Slaughter Houses
Mason, for years, pig production had been a big part of the slaughterhouses, but as time went on, the demand for pork went up. In 1975, pig production was at sixty-nine million a year; in 2004, pig production skyrocketed to one hundred three million pigs. The increase in pigs caused environmental problems because the average adult pig produces four times as much waste as an adult human. With the amount of pigs in each farm (for example, a farm in Nebraska has over forty-eight thousand pigs), and their waste leaking into nearby bodies of water, many fish and other animals were killed.
Pigs like to move around and explore their environment in the wild which they are unable to do that in captivity because of how cramped the pens are. On one farm in Nebraska, there are over forty-eight thousand pigs in only twenty-four barns (Mason and Singer 339). The video “Torture Inside Slaughterhouses Suffering Untold (The Ugliest Methods of Torture) Not for Weak Lyons 2 Hearts” shows that this environment causes pigs to develop open sores. When a pig is pregnant, it is kept in a gestational crate which is barely bigger than their body.
Following birth, the babies are immediately castrated and have their tails cut if without anesthesia. To make the pigs move, the workers kick, hit, and yell at them. Many of the pigs die from mutilation. If the pig is sick, injured, or has not been growing as fast as the other pigs, it is killed. Pigs tend to live for only five to six months. The most popular ways to kill the pigs include throwing the pigs into bins and painfully gassing them with carbon dioxide, slamming their head on the floor, and being hung on a forklift and suffocated (“Torture”).
With chickens used to produce eggs, directly after birth, the males and females are separated and the males are killed because they don’t lay eggs. To kill them, they are either thrown into giant grinding machines or thrown into trash bags and suffocated. With the females, to avoid pecking in overcrowded pens, the tips of their beaks are cut off which causes acute and chronic pain. When they are grown to a certain size, they are moved to even more overcrowded cages and lay eggs for their whole life. Workers abuse the hens by stepping on them, throwing them in garbage cans, and mangling their spines to break their neck.
After their egg production is too slow, they are plucked from their cages and put into carts where they are suffocated tit carbon dioxide (“Torture”). Poultry that is used for meat are stuffed in overcrowded sheds. Genetically, chicken and turkeys have grown so big, they become crippled, have chronic joint pain, and heart attacks. Poultry that are sick or injured are clubbed to death or have their neck broken. When finally in the slaughterhouse, the workers handle the poultry very violently leaving injuries and bruises.
The workers hang the poultry upside down by their feet in shackles and dragged through an electric vat Lyons 3 of water to paralyze them. To kill them, they are pulled against a blade that outs through their neck and if that doesn’t work, there is a worker that cuts their neck (“Torture”). On cow farms, cows are fed BEST, bovine commiseration, a genetically engineered growth hormone strictly used in the USA because Canada and England fear the side effects on the cows health. Along with BEST, cows are fed antibiotics in their meals.
Their meals, that should contain forage, actually contains corn and left over cow meat (Mason and Singer 349). Calves on dairy farms are dragged away from their mother and either made for veal or, if they’re strong enough, are kept for beef. Cows are kept confined n stalls on concrete flooring. Workers torture the cows by cutting off their tails and burning their skull to get their horns out without pain killers. When a cow becomes too sick or injured to stand, called downers, they are left alone too slowly and painfully die. Cows used for beef are castrated then branded with a hot iron.
Beef cows are contained in overcrowded feedlots which is covered with their waste. To kill a cow, the workers tend to cut their throat (“Torture”). Wild cows’ life expectancy is about twenty years, where a confined cows’ life expectancy is five to seven years (Mason and Singer 350). There is one person that noticed how inhumane these factories are, mainly for cattle, named Temple Grinding. From a small article “Temple Grinding Biography,” she was born on August 29, 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was diagnosed with Autism at the age of four and didn’t learn how to talk until the age of four.
To get her to talk, she went through extensive speech therapy with her mom. She also had a hypersensitivity to noise and other stimuli. According to the movie “Temple Grinding,” doctors said she should be institutionalized, but the mother refused. She went to a boarding school, here she still bullied. In this school, though, she befriended a teacher who saw how she learned in pictures and helped her realize her true potential. Lyons 4 One summer she went to her Aunts farm which is where she got her interest in cows. Throughout her life, she liked to build things.
She saw a machine she called a “hugging machine” and saw how much it helped to calm the cows. She built her own to calm her down saying she gets the same release a regular person gets from an actual hug from another person (“Temple”). For her masters degree in Animal Science, she went to Arizona State. As she would be in tours of different cattle farms and saw the cows being poked and prodded, she started to think about how she could make the farms more humane. She saw how the ways used at that time made the cows scared and how some of them were killed and wanted to fix it (“Temple”).
She first wanted to do her thesis on mooing, and she concluded how the cows use different moos at different times. She figured out that the cows are actually warning each other when something is going to happen. Her professors wouldn’t sign off on her thesis. She switched her thesis to control yester and cattle and why some work better than others and how they can tell the difference. To see what the cows see, Temple Went through the chute cows go through and was able to figure out what scared them and makes them uncomfortable. She soon wrote many articles on her findings (“Temple’).
A farmer read her articles and liked her ideas and asked her to design a dip for his farm. The dip she designed starts with a chute that is curved so that the cows feel like they’re going in circles, which calms them. They follow each other into a tunnel that makes them into one line and they go down a incorrect ramp that allows them to go into the dip at their own pace to keep tem relaxed. The day before it was going to be shown, a reporter witnessed it and called it brilliant. The day it showed though, the farmers changed it and had already killed three cows by the time Temple got there (“Temple”).
Lyons 5 She tried to enter the Abbot Slaughterhouse to talk to the head and show him her plans for a more humane factory. They would not let her in. At the store though, Temple met a woman who helped her trough the automatic doors that Temple was afraid to go through. That woman turned out to be the wife f the head of Abbot Slaughterhouse who was able to get Temple in to see her husband. He accepted Temple’s plans (“Tempe’). Temple went on to get her doctorate at the University of Illinois in Animal Science.
She then became a professor at Colorado State University and lectures worldwide on autism and animal handling. In North America now, half of the cattle is handled by the systems made by Temple Grinding (“Temple”). Today, a lot Of Temple’s beliefs are used. She believed that the correct stunning is extremely important, it leads to better meat. If the stunning is one incorrectly, bloodspots in meat and bone fractures can happen. She stated that an agitated steer can be very dangerous and shouldn’t be tampered with. Also, an escaped cattle should never be chased.
If you leave it alone, it will return. Lastly, stay away from the cattle’s blind spot, if it can’t see you, it might kick you. Temple has specific guidelines for livestock holding facilities. First, the animals should be moved in small groups. Also, the pens should never be overcrowded. They should be filled only halfway. Handlers should understand the basic concepts of flight zone and the point of balance on a owe. Ranches and facilities must have non-slip flooring. Lastly, workers should keep the animals calm, when the animals are calm, they move more easily.
Temple said that at all different types of facilities, there should be proper unloading ramps so the trucks can unload properly. Larger facilities should have two or more ramps. The ramps should have a level dock before the ramp goes down so the animals have a level surface to walk Lyons 6 on when they exit the truck. Also, the ramp should not exceed twenty degrees, this will allow the cows to go down the ramp easier. If the ramp is incorrect, stair Steps should be there to provide better traction for the animals.
