Author: Sandra Kyle

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.

A mirror to our lazy brutality and inhumanity – the work of ‘Artivist’ Philip McCulloch-Downs

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on A mirror to our lazy brutality and inhumanity – the work of ‘Artivist’ Philip McCulloch-Downs

In this article, End Animal Slaughter pays tribute to the work of ‘artivist’ Philip McCulloch-Downs. 

 

“I feel privileged to be a voice for the voiceless – to hold up a mirror to our society and its lazy brutality and inhumanity, and I’m proud to be able to commemorate the forgotten, the hopeless and the unloved – my art is ‘compassion on canvas’.” 

 

You can follow Philip on his website; on Instagram; and on Etsy.

 

 

[learn_more caption=”Where did you grow up?” state=”open”] I grew up in Malvern in Worcestershire, which is a very green town on the slopes of the lovely Malvern Hills (home of Edward Elgar and Malvern Water). [/learn_more][learn_more caption=”Where are you based now?” state=”open”] Nowadays I live and work in Somerset in the south of England, in a tiny hilltop hamlet near to Bath, Bristol and Wells.[/learn_more][learn_more caption=”Have you always loved animals?” state=”open”] Ever since I was little my family have had pet cats, and so I was always taught to respect and love animals as equals. According to my parents I apparently had a very visceral reaction against farms when on school trips to see dairy/sheep farms, and I always found eating meat an innately disgusting thing to do. My dad had an allotment, so I could see where all our vegetables came from, and the meat seemed to me to be an alien and unnatural substance to find on my plate. I would secretly hide it in the cat’s food bowl! It drove my parents mad, until my mum discovered soya chunks at the local supermarket when I was 8 years old.[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Can you describe your vegan journey? ” state=”open”] At 19, I became vegetarian overnight after being caught at traffic lights, eye to eye with sheep in a truck transporting them to slaughter. My girlfriend of that time said to me ‘How can you justify eating meat after seeing this?’. I couldn’t, so I changed my diet. Sadly it took me another 16 years to become vegan. This second change happened because, when I moved to Bristol, I volunteered at a local animal rights organisation and was exposed to all the information about dairy, eggs, leather, etc and simply couldn’t find any way to continue without changing my lifestyle once again. It was a relief to finally find a way to live ethically and healthily – as with most people’s vegan journeys, it was simply lack of information (and an unhealthy dose of cognitive dissonance) that had prevented this simple moment of clarity and conscience to allow me to be a better person.

 

[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Did you have formal training in Art?”] I have been painting and drawing since I was an infant (and now video-making and novel/poetry writing) – always encouraged by my parents. After doing my art ‘A’ level, I pursued my calling through a foundation course, then an illustration degree, and onwards into just over a decade of freelance graphic design/illustration work, until I chose my vegan path through life at the AR organisation. After s futher nine years there ( continually painting and writing my own personal work in my free time) I eventually combined my art, ethics and information from my job and became an animal rights artist. [/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”How would you describe your style?”] I work in a very detailed and realistic manner, using no stylistic tricks, and following a very traditional method of paint on canvas. I mostly work very small – people seem constantly surprised that most of my images are A4 size. It’s handy for storage in my tiny home studio, and due to the complex detail in them, they can very easily be enlarged to A0 size digital prints if necessary, and still look visually effective.[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”How do you work? (Materials, process, etc)” state=”open”] I paint a lot of grass/rusty metal/animal fur – these aren’t clean flat areas of colour and texture, so I find I work quickly and intensely (wearing out a lot of tiny brushes!) which acrylic paint is the perfect medium for as it’s quick drying and this allows me to build up many thin layers of paint very rapidly.

 

I’m happy to categorise my art as ‘Vegan Art’, ‘Animal Rights Art’, ‘Protest Art’ ‘Reportage’, ‘Animal and Human Portraiture’, or any other niche title, but what I’m aiming for is to blend all these together and simply have the viewer see my work as ‘Art’ (or ‘Fine Art’ if that’s the terminology that allows me to get my work into galleries). [/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Is Protest Art powerful as a kind of activism? Why?” state=”open”] This work demands to be seen. The issues are so urgent, the crimes of factory farming so vile, the cruelty and abuse so well-hidden, that I want this imagery to be seen and discussed everywhere – on the streets, in galleries, restaurants, on protests, in short films, at festivals… wherever. I want to grab attention, to offend, to upset, to inform, to have people see the previously unseen, to make them think, empathise, learn, and change. I have never felt so passionately about anything. I feel privileged to be a voice for the voiceless – to hold up a mirror to our society and its lazy brutality and inhumanity and I’m proud to be able to commemorate the forgotten, the hopeless and the unloved – my art is ‘compassion on canvas’. [/learn_more]

 

RIDING ROUGHSHOD – NEW ZEALAND’S TALLEY’S GROUP

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on RIDING ROUGHSHOD – NEW ZEALAND’S TALLEY’S GROUP

In this article End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle, and animal activist Robert McNeil call out the New Zealand billionaire family behind the notorious Talley’s Group. 

Managing Director of the Talley’s Group, Sir Peter Talley.

