants into rural areas and recruiting immigrant workers from

Mexico. Wages fell by as much as 50 percent, and meatpacking went from

one of the nation's highest-paid industrial jobs to one of its lowest.

At the same time, productivity -- as defined by the number of animals

slaughtered per hour -- doubled. The combination of an increase in

productivity and a decrease in worker qualifications had dire

consequences for animal welfare.

 

>From 1989 through the mid-1990s, Eisnitz, a determined woman in her

forties with a background in natural resources management,

crisscrossed the U.S. documenting slaughterhouse abuses. She learned

about cattle slaughter plants where cattle were hoisted upside down,

the lower part of their legs snipped off, their thighs and bellies cut

open, and their skin stripped from their legs up to their necks, all

while the animals were still conscious. She investigated pig slaughter

plants where inadequately stunned and fully alert animals were dragged

through tanks of scalding water, kicking and struggling until they

drowned. From coast to coast she recorded accounts of animals being

trampled, dragged, and shocked with electric prods placed in their

mouths. At plant after plant workers told her that this sort of

treatment was business as usual in the slaughter industry.

 

Where, she wondered, was the USDA, the agency charged with regulating

slaughter practices? In Washington, D.C., it seemed, or in regional

offices -- everywhere but on the slaughter lines where the abuses were

taking place. Eisnitz heard many excuses for government inaction --

too few government inspectors, too much industry control, too little

funding, too much pressure from meatpackers and Washington bureaucrats

to turn a blind eye. Whatever the reasons, humane handling of animals

was not a priority.

 

Eisnitz set out to make it one. She compiled hundreds of hours of

worker interviews and thousands of pages of government reports and

documents into a book, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed,

Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry,

published in 1997. Shortly after the book's release, Eisnitz organized

a Washington, D.C., news conference, during which one former and one

current USDA inspector told reporters they had frequently witnessed

plant workers dismembering still-conscious animals in order to keep

fast production lines moving. Also present were members of the federal

union representing some seven thousand U.S. slaughterhouse inspectors,

who denounced the USDA for not allowing them to enforce the law.

Still, outside the animal protection movement, the response to these

revelations of abuse was modest at best.

 

Eisnitz employed a new tactic. Now working for the Humane Farming

Association (HFA), she investigated conditions at a slaughterhouse

operated by meatpacking giant IBP (since acquired by Tyson Foods) in

Wallula, Washington. As before, Eisnitz obtained dozens of employee

affidavits attesting to the torturous conditions prevalent at the

plant. This time, however, she found a worker willing to videotape the

abuse and fitted him with a "shirt cam" that could be slipped past the

watchful eyes of managers. The video camera yielded hours of

disturbing footage that was promptly turned over to the state's

attorney general and a local television station. A reporter from the

Seattle station airing the IBP story was a friend of Washington Post

writer Joby Warrick, who picked up the story and wrote a lengthy

front-page article about the Washington State slaughterhouse titled

"They Die Piece by Piece." It was the second in a Post series on

problems with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

 

When the story appeared in April 2001, many Americans were outraged,

including Senator Robert C. Byrd (D., WV), then-chairman of the Senate

Appropriations Committee. Three months later, Byrd, a former hog

farmer himself, stood on the floor of the Senate and delivered one of

the very few speeches in congressional history on behalf of the

animals killed for food in the U.S.:

The law clearly requires that these poor creatures be stunned and

rendered insensitive to pain before this process begins. Federal law

is being ignored. Animal cruelty abounds. It is sickening. It is

infuriating. Barbaric treatment of helpless, defenseless creatures

must not be tolerated even if these animals are being raised for food

-- and even more so, more so.

 

 

 

That summer Byrd sponsored a one-time allocation of $1 million to hire

veterinary specialists to improve humane slaughter enforcement. This

was the first congressional action on the issue since the Humane

Methods of Slaughter Act was amended in 1978. The appropriation was

followed shortly by a congressional resolution calling on the

Secretary of Agriculture to enforce HMSA, and in 2003, Congress

directed the USDA to spend $5 million to hire additional humane

inspectors.

