Author: Sandra Kyle

‘Lumps of flesh covered every surface’ – A slaughterhouse worker’s story

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on ‘Lumps of flesh covered every surface’ – A slaughterhouse worker’s story

In this moving article, End Animal Slaughter contributor Mike Shaw recalls his job as a slaughterhouse worker, his ‘epiphany’ as he was about to kill a young boar, and his view on slaughterhouses now.

 

I didn’t do well at school, in fact I didn’t do well at childhood.  Bullied, and brought up in social services, I didn’t attend school at all for most of my last year. I still managed to pass one O level, albeit in art, but it wasn’t going to feed me.    I stumbled into retail work as I stumbled into most things in the those days, and should have been a baker but it wasn’t for me. I did though become a butcher in a local supermarket and after a while I could call myself a ‘time-served butcher’ due to experience, something you don’t hear much of nowadays. I had a knack for it.  I could throw a carcass through a bandsaw better and faster than most, and was a dab hand at trusting up a silverside or topside joint.  Then I had to move.  For a while I was homeless while still managing to keep the job down, but it was becoming harder and harder to do.  After a while it proved impossible so I became jobless to go along with my homelessness. I moved a little further up north and managed to get a room with relatives, and they told me about the plant nearby that was looking for workers.   I went on the off chance, and met the manager.   He took me into his office and we had a chat.  He said he was impressed with my credentials, and offered to show me around.

‘There were people in white everywhere you looked, and lumps of bloody flesh covered just about every surface, hung from every available space.  The dead animals outweighed the humans by some 20 to 1’.

The place was vast.  I was used to a butchery department in a store, and wasn’t prepared for this. The noise is the first thing to hit you followed by the smell, something you will never understand until you have never experienced it. There were people in white everywhere you looked, and lumps of bloody flesh covered just about every surface, hung from every available space.  The dead animals outweighed the humans by some 20 to 1.  I got the job.   I started in the cutting bay next to the slaughter bank.  Fresh meat was sent through on hooks to be fashioned into whatever cut of meat was required. I was fast, and before you knew it I was a supervisor. You got used to the noise, machinery, chatter, and sometimes the smell too, but one noise you never got used to was the animals you heard going through the slaughter bank.

 

But it was just a job.

 

When they asked me to move through to the slaughter floor, saying they would get me my licence to slaughter, I thought it sounded very James Bond so took the job.  Little did I know.

‘First day in the killing bays they give you a lamb, a knife and a set of electrodes, the idea being if you can kill it you can kill anything. It was less than six months old. They leave you to it, no matter how long it takes. It took me three hours, three hours of trying to not look at it, trying to not make eye contact, three hours before I could dispatch it’.

First day in the killing bays they gave you a lamb, a knife and a set of electrodes, the idea being if you can kill it you can kill anything. It was less than six months old. They leave you to it, no matter how long it takes. It took me three hours, three hours of trying to not look at it, trying to not make eye contact, three hours before I could dispatch it.

It had been several years and I had seen most things come through for slaughter; sheep, goats, bulls, horses, but the one thing I hated seeing coming through more than anything was the pigs.  They knew, they understood what was going on, they screamed, they fought you tooth and nail to stay out, they screamed and they screamed loud.

‘It had been several years and I had seen most things come through for slaughter; sheep, goats, bulls, horses, but the one thing I hated seeing coming through more than anything was the pigs.  They knew, they understood what was going on, they screamed, they fought you tooth and nail to stay out, they screamed and they screamed loud’.

I dreaded the pigs because I knew they knew.

Once an incident occurred that changed everything.  I had had a rough weekend, split up with my girlfriend at the time, and got so drunk it should have killed me.   It was a Monday morning and I was not in the best state of mind, made worse when I saw the paddocks full of pigs delivered in over the weekend.  Not just a couple, but hundreds.  It was going to be a busy day – and the pigs knew.

I put my whites on, grabbed my knife roll and went into the bank.   Outside the door I could hear them coming, high pitched screams and workers trying to muster them through.   They just didn’t want to go, but in they came, covered in old and new scars from journeys and loading and unloading, covered in each other’s shit from not being able to move around in the backs of lorries.  Suddenly there he was standing in front of me,  a young boar, teeth clipped so as to not damage the other ‘goods’, castrated, and screaming at me.

