In what way is the killing of an animal in a slaughter house cruel?

Question

This is mainly for vegetarians & vegans out there. I'm curious as to what you think are the acts of cruelty in a slaughter house. After all the actual killing is instant, so is it the herding into the pens, transportation or what?

This is a genuine, want to understand question...you never know, you may convert a meat eater!

Answer 1

you should research factory farms. i can't explain it all.  you say "the herding into the pens, transportation, or what" ... those processes are more than you make them sound.  for chickens they slice off their beaks so they don't bite each other and most times get their tongues too... they are cramped into wire cages and stacked on top of each other so their feet are bleeding, they are trying to bite each other, they're highly stressed adn on top of that they are pooping on each other... the death is also not always instant.... there is a lot that goes on and it's very very cruel... i'm not so much against killing animals for meat as i am for torturing them in factory farms before they kill them.  a mcdonalds burger isn't worth supporting torture.  

and yes we raise those animals, so if we stop eating them, we'd stop raising them and they wouldn't be overpopulating the earth! what's with those questions?  if people are so worried about population focus on humans and their overpopulation and overconsumption!

Answer 2

What do you mean 'in what way is it cruel'? Even if the killing was instant and painless, it's still wrong because the animals could be living and free - but no they are going to be dead for someones taste buds :(

It's everything. Transportation, herding into pens, being skinned, cut into pieces... I don't think anyone should experience that.

Edit : We don't eat zebras, monkeys, and giraffes and there aren't too many of them. Right?

Answer 3

From what I understand, standard factory farm practices do not ensure that the killing of the animals is instant.

Cows, for example, are herded one by one into metal pens just outside the "kill floor". It is here that they can hear, smell and sense what is going on just a few feet away. Someone with an air gun shoots a nail into their brain, supposedly to render them unconscious; but due to the speed of the process and the fact that not all cows are the same, it is totally possible to miss this point in the brain. If this happens, the cows feel everything that is to come on top of being in extreme pain because they have a nail in their brain.

So, let's say that the man with gun misses his mark. Without another thought, the cow is drug (usually against his will) to a point where he will be strung up with a chain by one of his hind legs. (You know how heavy cows are....this also must be painful). He is sent down a line where someone waits to slit his throat. If the cow is still alive and is still trying to breathe, he will eventually drown in his own blood. There is slaughterhouse footage of cows still mooing and still wriggling after having been shot with the nail and after having their throat sliced. To me, that is not what I would call instant.

There are other cases where pigs are not properly knocked unconscious and they are dipped in a scalding hot chemical bath that is supposed to remove its hair. They squeal and snort because they can feel it.

In all honesty, the majority of the meat Americans eat comes from factory farms. If the animals were treated well, cared for with compassion and not overcrowded or abused, the price of meat would be astronomical. It takes a lot time and manpower to care for animals. In order to turn maximum profit, meet demands and keep meat cheap, the easiest way to do all three is to care solely about the almighty dollar. If that means pumping the animals with hormones, allowing them to live in unsanitary conditions, killing them inhumanely, feeding them antibiotics, manipulating their reproductive processes, castrating/branding/debeaking without anesthesia and so on, then that's what happens.

It's really not a matter of what I think are acts of cruelty....they are facts. It has been documented and caught on tape. The "Meet Your Meat" videos on PETA.org are straight-forward examples of what happens. They are not isolated incidences. Nor are they manufactured for shock value. They are more common that what people care to admit.

As far as what would happen to the animals that are farmed for human pleasure, I guess they would just live peaceful lives. I don't think they'd overrun the planet...if there wasn't a demand for them as food, they would no longer be bred at extremely unnatural rates like they are now. Nature can regulate itself.

Answer 4

Refer to the sources that others mentioned, indeed very useful one.

Anyway, ever your parents brought to any zoo or slaughterhouse before? For most parents & modern animal agriculture, the less the consumer knows about what’s happening before the meat hits the plate, the better.

If true, is this an ethical situation? Should we be reluctant to let people know what really goes on, because we’re not really proud of it and concerned that it might turn them to veganism?

In my opinion, if most urban meat eaters were to visit an industrial broiler house, to see how the birds are raised, and could see the birds being ‘harvested’ and then being ‘processed’ in a poultry processing plant, they would not be impressed and some, perhaps many of them would swear off

eating chicken and perhaps all meat.

Livestock will Overpopulate?

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Your question is merely like “what would happen to weapon butchers if world uphold peace overnight?” There will be some industrial and cultural shift over the time.

When you look into the history of WW1 & WW2, most countries in the world (including Europe & Far East) reached acute shortage of livestock & meat industries were almost exhausted. What happened? During the WWII, for many consumers and farmers worldwide especially Europe, these events were eye-openers: They had never known livestock never propagate themselves and not ideal for all times. The human safety was jeopardizes while world reached acute shortage of meat, and many eastern countries survived on wild tapiocas. Many European farmers "peg their bones and chucked the plants" at their backyard. They keep on wondering "Why didn't those livestock propagate by themselves?".

