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.”