Point Reyes Light: Chicken slaughter: Killing them softly (Write a Letter to the Editor)

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Point Reyes Light

September 21, 2006

 

Chicken slaughter: Killing them softly

Meghan Gilliss

 

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Only five percent of the animals slaughtered in the United States are

currently protected by humane slaughtering regulations, leaving the

eight billion birds slaughtered yearly unprotected. The USDA has decided

not to extend legal protections to poultry - a category that includes

chickens, turkeys, water fowl, game birds and even rabbits - even though

they constitute 95 percent of the animals consumed.

 

If a lawsuit filed by several animal rights organizations succeeds in

court, the nation's poultry may gain the humane slaughtering protections

arguably extended to them nearly 50 years ago.

 

As the litigation continues at the federal level, some local producers

are taking it upon themselves to see to the humane treatment of their

flocks.

 

The local treatment

 

Marin County isn't home to a large-scale poultry industry. About 10

farms raise poultry for eggs; only a few of those raise poultry for

meat.

 

For all the life on Marin's hillsides and in its bays, there's a

remarkable absence of death. For most of the area's livestock, the life

cycle begins here but ends elsewhere, as there's no processing plant -

not for poultry, bovine or sheep - in the county's limits. That means

local producers must either ship their animals to the nearest facilities

in Sonoma County, or slaughter them on their own land by their own

hands.

 

On this small scale, Marin's poultry producers have a relationship to

their animals that informs their methods. For many of them, humane

slaughter is not a legal issue as much as it is a moral or even

pragmatic one.

 

A rancher gets his hands dirty

 

Local Rancher David Evans, who owns Marin Sun Farms, began slaughtering

his own poultry this year, operating under an exemption that allows

on-site slaughtering for farms handling fewer than 2,000 birds a year.

 

Evans believes that caging animals and shipping them hundreds of miles

for slaughter adulterates the product and drives up costs. Also, he

cares about the wellbeing of the animals he raises.

 

Evans is not a religious man, but he still sees his role in terms of a

biblical balance: on the one hand, we've been granted dominion over this

world; on the other hand, it's a sacred world, and we must respect it.

We must be humbled by our ability to control-to domesticate and to

slaughter.

 

" I don't separate humans from animals, " he said. " We're all part of the

same environment. "

 

He does believe, though, that humans and domesticated animals are

engaged in a contract with one another. Domesticated animals have been

bred for eating, not for survival. He pointed to his six-week-old

Cornish Cross broilers, feeding off the ground of their covered pen on

the morning of their slaughter. " Look at their feet, " he said. " They can

hardly walk. "

 

He believes it is his duty to provide his chickens with the best food

and safest possible shelter during their lifetime, in exchange for their

flesh or eggs.

 

In designing a slaughtering station for his fledgling poultry operation,

Evans looked to a mentor of his, Virginia farmer Joel Salatin.

 

Evans decided to emulate Salatin's poultry set-up because of its small

scale, intensity of interaction, simplicity and humanity.

 

From bird to meat

 

The slaughtering set-up on Evans' farm is modest, consisting only of a

few odd-looking contraptions sitting in the sunshine: a row of metal

cones in which the live birds are situated, a vat of scalding water,

and, most strangely, a tub lined with blunt rubber protrusions - a

centrifugal plucker.

 

The chickens, about 200 of them every four weeks, are brought from their

pen in the field, where they have spent their short lives eating organic

grains and grazing the pasture. The distance between their pen and their

place of slaughter is measured in feet rather than miles. They wait

calmly in cages on the back of a white pickup.

 

Four at a time, they're placed upside down in metal cones, their heads

poking out of the narrow openings. One at a time, their heads disappear

into the fist of a worker. In a calm and steady motion he pulls their

heads back in such a way to expose their neck to his blade and makes a

slice, careful to cut only the jugular vein - interrupting the flow of

deoxygenated blood to the heart.

 

The birds remain calm as their blood collects in a tub beneath them. The

transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, which occurs within a

matter of seconds, is seamless. It is only once the birds have lost

consciousness that their bodies begin to spasm, as much as they can

within the cones, and their beautiful white feathers become splattered

with blood, lending drama to the otherwise calm scene.

 

" I don't know how to kill a bird more painlessly,' Evans said.

 

The birds remain in the cones for about another minute and a half to

ensure they're dead before they're strung by their feet and dipped in

the scalding water to loosen their feathers. Now simply bodies, they're

tossed into the centrifugal plucker which sends them spinning around as

their feathers are rapidly removed by contact with the rubber fingers.

The bare, shining pinkish bodies that emerge are then sent inside to be

eviscerated and cleaned.

 

Within 15 minutes, a live bird is converted into the ready to sell

product, which Evans takes to the farmer's market the next day, to be

claimed by the customers who pre-ordered them.

 

A more commercial venture

 

West Marin poultry consumers not buying from Evans are likely buying the

poultry processed at Petaluma Poultry: Rosie Organic Free Range Chicken,

Rocky Range Chicken and Rocky Jr. Natural Chicken.

 

Between five and ten percent of the birds processed at Petaluma Poultry

come from Marin County farms. The plant, one of several nationwide owned

by Coleman Natural Foods, is USDA inspected and third party audited. It

boasts that all of its chickens are certified free-range, and that its

slaughtering methods meet or exceed all federal guidelines.

