Slaughter houses: Is this true?

Question

I want to be a vegetarian like a teacher co-worker of mine...so I decided to spend last night watching some slaughter house youtube videos to encourage myself. My husband told me that most of those cows are dead when their throats are pulled out eventhough they are flailing around and mooing horribly.

Answer 1

When they slit their throats they cut the main arteries to the brain also which is almost instant death. The flailing around is just the bodies reaction to the trauma that was inflicted. They feel little.

Answer 2

The shotgun slug John h refered to is actually what's called a "captive bolt".  It's a pneumatic gun that instaniously extends a metal "bolt" or shaft which impales the animal's brain causing instant death.  Even if the heart is still beating and the animal isn't technically dear, there's enough brain damage that the animal is unconscious and unaware of what's going on.  

One exception is "kosher" killing.  Kosher beef products are the result of the animal having it's throat cut while the animal is still alive.  A specially trained Jewish person uses a razor sharp knife and delivers a super fast cut all the right places.  I've been told by plant workers that the animal flails very little if any, usually less than the captive bolt animals.

On certain religious holidays, Muslims cut the throat of the goat kid or lamb.  They hold the animal's head between their knees while facing Mecca, say a prayer and cut the throat.  Not exactly my prefered way to dispatch an animal, but who am I to infringe upon their religious beliefs?

As far as animals flailing about, most of that is involuntary reflexes.  Ask anyone who's butchered a chicken.  You chop it's head off and it then runs around for a minute.  Where do you think the saying "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off" came from?  In big poultry processing plants, chickens are strung up by their feet, they go into a chamber with strong blue lights which for some reason calms them and their head is then dipped into electrically charged water where they are instantly electrocuted.  

Regardless of what you believe, slaughterhouses want to kill the animal as quickly and painlessly as possible.  Also, before killing, they want to keep the animal as calm and unafraid as possible.  Frightened, anxious animals that are running around produce what's called "dark cutters".  The meat is full of blood, very dark in color and when unwrapped before cooking, large amounts of blood ooze from the meat.  They take a very large price dock for dark cutters, hence why they want to keep the animals as calm as possible.  Neither do they want them flailing about, even after death because choice cuts of meat can be bruised and ruined.  In addition, dead of alive, flailing animals can injure plant workers and tear up equipment.  

Go ahead and stop eating meat if that's what you want, but don't necessarily believe all the stuff you see on videos.  Sure, occasionally there are animals that are not killed on the first blow of the captive bolt because the animal moved at the last moment or it was an old bull with a very thick skull.  Often times, old bulls are shot in the brain with a gun or other sure method to prevent the animal from suffering, equipment from being destroyed and people injured.

Occasionally a surgeon leaves a tool or sponge in his patient, but that doesn't mean all of them do.  That's the same way with slaughterhouses, accidents do happen but not with every animal.

Answer 3

A slaughter house is going to look gruesome no matter how they kill the animals.  I visited several slaughter houses as a project for a university.  They had two ways of killing, in one house they put the steers in a narrow shoot with a large man standing over them with a large sledge hammer.  One hard fast strike to the head and they were dead or at least unconscious.  They were immediately strung up with hooks thru their hocks and their throats were cut and they bled out in a matter of seconds. Another uses a type of hand held gun with a shotgun slug it it. They poke them in the head with that and they drop dead instantly, then pick them up and bleed them out as before. It is not easy to watch, but is as humane as possible.  A lot of the stuff you are seeing on youtube are just horror stories.  Another thing you may be watching, the Muslim religion requires an animal to be bled out while they are alive or they can't eat it. They do hang the animals up alive and then cut their throats.  That is very hard to look at and is not a humane way to kill an animal by our standards.  So, I'm telling you this, if you want to become a vegetarian, go and and be one, but don't stop eating meat because of the propaganda you are seeing from people showing you this stuff just to win you over.  Make up your own mind and follow your own thoughts on the subject, and not let groups like PETA talk you into it.

Edit: I watched your film, that really is bad.  No, those animals were not dead. One even got up and walked off.  I can't tell you where that was done, but it is not the way a regular slaughter house kills animals.  I'm guessing that is a Muslim slaughter house. I've watched them kill while in Africa, nothing on a large scale like that, but it's the way they kill. That was pretty hard to watch, Almost makes me stop eating meat.

Answer 4

eat your veggies i'll take steak

Answer 5

I went for a walk around one.

They use a stun gun to smash the skull of the beast into the brain. This doesnot necessarily kill the beast.

The beast is dropped

It is then hung upside down and the throat is slit.