I didn’t realise how long I just stood there, I didn’t realise I had been crying for so long, I didn’t realise they were calling my name.

I just stood there looking at him and he sat looking back at me, no longer screaming. In my mind the same mantra was repeating again and again, “What the fuck are you doing?”

‘Standing knife in one hand electrodes in the other I cried, crying for what I had become, crying for what I was doing, crying for the man now buried deep inside the monster wielding a knife in front of its victim’.

Standing knife in one hand electrodes in the other I cried, crying for what I had become, crying for what I was doing, crying for the man now buried deep inside the monster wielding a knife in front of its victim.

I heard them shout my name.   I turned and who knows how I must have looked, tears on my cheeks and the same look on my face as the pigs, as they try not to go through the doors.  They looked at me wondering what was going on, and I didn’t know either.  Was I having a breakdown? 

No, it wasn’t a breakdown.  It was an epiphany.

I looked back at the young boar,  told him I was sorry, sorry for all I had done.  I dropped the knife and electrodes, took off my whites and dropped them to the floor. I turned and walked out, never to return.

It was just a job, but it wasn’t my job any more.

I moved away from the meat industry, lived my life as normal as others. I learnt to disassociate the same way as the rest of society does. I even carried on eating meat because it comes in styrofoam trays wrapped in clingfilm.

It’s now many years later and I’m now a vegan, an ethical vegan.    I’m here to tell you there is nothing humane within the walls of a slaughterhouse, it’s a place were all humanity is lost.  The existence of slaughterhouses is a terrible blight on our societies, and they need to be closed down forever.

Photo of Mike with his companions Piglet the English Bull Terrier, and Grumble the British Bulldog

 

Peter Singer To Donate $1,000,000 prize to charities

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter’s congratulations go to Professor  Peter Singer who is the sixth recipient  of the Berggruen Institute’s annual $1 million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture.

 

Established by French-born billionaire philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen in 2016, the award goes each year to thinkers whose ideas have profoundly shaped our world.

 

The Berggruen Prize jury chose Singer because he has been extremely influential in shaping the animal rights and effective altruism movements, and has for decades worked for the eradication of global poverty.

 

I have some of Professor Singer’s books, and admire him as a rigorous and fearless ethical philosopher.  Some of his views have been controversial, but as he wrote when he launched the Journal of Controversial Ideas in 2020, suppressing a view that may offend some people ‘would drastically narrow the freedom of expression on a wide range of ethical, political and religious questions.’  Freedom of thought, rightly, receives absolute protection under international human rights law.  Rather than suppressing views, it is informed, rational and compassionate public debate that is called for.  

 

I still remember as a young woman reading Animal Liberation, the book Singer wrote in the 1970s to argue that the suffering we inflicted on our fellow animals in food production and research was morally indefensible.   Even today I recall how my hand shook as I turned the pages, wondering what other horrors of our inhumanity to our fellow beings would be revealed.  This book helped chart the course of my life, and I will always be grateful to Professor Singer for that.   I also know of many other activists who read that book, and acknowledge the seminal it played in their life’s work.

 

 Nearly fifty years later, Singer remains a powerful force for change.  He will donate half the prize to The Life You Can Save, a charity he founded to help the world’s poorest people, and the remainder will go to animal charities, especially those working to free animals from factory farms. You can help decide how some of the money he is donating will be allocated by going to his charity’s website.

 

As Nicolas Berggruen says, Singer’s ideas ‘have inspired conscientious individual action, better organised and more effective philanthropy and entire social movements, with the lives of millions improved as a result.’

 

Thankyou Professor Singer for everything you have done and will continue to do.  This prize is very well deserved.

 

Sandra Kyle, Founder, End Animal Slaughter

Animal Exploitation Through The Ages

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

While our current civilisation is the most enlightened we continue to wreak extreme suffering and death on sentient non-human animals.  Future generations will regard this as the greatest moral failure of our time.

 

Yet while modern exploitation of animals for food, for research, for their skin and fur, for entertainment, and as ‘beasts of burden’ causes incalculable suffering to countless trillions of beings, we have always profited from other animals at their expense.