 

The Humane Farming Association, which focuses on investigations and

working with whistleblowers, sees increased funding for government

inspectors as possibly the best hope for making the slaughter of

farmed animals less inhumane. But the USDA's history of lax regulation

of agricultural practices doesn't support that hope. Even after the

agency was directed by Congress to improve its oversight, there were

few instances of enforcement of HMSA. In 2002, only 6 facilities out

of 900 inspected by the USDA received any formal reprimand based

solely on incidents of inhumane handling. In its 2003 report to

Congress, the USDA acknowledged that most of its enforcement actions

under the HMSA were related to facility shortcomings, such as slippery

flooring and gaps between pen bars, while "very few infractions were

for actual inhumane treatment of the animals."

 

Nothing better illustrates the failure of the USDA to provide for the

humane treatment of animals raised for food than its position on

downed, or nonambulatory, animals. Images of animals too sick to stand

being prodded, pushed, and pulled to slaughter has sealed many an

animal advocate's decision to eschew meat. Yet for more than a decade

the USDA ignored pleas from animal protection groups to halt the

marketing of downed animals on humane grounds. The agency continued to

do nothing even after research conducted in Europe showed that downed

animals presented the greatest risk of bovine spongiform

encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, entering the U.S. food

supply. Only after a BSE-infected dairy cow was reported in Washington

State last December did the agency ban the slaughter of these animals.

 

The USDA's handling of the downer issue reflects its close ties to the

livestock and slaughter industries. Secretary Ann Veneman and many of

her top deputies came to the agency straight from jobs lobbying on

behalf of agribusiness. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Fast Food

Nation's Eric Schlosser made a telling observation about the USDA:

"Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more

completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate."

 

PARTLY OUT OF SKEPTICISM about the government's willingness or ability

to address problems, some animal-advocacy groups have turned to the

food-service corporations in their campaign for more humane slaughter.

In the 1980s, civil rights activist and union organizer Henry Spira

began negotiations on animal welfare with McDonald's Corporation, one

of the largest purchasers of beef, pork, and chicken in the U.S.

Spira's previous victories on behalf of animals included the

organization of a coalition that eventually pressured the cosmetic

industry to phase out product testing on animals.

 

Little came of Spira's meetings with McDonald's until 1997, after the

huge fast-food corporation brought a libel case against British

environmental activists who were circulating a pamphlet critical of

the company. A London judge in the case found McDonald's to be

"culpably responsible for cruel practices n the rearing and slaughter

of some of the animals which are used to produce their food." Soon

after the verdict, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

initiated a high-profile protest campaign against the corporation and

McDonald's invited PETA into negotiations concerning better conditions

for animals raised and slaughtered by its suppliers. When these

negotiations broke down two years later, PETA launched a second

campaign that featured more than four hundred demonstrations at

McDonald's restaurants in more than twenty-three countries.

 

In September 2000, PETA called off its protests after McDonald's

agreed to require its suppliers to meet basic on-farm animal-welfare

standards, and to continue to conduct audits of cattle, pig, and

chicken slaughterhouses begun the year before. The food-service

industry has declined to credit the animal-protection movement for its

recent stand on animal welfare, claiming it merely wants to do the

right thing. But PETA's Bruce Friedrich notes that no company has

implemented welfare standards without being prodded. "PETA has had to

campaign against each target," he said. Friedrich is responsible for

hatching PETA's provocative, youth-oriented stunts, and was recently

named by Details magazine as the fifth most influential male under

thirty-eight -- placing him just behind Eminem and ahead of Leonardo

DiCaprio.

 

Whatever the shortcomings of third-party audits, they seem to have

accomplished what forty years of government regulation did not. The

meat industry apparently became serious about improving the treatment

of animals only after McDonald's removed or suspended individual

plants from its approved supplier list. For a slaughter plant, losing

a major client like McDonald's has far more impact than having

operations suspended for a few days, the strongest penalty invoked by

the USDA for a humane slaughter violation.