 

The company's director of communications, Robyn Nick, said Petaluma

Poultry is happy to be at the forefront of humane practices, adding that

if the USDA adjusts its standards for humane slaughtering due to the

lawsuit, the company will comply. " If they change, we'll change, " she

said.

 

The company currently uses the industry's standard method of slaughter.

" As the birds enter the plant, the environment is dark and quiet, and

designed to minimize trauma. The chickens are then electrically rendered

insensible prior to the slaughter practice, " said Nick.

 

A request for a tour of the plant was denied, on the grounds that its

slaughtering practices are proprietary information.

 

Raising hens, feeding a family

 

Jesse Kuhn, who has been running Marin Roots Farm just outside of

Petaluma for a couple of years now, has the craziest henhouse in the

area. Rowdy Araucanas, Sexlinks and Rhode Island Reds cluck and scramble

in the hutch and in the open fields outside as others peacefully roost.

So far, these birds have been used solely for their eggs.

 

Kuhn has never slaughtered an animal, but this fall he plans on feeding

his family on the meat of some of these birds, as their egg production

levels begin to fall off.

 

Kuhn hasn't yet selected a method, but he'll choose carefully. " I would

want to do it the right way so that my conscience would feel okay while

I'm eating, " Kuhn said. " Otherwise, I'd probably end up with

nightmares. "

 

The litigation

 

The Humane Society of the United States and East Bay Animal Advocates

are suing the USDA for what they deem to be its failure to fully enforce

humane slaughtering laws. A 1958 law protects all livestock from

inhumane slaughter. In September of 2005, the USDA declared it would not

extend this protection to poultry.

 

In doing so, the Humane Society believes the USDA is ignoring Congress'

mandate that all livestock be humanely slaughtered, by interpreting it

to exclude the vast majority of all animals slaughtered in the U.S.

 

In the absence of regulatory protection, the Humane Society believes

poultry are suffering under industry practices such as shackling and

hanging conscious birds upside down, electrically stunning birds into

paralysis but failing to induce actual unconsciousness, cutting

conscious birds with mechanical blades (which are less precise than a

human-held blade), and drowning conscious birds in tanks of scalding

water.

 

An alternative method supported by the Humane Society is

controlled-atmosphere killing, in which animals are placed in a

contained environment into which carbon dioxide is released, causing the

animals to pass out before being sent down the line.

 

The history

 

In the early 20th century, enforcement would have proven highly

difficult, as it would have required a regulatory presence in far-flung

households across the countryside. But as nations were industrialized

and urbanized, the structure of food markets changed, giving birth to

the modern slaughterhouse. Because of advancements in transportation and

mechanized processes, animals could be shipped to these centralized

slaughterhouses and be killed, prepared and packaged at a rate of

thousands per day. With the development of these centralized units of

production came not only the ability, but some argued the

responsibility, of government to regulate.

 

In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a novel so horrid in its reflection of

Chicago's meatpacking industry that an alarmed citizenry clamored for

legislative action. " The Jungle " depicted inhumane and unsanitary

conditions suffered by both livestock and human workers, spurring

President Theodore Roosevelt to order an inspection of an industry that

was at the time completely unregulated. Impressed by the need for

humanitarian interdictions, Congress that year passed both the Pure Food

and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

 

The regulations set forth by these acts were primarily concerned with

protecting the health of the consumer. Until the late 1950s, the United

States had no laws addressing the humane treatment of animals during

their slaughter - although the precedent had been set by Switzerland as

early as 1874 and followed by several European powers throughout the

early 1900s.

 

In 1958, Congress passed the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. According

to a passage in the pending lawsuit, " public demand for a humane

slaughter bill was so strong that when asked if he would sign such a

bill, President Dwight Eisenhower stated, 'if I went by mail, I'd think

no one was interested in anything but humane slaughter.' "

 

Concern for worker safety also validated new laws. Distressed cows and

flailing turkeys made for a physically dangerous work environment, and

listening to the continual death-torn moans of pained beasts could take

a psychological toll on workers.

 

The HMSA allowed for two methods of slaughter: either ritualistic, such

as Kosher or Halal methods; or a method by which the animal is rendered

insensible to pain before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast or cut.

 

Rabbits, too

 

In a barn on Devil's Gulch Ranch in Nicasio, 700 rabbits with

luxuriantly soft white fur lounge in roomy cages.

 

Photographs from large-scale rabbit operations reveal tiered cages

packed full of sorry-looking creatures with goopy eyes. The scene here

is different, though. It almost resembles a child's fantasy: a seemingly

endless stockade of healthy, adorable bunnies.

 

These rabbits aren't pets, though.

 

Mark and Myriam Pasternak raise rabbits for a couple of reasons. " I like

their temperament, " explained Myriam. Also, she said, " I like the meat. "

 

" Whether you're eating plants or you're eating meat, you're eating

something that was once living and I think it should be treated with

respect, " Myriam said.

 

The rabbits are sent to Jones's Rabbit Farm in Sonoma County where

they're gassed, although the Pasternaks' would prefer they undergo

cervical dislocation - a quick and effective snapping of the neck.

 

" Our philosophy is that it should be as quick and as painless as

possible. It's never foolproof and we know that - I mean, look at what

happens with capital punishment, " Myriam said.