Gabriele Meurer is a German vet who worked as an official veterinary surgeon at Woolley Brothers abattoir in Sheffield. She left the country feeling completely disillusioned and now works in abattoirs in Sweden. She spoke out about her experiences for the first time in a letter to Viva!: The OTM cattle (over thirty months) were treated particularly badly. All OTMs were slaughtered and their carcasses were incinerated because of BSE. These animals had no value at all. Often there were too many cows on a lorry. Some could hardly walk. The ramps were much too steep and slippery and occasionally a cow fell. Sometimes she could not get up again and was forced to do so by being beaten and kicked - if I did not prevent this which I did. No animal likes to enter the lairage. So they were pushed, beaten, kicked. Electric goads were used practically all the time. There was no bedding in the pens and nothing to eat for the animals who stayed overnight. Sometimes there was no drinking water for the cattle who ended up standing in the gangway between the pens because too many animals were taken in. The men were pushing, beating, kicking and using electric goads all the time. Almost no animal would walk into the stunning box by its own free will. Most animals get diarrhoea because they are so frightened, so they and the whole place are covered with shit. Many animals are bleeding and have open wounds and bruises. The slaughtermen bang the gates which fall down from above on the cattles back all the time. The place was terribly noisy. A big problem is the lack of time. A certain number of animals have to be slaughtered each day and so there is no time for animal welfare. Time is money. The problem is worst with the pigs. The slaughtermen are in such a hurry that they often dont put the electric tongs in the correct position on the pigs heads. The pigs get only half or insufficiently stunned, wake up while they bleed and are obviously still alive and conscious when they plunge into the boiling water. Sheep are stunned just as badly. To stun cattle correctly is not an easy job either. It asks a lot of skill on behalf of the slaughterman. Not many animals stand still. They are all upset, some frightened to death and some move violently. The animals are never given time to calm down. Some of them wont calm down no matter what you do. Sometimes the slaughterman misses, wounding the animal terribly instead of stunning it. It may happen that the second shot cannot be done immediately and the animal is suffering terribly for quite some time. There should be two guns available that are in order. Unfortunately this is not so all the time. What I hated most of all was the slaughter of pregnant animals. There is no animal welfare for unborn ones at all. I have seen these creatures kick inside their dying mothers. They probably drown to death. When the maternal blood stops flowing they - as I believe - start breathing. Do we have to slaughter pregnant cows? Cant we wait until their calves are born? This is unbelievably cruel. Very young calves are slaughtered in Britain. There is hardly anything to eat on these animals. I completely condemn the slaughter of young calves and even older ones. Cant we give them some time to live? Are we that greedy? Stunning chickens and turkeys electrically is also deficient. Many birds are not stunned at all when their throat is cut. Pigs and many birds die on the lorry when its hot outside. The way animals are slaughtered in Britain, in Sweden and probably anywhere else is disgusting. During May 2000, Viva! spoke to the slaughtermen about their work. Their comments reveal the grave concrns Viva have about UK slaughter houses...
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 17:07:08 +0000
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