 

In this article from Crate Free USA we see how, from antiquity to the 21st century, we have caused our fellow beings incalculable suffering.  Because of the sheer numbers involved, animal abuse is now on a scale never before seen. 

One of the most effective ways we can help to redress these grievous wrongs is by stopping animal agriculture by adopting a vegan diet.

 

Read the article here:

‘The Adult Must Steer The Car’ – Reflections on the Ancient and Modern Brain

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on ‘The Adult Must Steer The Car’ – Reflections on the Ancient and Modern Brain

In this blog End Animal Slaughter contributor Paul Stevenson writes that the most recently evolved part of our brain is the seat of reason, compassion and kindness.  It should be developed if we are to create an enlightened world, and find inner contentment ourselves.

 

The adult within us dreams of Utopia but we can only manifest Utopia by being fully adult human beings, and not being controlled by our primeval infant ancestors. To put it slightly differently, the adult must steer the car, not the child if we wish to arrive at our destination.

We think we are one person, but are actually several people inhabiting the same body. That is because our brain is made of many different parts which have evolved over immense spans of time. We can think of the annual growth rings in a tree. The earliest rings formed when the tree was a tiny sapling are still there at the heart of the noble forest giant, hundreds if not thousands of years later. The more ancient parts of our brain control basic activities such as breathing, moving, resting, feeding, emotions, and memory, while at the other extreme is the most recently-evolved part of our brain that provides us with the ability to carry out rational thought processes and reflect on what we do.

 

‘We can think of the annual growth rings in a tree. The earliest rings formed when the tree was a tiny sapling are still there at the heart of the noble forest giant, hundreds if not thousands of years later’.

 

In reality we see with our mind.  That is because everything we do in life is controlled by the mind, and our senses are only its servants.   When we hear anyone’s screams, irrelevant of species, we know that they are in trouble. We feel for them and we would not be human if we didn’t. This is why we have words such as inhuman, cruel, inhumane, humane, kindly, caring, compassionate, charitable, unfeeling, hard-hearted, warm-hearted, sympathetic, empathetic, callous, magnanimous, and countless others.

Many people do not think about what they are eating, but increasing numbers are doing just that, hence the vegan revolution. The vegan revolution has important implications for our state of mind. A consequence of behaving kindly is that we are kind to ourselves at the same time, When we help others, when we show them kindness we feel far better inside ourselves. Our heart glows with warmth and we walk tall with pride. However, when we treat others unkindly and callously we shrink inside and become small, mean, hard-hearted. We cannot feel proud of ourselves and we cannot have peace in our heart.  At the end of the day ultimate happiness is all about having peace in our heart.

Such is the folly of the unkind life. The thief, the brutal person, the cheat, ends up doing the same to themselves as they do to others. This is basically all about the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When we kind to others we are kindest of all to ourselves (notwithstanding cases where would-be rescuers end up dying themselves). And when we are unkind to others we are unkindest of all to ourselves.

 

‘Such is the folly of the unkind life. The thief, the brutal person, the cheat, ends up doing the same to themselves as they do to others. This is basically all about the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.

 

In either case we carry the memory of our behaviour to the grave, whether for good or ill. We may forget or brush aside good deeds we have done, but bad deeds are like an immovable thorn in our foot, a pillow of thistles that accompanies us for the remainder of our days. We can try and make amends for our wrongdoing, but we can never undo what has been done, and it can torment us savagely. To sum up, my belief is that we must reconcile our behaviour to conform to what we know to be right. The human dream is the product of the human brain, the product of the advanced brain that is uniquely human. We yearn for the land of our dreams, but we prevent ourselves from reaching there by our primitive behaviour, behaviour of another time, an ancient time. Thus all our behaviour must be compatible with what we know to be right if we are ever to discover happiness and fulfilment in our lives.

Recently-evolved parts of the mind allow us to examine more rudimentary behaviours and preferences in the light of more evidence. Perhaps this process is akin to that of gaining expert advice when buying a house or car, or seeking specialist medical advice for example. In these cases our poorly-informed minds are not up to the job of making expert decisions, so we consult someone who does have the experience and knowledge. The question is then “what shall we do for the best?” We are now all armed with that inner specialist – the advanced human brain. We have built-in a mind that can make expert decisions of the kind required. We are fools indeed not to heed its advice. If we wish to enjoy the blessings that the human mind craves we must see, hear and behave with our fully human mind, not the mind of our primeval ancestors.  Thus the vegan life is not at all about being better than others, but by treating others decently, and  being best of all to ourselves. 

