From: Rosemary Waigh <rwaigh@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Painless slaughter?
Reply-To: rwaigh@zooid.UUCP (Rosemary Waigh)
Organization: The Zoo of Ids
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 16:19:46 GMT


An excerpt from an interview with Harriet Schleifer, "Inside a Canadian
Slaughterhouse", _Toronto_Vegetarian_Handbook_, Toronto Vegetarian
Association.  Ms Schleifer is director of Urban Animal Advocates in Montreal.

[...]
"Looking back at the experience, what really strikes me, more than anything
else is the irony of the way everyone concentrates on the specific death of
the animal - when they are finally killed and skinned.  People focus on that
as if it were the main issue.  What I realize now is that it isn't the issue
at all.  When I saw the animals being killed, I almost felt relieved.  It was
weird.  And then I realized what it was, it was all the horror they had gone
through for 42-78 hours prior to slaughter.  It was over.  They weren't going
to suffer anymore.
"To begin with, animals suffer horribly on factory farms.  Then they are
crammed into trucks which are, as I have since discovered by personally trying
to stand on the floor of them, unbelievably slippery.  During transit it may
be extremely hot or extremely cold.  Usually there is no food or water, or
minimal amounts.  Then they arrive at the slaughterhouse.  They are dropped
into a totally alien environment that they have never seen or smelled.  And
they are crammed in there with hundreds of other confused and terrified
animals.
[...]
"After my experience, I no longer believe that humane slaughter is possible.
You cannot, no matter what you do, take the terror out of this process.  It is
not because it is painful.  It is not because it isn't fast enough.  It is not
any of these things, it's the two or three days leading up to slaughter, it is
the fact that the animal is terrified for hours on end.  There is no way,
given the way it is done, that you can prevent that.  That is why it isn't
humane.  
[TVH asks]
"I understand you got onto the 'killings floor and witnessed chickens being
slaughtered.  Were there any humane standards in place for this process?
[Ms Schleifer replies]
"No, none of it was.  First of all they were grabbing the birds and slamming
them on to what looked like inverted paper clips.  We could hear legs
breaking.  They don't do it gently, the thing is moving at the usual assembly
line speed.  Bang, bang, bang, one after another they go on.  The operator
doesn't have control over the speed of the belt.  He would no doubt lose his
job if there were too many empty hooks, so they grab them and slam them on as
fast as they can
"Then the birds are supposed to go through an automatic electric stunning
current.  After that, there is a guy sitting there with a knife, who slits the
throats.  Watching the upside-down birds move along the assembly line, I
noticed that they were flapping their wings, and looking right at you.  So I
asked the worker if the stunner was working.  He told me quite openly, 'I
turned the switch off.  It's pretty hot in here and, if the the birds flap it
keeps me cooler.'  'Excuse me?' I asked, 'you can turn off the stunning
switch?' 'Yeah, sure,' he replied, 'when they come to inspect I just turn it
on.  You can see the inspector coming through the big doors.  It's much cooler
in here when the birds flap.'
"At this point I really realized the extent to which the people who work in
these places put themselves in a psychological space where they are not
dealing with living beings consciously.  You couldn't keep working there if
you had to face the fact constantly that you are dealing with sentient beings.
[TVH asks]
"Did the workers seem deadened in some way or violent?
[Ms Schleifer replies]
"No, just shut off, unaware, frighteningly normal.  In a way it is the same
process that every single person who eats meat is doing.  What they have on
the plat e is a piece of dead animal, but no one thinks of it like that.  If
you did, could you seriously sit down and eat it, day after day, without being
upset, and actually enjoy it?"
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals