It All Ends Here

The "Transport" has pulled up to the slaughterhouse. The harrowing journey for these exhausted and frightened animals is almost over, but not quite.

Can you imagine what these poor, helpless creatures have had to endure? For those who survived the feedlot and also the transport alive, one final horror still awaits them. Can it get any worse than what they've already encountered up to this point?

Already traumatized, they continue resisting even as they breathe their last breath. They struggle to live right up to the bitter end!

But the welfare of these animals is irrelevant. Speed is of essence at the slaughterhouse. The more livestock slaughtered in the shortest amount of time, the more profits there are for the large corporations that control this industry.

That means there is no time on the production line to slow it down long enough to ensure that a swift death ensued, therefore, stunned, but still living animals have unimaginable things done to them.

Temple Grandin, consultant and designer of livestock handling facilities, Grandin Livestock Handling Systems Inc., said high production speeds can trigger problems when people and equipment are pushed beyond their capacity. From a typical kill rate of 50 cattle an hour in the early 1900s, production speeds rose dramatically in the 1980s. They now approach 400 per hour in the newest plants. "It's like the 'I Love Lucy' episode in the chocolate factory." she said. "You can speed up a job and speed up a job, and after awhile you get to a point where performance doesn't simply decline--it crashes."

Did I read that right? 50 kills per hour then and nearly 400 kills per hour now?

Currently, the industry uses three methods to stun animals, all of which cause tremendous pain and suffering. If captive bolt guns are improperly placed or if the gun is poorly maintained, the animals are not stunned, and will be in severe pain from a partial impact. Cardiac arrest stunning kills the animals by stopping the heart, and animals can feel painful heart attack symptoms. Insufficient cardiac electrical stunning also results in paralyzed animals that feel everything. Many small plants use head-only stunning because they lack restraint equipment. This type of stunning is reversible, and animals can regain consciousness if they are not bled immediately due to slow hoists or other handling problems.

Consider the pain and anguish they suffer at the hands of someone who is being paid to slaughter a "dead" animal.

But this is just one chilling aspect of the whole processing system!

Do you suppose the unthinkable suffering of these animals will have any effect on the quality of the meat that eventually finds its way into our freezers and onto our dinner tables?

Stress does affect the quality of the meat. The meat can become very pale, extremely acidic, and the taste is quite poor, or, on the other hand, the meat turns very dark, becomes drier than normal and has a tougher texture. Again the taste is extremely low quality. Added to that, it will also have a shorter shelf life because the pH-level of the meat is abnormally high. In other words, it spoils much more rapidly.

How about answering a simple multiple choice question?

Which one of the following three cuts of beef would you choose to serve at your next dinner party? A, B or C?

Fig. 1: A. Pale Soft and Exudative (PSE) meat
Fig. 1: B. Normal meat
Fig. 1: C. Dark Firm and Dry (DFD) meat

Cuts A and C are examples of the poor quality of meat resulting from the butchered animal's extreme pre-slaughter stress.

No question that B is the clear winner!

(Photos courtesty of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)

I'd just like to briefly touch on one more critical issue created by the fast-paced production lines of the whole meat processing operation.

Production lines run so fast, in some cases carrying 330 animals per hour, that inspectors cannot adequately inspect. Often feces gets splattered on the meat and the workers let bile, tumors, pus, and hair pass by on the line.

If I had wanted this to be much more graphic, it could have been. Eye-opening videos and horrific eye-witness accounts document the abuses and the abysmal, unsanitary conditions in the typical slaughterhouses across the U.S. If you have a weak stomach, or a soft-spot for animals, I wouldn't recommend watching them!

Rather than taking the initiative to deal with their sanitation issues, the corporations
instead would rather put the emphasis on "after-the-damage-is-done" solutions.

They push pasteurization, irridation and cooking as essential to the destruction of the germs and viruses that thrive under the foul slaughterhouse conditions.

More importantly, not only do these processes add other unhealthy elements to the meat, but they also destroy whatever nutritional value might still be left in the meat!

You know, my local food sources look better and better with each post!