 

‘Thus the vegan life is not at all about being better than others, but by treating others decently, and  being best of all to ourselves’. 

Voices For Animals Over The Years: Jonathan Balcombe

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 4 Comments on Voices For Animals Over The Years: Jonathan Balcombe

Vegan Ethologist and Author Jonathan Balcombe’s books have changed the way we look at other creatures such as fishes and flies.  In this article Jonathan answers End Animal Slaughter‘s questions about his love for all animals, and his groundbreaking work on their outer and inner lives.

 

 

Q1 Tell us about your early years.  I see you lived in New Zealand.  What did you do here?

 

My family moved to Auckland, for the sheer adventure of it, when I was three and we sailed to Canada five years later. We travelled by ocean liner (six weeks), and I remember petting a kangaroo under a tree during a stop in Australia en route. New Zealand, with its mild climate and proximity to the ocean, was a lovely place to spend my early formative years.

 

Q2 Have you always loved animals? Was this what led you to become a biologist?

 

From my earliest memory I’ve loved all animals. To me it is entirely natural and normal to perceive other animals as other beings, equally involved in their precious lives as I am in mine. It follows that to do another animal harm is completely alien and repugnant to me, and I remember feeling far more estranged from any child who squashed bugs under their shoes than from the poor creature they were killing. My decision much later to study biology was a direct outgrowth of my strong feelings for animals.

 

‘I remember feeling far more estranged from any child who squashed bugs under their shoes than from the poor creature they were killing.’

Q3 What is your position on the sentience of animals?   Is all animal life sentient?

 

There is a pattern in scientific discovery that the more we come to know about an animal, the more complex and sophisticated we find it to be. It is hard to imagine that not long ago we thought we were the only tool-users, the only species with emotions, the only one to communicate with symbols, the only one with a personality and self-awareness, and so on. And so while I’m open to the possibility that some “simple” animals—sponges, or jellyfishes, perhaps?—might lack sentience (the capacity to feel), the idea seems increasingly doubtful. Regardless, I believe it is good policy to follow a version of the “precautionary principal,” which in this case assumes that all animals are sentient unless science compellingly indicates otherwise.

Image of Jellyfish: National Geographic

 

‘It is good policy to follow a version of the “precautionary principal,” which in this case assumes that all animals are sentient unless science compellingly indicates otherwise’.

 

Q4 Can you share with our readers some stories that show animal sentience and emotions?

 

In my last two books I have synthesized discoveries for two often demeaned and maligned groups of animals: fishes and insects. Examples include: referential signaling (fishes), observational learning (both fishes and insects), mental mapping (fishes), face recognition (both), mirror self-recognition (both), inferential reasoning (both), problem solving (both), and tool-use (both). Fishes are clearly emotional, and while there is less evidence for insects (maybe because we haven’t been looking for it), insects share with us biochemical pathways such as a dopamine system implicated in pleasurable feelings, and they respond in ways that suggest fear, arousal, and anger, for instance.

Blackspot tuskfish on The Great Barrier Reef.  The fish repeatedly bash the shellfish against rocks to get to the edibles inside.  

Q5 Is there any inherent distinction between wild animals, and animals that have been our companions for thousands of years, for example dogs?

 

There is no inherent distinction. Animals we have domesticated retain the same relevant anatomy and physiology as their wild ancestors. Behaviorally, however, there have been changes depending on the species and the context in which we keep them. Dogs have been shown to communicate with humans in ways that their wolf ancestors cannot. This makes evolutionary sense because dogs, unlike wolves, benefit from being acutely attuned to their human providers. For example, experiments at the Clever Dog Lab, in Vienna, show that, like us, dogs glance first (for just a few milliseconds) at the side of our faces that conveys more emotions. This unconscious behavior allows dogs (and us) to get a quick read of whether the person is, say, hostile or friendly. But since dogs’ faces don’t convey emotions in this asymmetrical manner, they don’t glance first at one side of another dog’s face. Nor do we.

 

         Image of Waimaraner puppy: American Kennel Club

Q6 Are we much more like other animals than most of us care to admit?  How?