The animal is bled this way as the heart beats out all the blood. Sometimes and electrical charge is passed from the nose to the a**s to artifically stimulate the heart to beat out most of the blood.

This process helps tenderise the meat, improve the taste and extend the shelf life.

After this the animal is dead.

Are you now a vegetarian?

Answer 6

A slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (French, ultimately from the verb abattre which means "to strike down"), is a facility where farm animals are killed and processed into meat products. The animals most commonly slaughtered for food are cows (for beef and veal), sheep (for lamb and mutton), pigs (for pork), fowl (for poultry), and horses (for horsemeat).

The design, process, and location of slaughterhouses respond to a variety of concerns. Slaughtering animals on a large scale poses significant logistical problems and public health concerns. Most religions stipulate certain conditions for the slaughter of animals. Public aversion to meat packing, in many cultures, influences the location and practices of slaughterhouses. More recently, animal rights groups have levelled ethical charges at slaughterhouses.

Slaughterhouse process



A steer restrained for stunning just prior to slaughter.The slaughterhouse process differs by species and region and may be controlled by civil law as well as religious laws such as Kosher and Halal laws. A typical procedure follows:

Cows are received by truck or rail from a ranch, farm, or feedlot.

Cows are herded into holding pens.

Cows receive a preslaughter inspection.

Cows are usually knocked unconscious by applying an electric shock of 300 volts and 2 amps to the back of the head, effectively stunning the animal.[citation needed] If unsuccessful, secondary methods include the use of a captive bolt pistol to the front of the cows's head. Livestock are also rendered unconscious by pneumatic or cartridge-fired captive bolt stunning and CO2/inert gas stunning. (This step is prohibited under strict application of Halal and Kashrut codes.)

Animals are hung upside down by one of their hind legs on the processing line.

The main arteries and veins are severed with a knife, mainly in the neck, and the cow's blood drains, causing death through exsanguination.

The hide/skin/plumage is removed by down pullers, side pullers and fisting off the pelt (sheep and goats)

The internal organs are removed and inspected for internal parasites and signs of disease. The guts, referred to as viscera, are separated for inspection from the heart and lungs, referred to as the "pluck." Livers are separated for inspection, tongues are dropped or removed from the head, and the head is sent down the line on the head hooks or head racks for inspection.

The carcass is inspected by a government inspector for safety. (This inspection is performed by the Food Safety Inspection Service in the US, and CFIA in Canada.)

Carcasses are subjected to intervention to reduce levels of bacteria. Common interventions are steam, hot water, and organic acids. Carcasses are chilled to prevent the growth of microorganisms and to reduce meat deterioration while the meat awaits distribution.

The chilled carcass is broken down into subprimals and primals for boxed meat unless customer specifies for swinging sides of meat. Beef and horse carcasses are always split in half and then quartered, Pork is split into sides only and Goat/Veal/Mutton and Lamb is left whole

The remaining carcass may be further processed to extract any residual traces of meat, usually termed mechanically recovered meat, which may be used for human or animal consumption.

Waste materials such as lard or tallow, are sent to a rendering plant.

The waste water, consisting of blood and fecal matter, generated by the slaughtering process is sent to a waste water treatment plant.

The meat is transported to distribution centers that then distribute to retail markets.

Slaughterhouse design



Curved cattle corrals designed by Temple Grandin are intended to reduce stress in animals being led to slaughter.In the latter half of the 20th century, the layout and design of most US slaughterhouses has been significantly influenced by the work of Dr. Temple Grandin[1]. Grandin is also well known for being autistic and it was a fascination with patterns and flow that first led her to redesign the layout of cattle holding pens.

Grandin's primary objective was to reduce the stress and suffering of animals being led to slaughter. In particular she applied an intuitive understanding of animal psychology to design pens and corrals which funnel a herd of animals arriving at a slaughterhouse into a single file ready for slaughter. Her corrals employ long sweeping curves so that each animal is prevented from seeing what lies ahead and just concentrates on the hind quarters of the animal in front of it.

Grandin now claims to have designed over 54% of the slaughterhouses in the United States as well as many other slaughterhouses around the world.

International variations

The standards and regulations governing slaughterhouses vary considerably around the world. In many countries the slaughter of animals is virtually unregulated by law; often, however, it is strongly regulated by custom and tradition. In the non-Western world, including the Arab world, the Indian sub-continent, etc., both forms of meat are available: one which is produced hygienically in modern mechanized slaughterhouses, and the other of the animals slaughtered in local butcher-shops.

