THEY DIE PIECE BY PIECE" ,
the WASHINGTON POST (April 2001)



Received: May 15, 2007

 Reminder : about USA slaughterhouses. And the same goes on in European slaughterhouses.
http://www.hfa.org/hot_topic/wash_post.pdf
'The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to [cattle-killer in a slaughterhouse, Ramon] 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.”'


the video: 'After a blow to the head, an unconscious animal may kick or twitch by reflex. But a videotape, made secretly by IBP workers and reviewed by veterinarians for the Post, depicts cattle that clearly are alive and conscious after being stunned. Some cattle, dangling by a leg from the plant’s overhead chain, twist and arch their backs as though trying to right themselves. Close-ups show blinking reflexes, an unmistakable sign of a conscious brain, according to guidelines approved by the American Meat Institute. The video, parts of which were aired by Seattle television station KING last spring, shows injured cattle being trampled. In one graphic scene, workers give a steer electric shocks by jamming a battery-powered prod into its mouth. More than 20 workers signed affidavits alleging that the violations shown on tape are commonplace and that supervisors are aware of them. The sworn statements and videos were prepared with help from the Humane Farming Association.' 
  
  
'“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive,” IBP veteran Fuentes, the worker who was injured while working on live cattle, said in an affidavit. “The cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I’ve been in the side-puller where they’re still alive. All the hide is stripped out down the neck there.” [IBP, the nation’s top beef processor]. 
[...] 
One worker said IBP pressured him to sign a statement denying that he had seen live cattle on the line. “I knew that what I wrote wasn’t true,” said the worker, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing his job. “Cows still go alive every day. When cows go alive, it’s because they don’t give me time to kill them.” 
[...] 
For example, the government took no action against a Texas beef company that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that included chopping hooves off live cattle. 
[...] 
Industry groups acknowledge that sloppy killing has tangible consequences for consumers as well as company profits. Fear and pain cause animals to produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of dollars a year in discarded product, according to industry estimates.( Read 'Animal Stress Results in Meat Causing Disease'.)
'One Texas plant, Supreme Beef Packers in Ladonia, had 22 violations in six months. During one inspection, federal officials found nine live cattle dangling from an overhead chain. But managers at the plant, which announced last fall it was ceasing operations, resisted USDA warnings, saying its practices were no different than others in the industry. “Other plants are not subject to such extensive scrutiny of their stunning activities,” the plant complained in a 1997 letter to the USDA. Government inspectors halted production for a day at the Calhoun Packing Co. beef plant in Palestine, Tex., after inspectors saw cattle being improperly stunned. “They were still conscious and had good reflexes,” B.V. Swamy, a veterinarian and senior USDA official at the plant, wrote. The shift supervisor “allowed the cattle to be hung anyway.” 
[...] 
At an Excel Corp. beef plant in Fort Morgan, Colo., production was halted for a day in 1998 after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. In imposing the sanction, U.S. inspectors cited a string of violations in the previous two years, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. 
[...] 
Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water. 
[...] 
One finding was a high failure rate among beef plants that use stunning devices known as “captive-bolt” guns. Of the plants surveyed, only 36 percent [!] earned a rating of “acceptable” or better, meaning cattle were knocked unconscious with a single blow at least 95 percent of the time. 
[...] 
Industry trade groups acknowledge that improperly stunned animals contribute to worker injuries in an industry that already claims the nation’s highest rate of job-related injuries and illnesses ­ about 27 percent a year. At some plants, “dead” animals have inflicted so many broken limbs and teeth that workers wear chest pads and hockey masks. “The live cows cause a lot of injuries,” said Martin Fuentes, an IBP worker whose arm was kicked and shattered by a dying cow. “The line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive.” 
[...] 
The hitch, IBP workers say, is that some “stunned” cattle wake up. “If you put a knife into the cow, it’s going to make a noise: It says, ‘Moo!’” said Ramon Moreno, the former second-legger, who began working in the stockyard last year. “They move the head and the eyes and the leg like the cow wants to walk.”