 

Biologically, we are animals. And that’s much more significant than mere semantics. We literally share the same genetic, anatomical, and biochemical roots. And let’s be clear that humans are not some pinnacle of evolution—a high-point. We are another species of ape, one whose evolutionary trajectory happened to result in a big brain that in turn spawned fairly (though not entirely) unique emergent cultural phenomena such as art, technology, birthday cakes, and cigarettes.   

Evolutionary Biologist Desmond Morris’s ‘The Naked Ape’ struck a chord with the public when it was first published in 1967

 

 

Q7 You have written so many scholarly articles, and penned several books. One of your books that I would really like to read is ‘What A Fish Knows’. Are fish intelligent and sentient? What does a fish know, that we should know they know….

 

I mentioned some examples above, but here’s one that I find especially appealing and revealing. Fishes of several species have been shown to “fall” for the same optical illusions as we do. For example, if you teach a fish to select the larger of two circles (by touching it with her mouth or squirting water at it, for a food reward), then present the Ebbinghaus Illusion—in which one of two identical circles seems larger because of the arrangement of (smaller) dots surrounding it—and the trained fish will choose the circle that appears larger. To me this is a quite telling result. It illustrates that a fish can have beliefs, and that those beliefs are fallible. If the fish’s mind worked like an unthinking, unfeeling robot, it would perceive the two circles as equal. Another example illustrating the sharpness of a fish’s mind is the remarkable bird-hunting behavior shown by certain fishes. In freshwater lakes of southern Africa, predatory tigerfishes have learned to catch swallows by leaping from behind and snagging the birds in mid-air. If you know swallows then you’ll know that they are fast, erratic fliers (they need to be to catch their flying insect prey). Not only does the tigerfish behavior require impressive athleticism and coordination, it also requires planning. Catfishes in French rivers also show clever planning when they carefully stalk and ambush pigeons bathing and drinking in the shallows. 

 

‘An example illustrating the sharpness of a fish’s mind is the remarkable bird-hunting behavior shown by certain fishes.’

 

Catfish waiting for pigeons to get close enough to catch them.

 

Q8 Your latest book: ‘Super Fly. The unexpected Lives Of The World’s Most Successful Insects’ sounds fascinating. Why are Diptera so awesome?

 

Here are just a few of many reasons. Flies belong to the most successful group of animals on the planet, the insects, which make up 80 percent of all animal species living today. At 160,000 described species, and probably around five times that many still undiscovered, flies are probably the most diverse order of animals ever. Flies are also very fecund: in one year, a single pair of fruit flies could produce a dense ball of flies whose diameter stretches from here to the sun! (This calculation illustrates the importance of nature’s checks and balances.) Flies have an attention span, and they show rational decision-making, and deductive reasoning (A>B, B>C, thus A>C). Flies have taught us more about genetics than any other animal. Their maggots are the stars of the growing field of forensic entomology, helping to solve murders and exonerate the wrongly accused. Fly maggots are also effective in healing stubborn wounds such as burns, severe bedsores, non-healing surgical wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, and bone infections. Flies’ colorful sex lives include serenades, dancing, foreplay, gift-giving, cannibalism, bizarre interlocking genitalia, and giant sperm. Flies also self-medicate, using alcohol (in fermenting fruit) as a toxic defence against parasitic wasps.

 

‘Flies’ colorful sex lives include serenades, dancing, foreplay, gift-giving, cannibalism, bizarre interlocking genitalia, and giant sperm. Flies also self-medicate, using alcohol (in fermenting fruit) as a toxic defence against parasitic wasps’.

 

Flies have taught us more about genetics than any other animal.

 

Q9 Why do you think the majority of people continue to eat animals and their products, even when they are fully aware of what you and I would consider the cruelty and injustice of raising animals for food?

 

I think the main reasons are ignorance and economics. While many people may have a vague idea that meat production is not very nice for the animals, relatively few know, and fewer still wish to know, the ugly details of industrialized meat, dairy and egg production. And because most people enjoy the taste of these products, they don’t wish to be confronted with information that might conflict with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, there is a persistent and deep-seated misconception that plant-based foods are less palatable and rewarding than animal-based foods. This is why the rise of plant-based and lab-cultured meats and dairy products has the potential to be a game-changer in human dietary choices. But as long as these products cost more than the heavily-subsidized products of animal agriculture, large-scale change will be slow in coming.