In some communities animal slaughter may be controlled by religious laws, most notably halal for Muslims and kashrut for Jewish communities. These both require that the animals being slaughtered should be conscious at the point of death, and as such animals cannot be stunned prior to killing. This can cause conflicts with individual national regulations when a slaughterhouse adhering to the rules of kosher preparation is located in some western countries.

In many societies, traditional cultural and religious aversion to slaughter led to prejudice against the people involved. In Japan, where the ban on slaughter of livestock for food was lifted only in the late 19th century, the newly found slaughter industry drew workers primarily from villages of former eta (outcasts), who traditionally worked in occupations relating to death (such as executioners and undertakers). In some parts of western Japan, prejudice faced by current and former residents of such areas (burakumin "hamlet people") is still a sensitive issue. Because of this, even the Japanese word for "slaughter" (屠殺 tosatsu) is deemed politically incorrect by some pressure groups as its inclusion of the kanji (Chinese symbol) for "kill" (殺) supposedly portrays those who practice it in a negative manner.

Some countries have laws that exclude specific animal species or grades of animal from being slaughtered for human consumption. The former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, suggested in 2004 introducing legislation banning the slaughter of cows throughout India, where the cow is a sacred animal to Hindus, for whom the slaughter of one is unthinkable and offensive (note that already in all the federal states of India except two, cow-slaughter is not banned by law). The slaughter of cows and the importation of beef into the nation of Nepal are strictly forbidden under Nepalese law. Several U.S. states have banned the slaughter and consumption of dogs. Horse meat is a taboo food in the USA and Canada, where sale and consumption of horsemeat is illegal in Illinois and California,[2] although horses are slaughtered for meat export to Europe and Japan for human consumption and for the USA domestic pet food market.

History



In the slaughterhouse, Lovis Corinth, 1893.Slaughterhouses are needed primarily to serve the large-scale demand for meat in urban areas where there is no livestock. Thus the slaughterhouse has developed as an adjunct of the city. Early maps of London show numerous stockyards in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air. A term for such open-air slaughterhouse is a "shambles." There are streets named "The Shambles" in some English towns (e.g. Worcester, York) which got their name from having been the site on which butchers killed and prepared animals for consumption.

Open-air slaughter inside cities produced very substantial concerns about public health, morals, and aesthetics. This antipathy towards slaughterhouses is mentioned at least as early as the 16th century, in Thomas More's Utopia. In the 19th and 20th century, slaughterhouses were increasingly sited away from the public view, and took pains to portray themselves as clean, innocuous businesses. In this they have been responding not only to increasing regulation, but also to public sentiment. Most Westerners find the subject of animal slaughter to be very unpleasant and prefer not to know the details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. As such, in the West, the connection between packaged meat products in the supermarket and the live animals from which they are derived is obscured.

In recent years, animal rights groups and some vegetarians and vegans have accused slaughterhouses of secrecy, and have tried to highlight the practices inside a slaughterhouse. Examples include the PETA produced film, Meet Your Meat. This tactic has been in part to expose and correct allegedly inhumane treatment of animals, or unhygienic standards. It has also been used to encourage people to inform themselves about meat production, which the activists hope will lead to more people choosing a meat-free or reduced-meat diet.

Law



USDA inspection of pig.Most countries have laws in regard to the treatment of animals at slaughterhouses. In the United States, there is the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, a law requiring that all swine, sheep, cattle, and horses be stunned unconscious with just one application of a stunning device by a trained person before being shackled and hoisted up on the line (chickens are exempt from this Act). The USDA is opposed to the Humane Slaughter Act, and violations of the Act carry no penalties. Since stopping the line to re-knock conscious animals causes "down time" and results in fewer profits, the Humane Slaughter Act is usually bypassed and ignored by USDA supervisors (Eiznitz 1997). There is some debate over the enforcement of this act. This act, like those in many countries, exempts slaughter in accordance to religious law, such as kosher shechita and dhabiĥa halal. Most strict interpretations of kashrut require that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.

The novel The Jungle detailed unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industry during the 1800s, leading to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. A much larger body of regulation deals with the public health and worker safety regulation and inspection.

Major slaughterhouses

The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, North Carolina. It is capable of butchering over 32,000 pigs a day. The Dutch Stork Food Systems is the world largest manufacturer of chicken slaughtering installations with an annual turnover of € 149m.

The largest slaughterhouse in India and also in Asia is located at Deonar, a suburb of Mumbai.

Answer 7

Some of the videos on YouTube are from a kosher slaughter house which is much different from a normal industrial slaughter house.

Answer 8

yes they are dead and the flailing around and noise is from nerves, we used a handheld gun that shoots a retractible bolt into their brains before we cut their throats and cutting their throats is only to bleed them