She is clearly alive and fully conscious calling for help while going through the slaughter process – According to a 10-year investigation based on interviews with slaughterhouse workers and USDA inspectors, many animals actually survive the slaughter process. Many — alive and conscious — are skinned, dismembered, gutted, scalded, and drowned in their own blood. After they are unloaded, cows are forced through a chute and shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun meant to stun them. But because the lines move so quickly (in 20 minutes they are ready for the cooler) and many workers are poorly trained, the technique often fails to render the animals insensible to pain. Ramon Moreno, a longtime slaughterhouse worker, told The Washington Post that he frequently has to cut the legs off completely conscious cows. “They blink. They make noises,” he says. “The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around. … They die piece by piece.” Another worker, Martin Fuentes, told the Post that many animals are still alive and conscious for as long as seven minutes after their throats have been cut. “The line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive.” Because the industry makes more money the more animals it kills, workers who stop to alert officials to abuses at their slaughterhouse risk losing their jobs. The meat industry thrives on a workforce made up largely of impoverished and exploited workers, many of them immigrants who can never complain about poor working conditions or cruelty to animals for fear of being deported. The best way to help put an end to this cruelty is to stop eating meat and animal byproducts.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 13:31:42 +0000
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