 

Image of lab grown dairy products from Phys.Org

 

Q10 Is a vegan diet necessary for the future of our planet?

 

For most of the world, I believe a transition to plant-based eating is a critical component of the change that needs to happen. Animal agriculture uses about 83% of arable land to produce just 18% of the calories we consume as a species. Livestock today comprise a grotesque 60% of the vertebrate animal biomass on Earth, with humans making up 36% and wildlife a mere 4%. Anyone who thinks our meat habit isn’t a major if not the leading cause of the climate emergency, and current and future pandemics, is kidding themselves.

 

‘Anyone who thinks our meat habit isn’t a major if not the leading cause of the climate emergency, and current and future pandemics, is kidding themselves’.

 

Q 11 As well as your academic work and writing, do you do other forms of animal advocacy?

 

In addition to being a vegan, and an author, I share issues on social media, occasionally write a letter to the editor, donate to charities, sign petitions, and maintain an animal-friendly investment portfolio. I give around 15-20 presentations in a typical year, and I do lots of media and podcast interviews, especially in years when a book comes out.  

Q12 How can we follow and support your work, and read your books?

 

My website is jonathan-balcombe.com, I have an author page on facebook, and I tweet occasionally. My books are widely available online, and most bookstores (and libraries) will acquire copies upon request.

 

‘Let’s Transform!’. Inaugural speech of Emma Hurst, MP, Animal Justice Party

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

One of the most powerful animal right speeches we have heard was delivered by Emma Hurst MP of the Animal Justice Party (AJP) in 2019.  In her inaugural speech in the Australian Parliament, she tells the story of the ‘dirty mouse’, or ‘pest’ she saw as a child.  Cowering in a corner terrified, its little heart beating against its chest, she immediately understood that the tiny being’s life was as important to them as our lives are to us…

She also tells the story of Dudley, the Australian steer live-exported to Indonesia,  filmed trying to resist being dragged to slaughter. He put up a brave fight, but finally stumbled and fell.  Numerous men jumped on his back, stabbed him with sticks, poked him in the eye, and broke his tail as he bellowed in pain…     

There are other true stories told with simplicity, clarity and compassion by the young MP.  She finishes her speech with a call to action to to her fellow MPs and fellow Australians:

 

‘This is the moment. This is the time for change. Let’s transform.

 

Let’s dare to hope.

Let’s dissolve the cages and shackles that have enslaved animals and caused them great harm’.

 

 

You can watch the video here: 

Follow Emma Hurst on Facebook (Emma Hurst)

Instagram (@emma.hurst)

Twitter  (@MicHurst)

We Need A Discussion On Animal Sacrifice

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this article from India Today a brave Indian Muslim fasts to protest animal sacrifice.

 

We need a discussion on animal sacrifice. Many animal sacrifice rituals are based on “substitution”, using animals as proxy-humans to discharge sins. We must ask why an act of publicly killing an animal (often with brutal, painful methods, entailing great suffering to the animal) is needed in 2021.  We have progressed in knowledge and understanding from thousands of years ago, when such practices were first carried out.

 

Animal sacrifice should be substituted entirely with other non-violent rituals that express the essence of the religious act, but without causing pain, emotional suffering and bloodshed to sentient beings.

 

Read the article here:

 

 

 

 

The Last Day Of Their Lives – Testimony Of A Slaughterhouse Worker

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this article, undercover vegan/animal activist Alan G recounts his experience in chicken, pig and sheep slaughterhouses in the United States.  (Reprinted from thedoe.com).

 

“ I saw cruelty everywhere I went. ”

“I can’t save any of them.” That’s what I reminded myself, day after day, as I looked upon the faces of the animals who would soon be slaughtered. “Just do what you came here to do,” I would add, locking my eyes forward to concentrate on the task at hand. There’s no time to stop and be sentimental.

Inside a slaughterhouse, there’s always work to be done.

During the years I was an undercover investigator, I worked at three slaughterhouses in three different states—on behalf of a national farmed animal protection organization. While working, I used hidden camera equipment to document the painful reality of what animals endure on the last day of their lives.