Answer 5

I always love how people add after death experiences, as suffering for the animals, at this point they are dead they cant feel it, they cant watch it, they no longer have any of the senses they once had. Same I would hate to have my head cut off (without being electrocuted first, because after that there dead), but after that I couldn't careless.

Answer 6

Are you freakin serious???!!!!?!?!?!? first off the animal is basically chained down constantly fed they are not allowed to move in fear of the muscles becoming to tough at all and then  they are taken to slaughter house to get there heads chopped off.......you tell me whats not cruel about that and by the way the animals were recreating before humans decided to create farms strickly for raising animals to eat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 7

When you see someone post "check PETA" and then follow it up with "see how KFC tortures chickens before killing them" you know there are a lot of ignorant people out there who do not know what they are talking about but are simply, almost robotically repeating what they see and repeat it as if it is actually true. Lies repeated often enough become truths to the lazy and weak minded.

For the nth time, KFC does not have a poultry farm therefore do not kill chickens much less torture them. You can make other issues with KFC but them personally torturing and killing animals is not one of them

anyway, to your question

Unfortunately, the conditions in slaughterhouses are less than ideal. While rules and regulations do exist, they are often ignored or not  implimented because of the the factory style assembly line processing instead of a ritualized humane system the laws try or hope  to achieve. Withoput going into the gory details, animals for the most part are just treated badly. the thought process seems to be "what's the point of being kind when they  are all going to die anyway? And afterall, they are just dumb animals??"

I am not a vegetarian nor vegan. But  I have seen the difference between humane and inhumane treatment of animals. We have our own farm and associate with other farmers and ranchers both on a social and business level. Some practice humane or as humane as possible livestock "management" up to and including slaughter time. Some are less inclined to do so for their own reasons.

Besides, some people think the very killing of an animal for food is inhumane in itself.

Answer 8

Countless acts of cruelty are committed in slaughterhouses each day. If you're genuinely interested, do some cursory research, and you'll see what I mean.

The "instant killing" in slaughterhouses alone is cruel by most definitions of cruelty. One may try to justify it, but it's cruelty just the same. If I were to instantly kill you, I'm sure most would define the act as "cruel."

Answer 9

It may be the chainsaw to the throat, beating in the head with a blunt object, in a lot of cases, animals are skinned and gutted while alive.

Answer 10

In reality, the actual killing is not instant. I can not for the life of me think of the name of the movie I watched that shows the procedure, but it's inhumane. Check PETA's website for more details, especially about how KFC tortures their chickens before killing them.  Also, my thinking is (and this is strictly my opinion), if the world were run by bears, I wouldn't want one of them cutting my head off, draining my blood out, choppin me up and then eating me.

Answer 11

The V&Vs would prefer that there was no slaughter.  Most think that the very act of dying is too cruel.

Answer 12

It isn't cruel.  Thick, thick pagesbooks of laws exist to ensure it isn't so.  The real problem is that it isn't pretty, and that's what most people can't handle.

Let's have some thumbs down!!

Answer 13

Many of the animals can not reproduce on their own and would therefore go extinct. The animals we use have changed and have be mutated so much they are little like their ancestors.

Answer 14

I'm not a vegan.  I'm a small farmer, on a permaculture farm.  I raise meat goats, and meat rabbits.  All of my livestock is slaughtered right here on my farm, by my customers (yes, I'm in the U.S.A.).

Most of the cruelty that factory farmed animals experience isn't so much at the slaughter house itself, but at the places they are raised.

All you have to do is look at some of the number and it's easy to figure out that mistakes happen at slaughterhouses and not every animal is going to have a quick, clean death.

The big slaughterhouses (and they are almost all big now) slaughter 2 MILLION chickens a week.  Two million.....how can every single bird have a quick, clean death, when you are talking about those kinds of numbers?

The large slaughter houses that butcher cattle can send two thousand of them through an hour!  Just a couple of years ago, it was 400 cattle per hour, and I tought that was outrageous.  Of course not every animal has a quick, clean kill.  Of course these slaughter houses end up with a "live one on the hook," every so often.  The stun bolt does not hit the cow just right, to kill it....and it's back legs are hooked, through the flesh, and it's hoisted up...then it wakes up from the knock out blow.  However by then, it's throat should be being slit, so death, though not kind, not quick, and not pretty, is going to be coming fast.

Have you ever been to a factory poultry house, where the meat chickens are raised?  The smell, the overcrowding, the beaks that have been cut off, so they don't peck each other to death, the sick chickens that are trampled into the bedding by the other chickens.  What kind of life is that for a chicken?

How about the egg laying hens.  Six hens will spend their entire lives in a cage that has the floor space of a sheet of paper.  They will live their entire lives in a barn, never seeing actual sunshine, nor their feet touching the ground.  The smell is so horrific, the humans must wear resporators to enter the chicken houses.

Beef cattle will live their lives from the time they are 6 months old or so at a stockyard.  They will stand on tons and tons of manure for the rest of their lives.  Their tails will become so coated with manure, the end of their tail will weigh, and look like a bowling ball of manure.  They will be unable to swat flies with that bowling ball of manure on their tails.  They will be fed an un-natural corn diet, which will give them huge gastric upset, until the day they are slaughtered.  Would you like to live with heartburn so bad it was destroying your liver for a year or so?