 

Photograph | Helen King/CORBIS

But the food-service industry's influence on slaughter operations

could also lead to the formation of a two-tier market, where the

relatively few corporate plants are routinely audited and held to a

higher standard of animal welfare than the more numerous smaller,

independent plants. Even after five years of audits, most of the nine

hundred pig and cattle slaughter plants in the U.S. have never been

subjected to a review. The effect of corporate audits may also lessen

over time, as both plant management and auditors become complacent

about enforcing standards. As Eisnitz has pointed out, the results of

corporate audits are not available to the public.

 

Most of those involved in working for humane slaughter share the view

of Bruce Friedrich, who contends that progress has been made, although

the extent of and the commitment to improvements are debatable. "No

one is naïve enough to believe that what goes on most of the time in

slaughter plants meets the standards," Friedrich said. "But we think

it's important to support their attempts to do better."

 

Still, while things may have gotten somewhat better for cattle and

pigs, "nothing has changed for chickens," according to Friedrich.

"Every moment of their lives is characterized by such unmitigated

suffering; they are subjected to a level of cruelty and abuse so far

beyond anything we can imagine."

 

The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act does not protect chickens and

other birds, which represent 90 percent of the animals slaughtered for

food each year in the U.S. Three attempts during the 1990s to amend

the Poultry Products Inspection Act to include a humane slaughter

provision failed. Chicken slaughterhouses currently shackle birds

while they are conscious and then drag their heads and upper bodies

through an electrified water trough called a stunner. Because of

concerns for carcass quality, the voltage is often intentionally set

too low to stun, and the birds are simply immobilized enough to keep

them from thrashing about as their necks are cut. Some birds are still

alive when they are plunged into scalding tanks for defeathering. PETA

is pressuring restaurants like Kentucky Fried Chicken to make

slaughterhouses increase the voltage so as to kill the birds outright,

or to use a less inhumane killing method, such as argon gas. In the

meantime, says Friedrich, chickens qualify as "the most abused animals

on the face of the planet."

 

 

 

 

APOLOGISTS FOR THE meat industry say they're merely giving people what

they want -- lots of meat at low prices. Adele Douglass of Humane Farm

Animal Care believes it is up to American consumers to demand

something more. Douglass has partnered with two of the country's

largest animal-protection groups -- the Humane Society of the United

States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Animals -- to develop the "Certified Humane" labeling program, which

establishes some of the country's strictest animal welfare standards

for auditing producers of meat, poultry, egg, and dairy products. The

American Humane Association operates a similar certification program

under the label "Free Farmed."

 

Certified Humane, which currently has about a dozen producers

participating, conducts its own audits of slaughterhouses. While its

auditors use the same standards as the food industry for evaluating

cattle and pig slaughter plants, their sole interest is animal

welfare. Chicken slaughter facilities applying for Certified Humane

endorsement must meet specific requirements that include the

appointment of at least one trained animal welfare officer responsible

for making frequent checks on how animals are being handled and taking

prompt action to address any problems. Certified Humane also

recommends the installation of closed-circuit television to make the

slaughter of chickens more transparent and allow officials not present

in the kill areas to monitor the process.

 

Beyond the certification programs offered by humane groups, consumers

have very little to go on if they want to purchase meat from animals

that have been killed humanely. Some labeling terms such as "natural"

have virtually no relevance to animal welfare; others like

"free-range" have some limited animal-care significance but provide no

assurance as to the manner of slaughter. The government's "organic"

program, which mandates that animals be allowed access to the

outdoors, offers no specific requirement regarding humane slaughter.

Even if the meat industry were able to consistently meet the highest

standards it has set for itself -- properly stunning between 95 and 99

percent of animals -- the remaining 1 to 5 percent represents millions

of animals every year that would still suffer, some of them

tremendously, when slaughtered. Knowing this, many animal advocates

have concluded that the only way to be assured one is not contributing

to the suffering of animals is by not eating them. Upton Sinclair

probably suspected as much when he first pried open the dungeon door.

 

 

DENA JONES is a consultant on farm animal protection who has worked

with Farm Sanctuary, the Humane Farming Association, and the Animal

Protection Institute. A former nurse, she now advocates for the

planet's nonhuman inhabitants

 

 

 

 

This article has been abridged for the web.

To read the full article, Click Here to receive a Free Trial copy

of the current issue of Orion magazine.