I often asked myself how I ended up where I was. Like a lot of people in the vegan movement, I would call myself an animal lover. When I was young, I only had a few career goals. After seeing Jurassic Park, I wanted to grow up and study reptiles. Then, after consuming copious comic books, I wanted to be a hero. I combined these goals and eventually earned a master’s degree in ecology, with the goal of doing conservation research to protect wild animals. But, while I was in school, I learned about the suffering of farm animals through a labmate, the first vegan I ever knew in real life.

You probably guessed this already, but after a lengthy process, I became a vegan as well. Why wouldn’t I? Not only is meat production cruel, but it’s also notoriously bad for the environment, in terms of land use and emissions. So, it appealed to me as someone interested in conservation. In fact, I was so entranced with veganism and its benefits that I decided to keep my career options somewhat open. I wanted to either end up in field research or in activism. The non-profit I continue to work for today was the first to respond to my resume, which eventually brought me to those slaughterhouses.

I ended up working at chicken, pig and lamb slaughter facilities before I retired from fieldwork. I saw cruelty everywhere I went: some intentional and some as a result of companies trying to maximize speed (and, therefore, profits).

 

“The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere.”

 

Chicken Slaughterhouses: Animal Cruelty Bordering on Torture

My first job undercover was at the poultry plant, working live hang. Our one job was to pull chickens off a conveyor belt and wedge their legs in shackles passing by at eye-level. We were supposed to handle 24 chickens per minute, an impossible timeframe for anything even resembling “humane.” The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere. The other workers seemed unconcerned with their plight. They would tear feathers off to throw at one another, or press the bodies of chickens against the metal conveyor belt in retaliation against their struggling. Sometimes, the workers at the head of the line would take a few steps back and hurl the birds at the shackles like they were baseballs. Often, the birds would successfully end up in the shackles after these pitches. It was easy to see that the workers had practiced this method.

 

“Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.”

 

Pig Slaughterhouses: Cruel and Inhumane Methods of Killing

My second position was at a slaughterhouse supplying a household name in pork products. I ended up working two different jobs there, one of which was on the kill floor. Part of the job was herding the animals through chutes and pens until they reached the stunner. Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.

We had “rattle paddles,” which look like oars with the flat end filled with noise-making beads. Workers would raise these paddles above their heads and bring them down on the heads or bodies of pigs. Several times, I was admonished by others for not doing this. “Hit them! Hit them!” they would yell at me. We also had access to electrical prods, which other workers would use on animals multiple times, sometimes in the face or near the genitals. The sick ones would be pulled by their tails or shoved out of the pens. We were supposed to use a sled to do that, but a supervisor told me they just didn’t have the time.

When the animals got past the chutes, a worker would use an electrical stunner on them. The hogs would go rigid and fall down a slide to a conveyor belt below. There, a worker would cut their throats. If the cut wasn’t done correctly, the animal wouldn’t bleed out enough to kill them before the stunning wore off, so I documented several pigs returning to sensibility and attempting to right themselves while they were hanging upside down, bleeding from the gaping hole in their throats. Workers were supposed to stop the line to re-stun the animal, but in one instance I witnessed, they didn’t bother, leaving the animal to suffer as the shackle took him slowly towards tanks of scalding water. I remember a choice quote from one worker: “If USDA were around, they could shut us down.”

 

“After having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. . ”

 

The Lamb Slaughterhouse: Processing Contaminated Meat

My final investigation was at a slaughterhouse for one of the largest lamb producers in the U.S. I spent a few months working in a refrigerated room all day. The supervisor would tell workers to change the “best by” date labels on older products to falsify their freshness. He would help people avoid putting product through the metal detectors to save time, risking contamination of the meat with metal shavings. And when I finally got a position that would help me observe the slaughter process, we discovered that after having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. What we saw was so egregious we decided to file a False Claims Act against the company, which resulted in a historic intervention from the Department of Justice, a settlement and mandated changes to their slaughtering practices.

 

Slaughterhouse Workers Suffer Too

Slaughterhouse practices don’t just cause suffering for the animals. Meatpacking plants are notoriously dangerous for workers, with two amputations occurring in the U.S. per week. Most of my jobs were basically assembly line jobs, with workers performing the same action hundreds or thousands of times per day. Injuries are common, especially those caused by the repetitive motions on the line. I remember my hands aching every minute while I was employed in live hang, my knuckles red from holding the bony legs of thousands of chickens.

