Vegan for Life - Jack Norris [89]
Ranching impacts the lives of many wild animals as well, especially those that prey on cattle. In 2008, 89,300 coyotes were killed by the USDA Animal Plant and Health Inspection Services’ Wildlife Services Department to protect cattle. Other animals, particularly bison from Yellowstone National Park, that threaten to pass disease to cattle are often killed by government employees or hunters.
TRANSPORT
As slaughterhouses have consolidated, animals are trucked long distances to slaughter. They are typically not fed for many hours at a time and are subject to extreme heat and cold, as well as highway accidents. At least one trucker admitted that he leaves cattle on a truck for up to sixty hours without water. Many animals die in transport or are too weak to walk when they arrive at the slaughterhouse.25
Animals that cannot walk are treated horribly. They may be repeatedly shocked with electricity or dragged by chains. Some are pushed by a backhoe and dumped in a dead pile, where they die a slow death.
SLAUGHTER
With the exception of kosher and halal slaughter, mammals are by law to be rendered unconscious before they are killed. This is often done with a shot from a captive bolt pistol. Studies show that the shooter misses the mark in a small but consistent percentage of cases. The American Meat Institute considers a 95-percent stun rate acceptable.26 According to a 2008 survey, 25 percent of beef slaughter plants obtained a level of stunning of 95 percent to 99 percent on the first attempt. But while the percentage of animals who are not rendered unconscious on the first try is small, the actual number isn’t. It may be true that “only” 1 to 5 percent of all cattle are insufficiently stunned, but that means that as many as 345,000 to 1.7 million cows per year must be stunned more than once—or they remain conscious during at least part of the slaughter process.27
Slaughterhouse consultant Temple Grandin said, “Unfortunately, effective stunning and reducing skull fracturing [to prevent the spread of mad cow disease via brain tissue entering the flesh] are two opposite goals. As the amount of damage to the skull is reduced, placement of the shot must become more and more precise to achieve instantaneous insensibility. Shooting on a slight angle may result in failure to induce instantaneous insensibility.”28
In “Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest,” a 2001 article from the Washington Post, the reality of insufficient stunning was made graphically clear:
It takes twenty-five minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For twenty years, his post was “second-legger,” a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour. The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.
“They blink. They make noises,” he said softly. “The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.”
Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller.
“They die,” said Moreno, “piece by piece.”29
Fast line speeds at the slaughterhouse are typically to blame for the fact that animals are often conscious as they move down the line. Workers are under too much pressure to keep the line moving and cannot take the time to worry about a still-conscious animal who has slipped by.
In testimony before the U.S. House