Vegan for Life - Jack Norris [90]
Poultry Slaughter
Birds (and rabbits) are not required to be stunned or unconscious when they are slaughtered. Although birds’ heads are usually run through water that has an electric current to paralyze them for easier handling, it’s unlikely that this renders them unconscious. When their throats are cut, if the blade misses—a frequent occurrence when the process is mechanized—birds may be awake and alert when they are dropped into the scalding tank to be boiled alive. The USDA refers to birds who are still alive when they reach the scalding tank as “cadavers” and condemns them from the food supply because they contain too much blood and are discolored. USDA statistics show that over 1 million chickens and over 30,000 turkeys were condemned as cadavers in 2008.31
From December 2004 through February 2005, a PETA undercover investigator worked on the slaughter line of a Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Heflin, Alabama. Using a hidden camera, he documented the treatment of the more than 100,000 chickens killed every day in the plant:
• Birds were frequently mutilated by throat-cutting machines that didn’t work properly; one bird had her skin entirely torn off her chest.
• Workers were instructed to rip the heads off birds who had missed the throat-cutting machines.
• Plant employees jokingly tossed around dying birds.
• Plant managers told the investigator that it was acceptable for forty animals per shift to be scalded alive in the feather-removal tank, and no one was reprimanded when far more than forty birds suffered this fate during any given shift.32
Shockingly, just two years later, a PETA investigation into Tyson slaughter plants in Georgia and Tennessee showed that the abuses at this company had worsened. The investigator documented birds hung from shackles by their necks rather than their feet, birds trapped under the door at the end of the conveyor belt, and workers urinating on the conveyer belt. Supervisors were sometimes directly involved in the abuses or failed to stop them. One stated on videotape that it was acceptable to rip the heads off live birds who had been improperly shackled by the head.33
At the House of Raeford Farms, one of the country’s largest poultry slaughterhouses, a 2007 MFA investigation found workers ripping heads off of live turkeys, birds being crushed to death beneath the wheels of trucks, and a worker punching shackled turkeys.34
Pig Slaughter
Prior to slaughter, pigs are typically stunned with electricity, producing a grand mal seizure. Proper stunning can take more than one try, which is very painful. In an article titled “Electric Stunning of Pigs and Sheep,” Temple Grandin writes:
To produce instantaneous, painless unconsciousness, sufficient amperage (current) must pass through the animal’s brain to induce an epileptic seizure. Insufficient amperage or a current path that fails to go through the brain will be painful for the animal. It will feel a large electric shock or heart attack symptoms, even though it may be paralyzed and unable to move.35
Kosher and Halal Slaughter
According to the rules that govern kosher and halal slaughter, animals must be conscious when their throat is cut. In kosher slaughter, the cow should have her throat cut only once, after which she should bleed to death. But at the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, a 2008 PETA investigation showed workers making multiple cuts. Only months before the investigation’s findings were released, the slaughterhouse had