In another job, I wore a back brace on top of another because I spent all day carrying boxes filled with lamb meat. I cut myself on knives and metal hangers at the pig plant. More than once, I cried in my car before a shift, anticipating the mental and physical anguish I would endure for the next 12 hours. (And, now, during the coronavirus pandemic many Americans are painfully aware of how disease can spread like wildfire inside of these facilities.)

Though all of that is behind me now, it is still the reality for the billions of animals who are slaughtered every year. While I’m retired from undercover work, I’m still very much an activist for animals. As part of my job, I work with footage from other investigators and witness the same cruelty I saw firsthand. But it’s worth it, because I want people to see what I saw, as hard as it can be to watch. Despite the efforts of investigators like myself, there are still so many people who have no idea where their “food” comes from, and what horrible atrocities they’re paying into by buying animal products. My hope is that everyone who is even a little curious about what I went through can take the time to watch some of the footage brought back from these facilities. As someone who was on the inside, I hope the reality of the plight reaches you.

 

THE END OF MEAT

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this blog End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle puts a date on the end of animal agriculture.

 

In 2018 I self published a slim book calling for the New Zealand government to close all slaughterhouses before 2025.   Most ‘sensible’ people, including many vegans, thought at the time that it was a wishful-thinking fantasy, and could never happen in such a short timeframe.

Fast forward three years and such predictions are beginning to become commonplace.   Not only from outsiders like myself, but also from within the animal agriculture Industry. Here in New Zealand, Danielle Appleton, MBA and Masters in Dairy Science and Technology, spent a decade with dairy giant Fonterra before launching her own alternative-dairy startup. In this TED talk from a couple of years ago she warns that two technologies – plant protein and synthetic dairy – means that dairy will no longer be this country’s ‘cash cow’.  Just as wool was the social and economic backbone of New Zealand up until the 1950s,when synthetic fibres caused the bottom to fall out of the wool industry, alternative technologies are now heralding the end of animal agriculture.  In fact, many futurists are predicting a much larger revolution that, as soon as the tipping point is reached, will grow exponentially to spell the end of raising and eating other animals for food worldwide.  The new foods will be more nutritious and convenient, healthier, and produced at a lower cost than the animal-derived products they replace. A world having moved away from animal agriculture may also usher in a world without hunger.  

Tony Seba, and Catherine Tubb from RethinkX, a US-based think tank that identifies social disruptions from new technology, have likened this agricultural revolution to the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago.

As the title of my book indicates, I believe this will happen in many places before 2025.   And in  2018 I couldn’t foresee a pandemic or the increase in flooding and wildfires worldwide, two principle reasons why we are on the cusp of the end of animal agriculture.

We are on our way to a vegan world.   To try a vegan diet, take the Vegan 22 challenge.

 

 

 

THERE’S AN INTELLIGENT BEING IN THAT SQUISHY BODY: CUTTLEFISH PASS TEST DESIGNED FOR CHILDREN

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus) appear alien to us, yet they possess remarkable intelligence,  cunning ways, curiosity and affection.  

 

Their cognitive abilities and complex thinking patterns are still being investigated by scientists.  In a recent study cuttlefish show that they also are able to delay their gratification.  

 

Read the Mercy For Animals article here

 

 

The Suffering Of Marvellous Fish

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on The Suffering Of Marvellous Fish

For some years now the scientific concensus has been that fish feel pain.  At the anatomical level, fish have neurons known as nociceptors, which detect potential harm, such as high temperatures, intense pressure, and caustic chemicals. They also produce the same opioids—the body’s innate painkillers—that mammals do.   All over the world, every moment of every day, untold individual fishes suffer panic and undergo painful death through suffocation and injury because of our taste buds.

There are now widely available substitutes that mimic the texture and flavour of fish.  There is no longer any excuse for torturing the denizens of the Ocean in order to eat them.  Eating fish and other ‘seafood’ is also causing harm to sea mammals and marine ecosystems.  

Read about scientific findings on fish sentience and complex behaviour in this Free From Harm article.