Pigs can fall in and drown in the manure lagoons they are sometimes housed over.  They cut the tails off the pigs, because they force ween them too early, and they still want to nurse.  If they nurse on the tail of a fellow piglet for comfort, they will cause a sore on that piglet.  The pigs will then begin to canibalize the weaker piglet with the sore on its rump.

Rabbits are housed in barns, where they too never see the light of day, or have fresh air.  Sunshine is not a big deal for rabbits (unlike the chickens), since sunshine can kill rabbits in 15 minutes.  However the amonia smell from the rabbit urine in factory farmed rabbits is simply staggering.  It's so bad, it causes sores on the rabbits feet, and face, just from the fumes rising up.  Huge air conditioners keep rabbit and poultry barns cool, so the VASTLY overcrowded animals can live.  If the power goes out, and back-up generators do not kick in, entire barns of thousands of rabbits or chickens will be dead in just 10 minutes.  

If you live someplace where there are elevators, imagine this, next time you get on one.  So many people get into the elevator that you are jammed, wall to wall, you cannot move your arms.  Some of the people must stand on the shoulders and heads of the other people, until a person down below fights to the top, and they sink down to the elevator floor.   People must go to the bathroom in the elevator...sometimes that is on top of another person, sometimes it is on the floor.  Don't worry....the floor is a giant mesh screen, so most (but not all) of the waste falls through.  Of course the oder from down below as the waste collects comes up the elevator shaft.  

Your feet are bare, so you quickly get sores on your feet from standing on the bare wire, from the fumes from everyones waste, and from the bits of waste still left on the wire.  You can sit down, to take the pressure off your feet, but since you will be taking up more than your fair share of space more of your fellow captives will have to sit, or stand on you while you rest your feet.  Some of the people in the elevator will begin to die.  That's good, because it give you more room to move around.  However it's also bad, because their rotting body is with you, until you and your fellow captives can trample them through the mesh of the wire floor...that takes a while.  Are you getting an idea of what the life of a laying hen is like?  

At the end of this misserable life, she and her fellows that are still alive are put into cages, and trasported to a slaughter house.  Can you imagine what a ride in cages, strapped to a semi truck must be like for these hens, which have never seen daylight?

At the end of the ride, they are pulled from cages, and their legs put into hooks which hold them upside down.  Their head is then dragged through a trough of electrified water, so they can be butchered.

For some of these animals, the actual killing is the least inhumane thing they will ever experience.

For people that do not know livestock, herding into pens CAN be quiet a tramatic experience.  All animals have social/herd/flock pecking orders.  As strange animals are forced together, they fear one another, and sometimes firght for dominance.  They feel no herd unity, no comfort from their fellow animals, because they do not know one another.

Pigs that are trasported in the winter often sufer frost bite, if they are one of the ones on the near the edges of the truck.  Factory raised pigs are no better off than naked humans.  

If you are asking this question to bait the Vegans into being angry, shame on you.

If you want to continue to be a meat eater, then serriously concider purchasing all of your meat, eggs and dairy, from small farmers who DO raise their livestock as humanely and naturally as possible.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 15

1. The animals die (That should be enough, but I'll keep going)

2. The animals are slaughtered painfully.

3. The animals are fed growth hormones and are given spaces way too small to live in.

Answer 16

Oye, the killing of the animals is NOT instant.

The transportation of the animals is cruel.  I have seen many of the big double decker semis filled with cows.  They are all dirty and they make moanfull sounds that you can tell is coming from a cow but is not a moo, it is more like a moan and sounds almost human.  The trucks wreck and topple over all the time, injuring, killing and scaring the animals.  I cannot imagine how scary it would be crammed in a strange contraption and moved very fast along the freeway.

The way they are raised is beyond cruel, watch Earthlings or Meet your Meat and you will see.  The majority of the animals are not kept on small farms anymore, they are in factory farms, keyword is factory.

If everyone would stop eating animals then the population of them would increase by the billions.  Humans are the ones who keep creating more of these animals.  There are like 6 billion people in the world and 50 + billion land animals are killed to feed them.  Dosen't that not seem right?

Answer 17

Check out this page:-

http://www.petatv.com/

Generally the killing is instant, but what about the occasions when its not? Does the majority overrule the minority in this case?

Why do you feel so privileged that you think that other animals deserve to die, just so you can have something tasty?

And as an aside to the animal rights issue, have you ever considered the effects that intensive animal farming has on our environment, the effluent being washed into our waterways, land clearing, how much of our ancient forests have been clearing for farming meat?

Answer 18

obviously you have never visited a slaughter house.  how would you feel if your entire life was spent eating & sleeping in your own f***s, only to be loaded up into a metal box hauled to a slaughter house where as you approch you can smell death in the air, then you get cramed into a holding pen, in full view of your pen mates being clubed over the head to death knowing all along you will meet this fate as well.  do not fool yourself, those animals in holding pens CAN see, & hear what is happening.

there are alot of resources online to check out - even graphic video on slaughter house practices - see for yourself then decide.  :)