New Zealand’s notorious agribusiness moguls, the Talley family, are in the news again.  This time it is because of allegations of unhygienic conditions and dangerous health and safety breaches in their Ashburton frozen foods operation. In May 2015 Te Atatu Hemi, 42, was working in the cold store at this same facility when several bins stacked on top of a forklift fell on top of her, leaving her a paraplegic.  Since the latest story broke this month more former employees have come forward.  This includes one cold store worker at the same plant who, six years after Hemi’s accident, quit in fear his life was in danger.

Demonstration by meatworkers and their families.  Workers striking for better conditions were locked out of AFFCO plants in 2012 

The rich-lister Talley’s group have long courted controversy over their approach to industrial relations, and workplace safety.  They are notorious for squashing union activity, seeking to dilute health and safety legislation, and blatantly flouting environmental rules.  Their Wikipedia entry includes 29 references to their litigious history with unions, disgruntled employees, and the environment.

In the past ten years Worksafe have had multiple reported cases over injuries incurred at their workplaces.  One such was Nelson fisherman Leighton Muir, 27, who was decapitated in August 2014 in an accident aboard a Talley’s seiner.   Talley’s were found negligent, and fined $73,520 and ordered to pay $21,000 reparations to the family of Mr Muir – chump change for this billionaire family.

They have come a long way since Dalmatian immigrant and local fisherman Ivan Talijancich (later known as Ivan Talley) established a small firm in Motueka in 1936.  From these humble beginnings, the company has cast a giant net over sea and land.  For the last couple of decades it has been one of New Zealand’s biggest businesses, with interests in fishing and seafood (Talley’s) meat (Affco), dairy (Open Country Dairy), frozen foods, and coal mining (in conjunction with Solid Energy).

There’s no getting around the fact that an animal died to provide the sausages and bacon sizzling on New Zealand BBQs. Tens of millions of cows, sheep and pigs are killed in New Zealand every year, many of them at the Talley’s owned AFFCO.

They own AFFCO, one of New Zealand’s largest slaughterhouse chains.  The business of killing animals is grisly, and full of potential hazards to workers because of animal size, machinery involved, and contamination from animal-origin viruses and bacteria.  In 2014, a cleaner at the Rangiuru (Bay of Plenty) meatworks spent more than an hour with a meat hook impaled in his head, resulting in a ruling that the company breached health and safety rules. The man involved in this terrible accident now lives in constant pain, and has tried to commit suicide, while the company was fined $30,000 and ordered to pay $25,000 to the victim.   In June 2015 a Whanganui Affco Imlay worker was cleaning up an offal spill when some raw material squirted into his eye. He became extremely ill with an animal bacterial infection and had to have life-saving surgery to replace his aortic and mitral valves.  Talley’s are aware of the hazards of their businesses, yet repeatedly fail to implement control measures to enforce workers’ safety.

Trading under the Amaltal brand, Talley’s have a modern fleet of fishing vessels, including bottom trawlers that damage the marine environment and exacerbates global warming.

All year round Talley’s fleet of eight fishing vessels operates in the EEZ (exclusive economic zone), the Antarctic and Western Pacific, to sell in global markets. One of the methods they use is bottom trawling, a highly destructive fishing technique that has both direct and indirect negative effects on marine ecosystems.  One of the ways is through overfishing, which can remove  essential predators, increase algal bloom, threaten local food sources, and lead to an ecosystem imbalance.

Another way is catching untargeted species, or ‘bycatch’, including mammals and even seabirds that are brought up injured or dead, and then ‘shovelled’ back into the sea.  A further consequence of bottom trawling is the way the weighted nets ruin reefs and coral populations that have been growing for centuries, and are the homes of countless fish species as well as anemones, sponges, urchins and other fragile-bodied animals. This fishing method also releases carbon stored in the seabed, impacting global warming as well.

On their website Talley’s promote their commitment to sustainable fishing practices and  the environment, yet their track record tells a different story.  In a recent example they have been found guilty of bottom trawling in a marine protected area off Kaikoura.  They also hunt the Patagonia tooth fish in Antarctic seas. A top predator in the Antarctic food chain, the tooth fish (sold as Chilean bass) doesn’t reach sexual maturity until age thirteen and can live for fifty years.  As large fishing vessels can only access its home waters a couple of months a year, it is impossible to monitor and report changes in fish stocks, a sustainability practice Talley’s claims to adhere to.

At the beginning of this year an investigation by Radio New Zealand revealed dozens of big business players were routinely discharging wastewater into our rivers and oceans.   AFFCO were among the companies found to be breaking the law. 

The animal agriculture industries that have made the Talley’s family billionaires (and have bestowed a knighthood on Peter Talley) are as secretive as the family itself.   Their animal operations kill cows, calves, sheep and pigs in the tens of millions every year; factor in their seafood operations and the number is in the billions. Those who profit from killing living beings for food want us to believe that something humane happens along the way, but nothing humane happens in slaughterhouses and commercial fishing fleets.  Animals, unlike people, cannot speak up for themselves, their rights are seldom protected, and there are few willing to stand up for them.

But even if we don’t care about animals, then we all should care about the future of our planet.   We need to act with a unified purpose to keep Earth and all its inhabitants healthy and resilient.  Companies such as Talley’s with such a destructive global footprint, and who repeatedly disregard their duty of care to people, animals and the environment, deserve to be deregistered.  In the meantime, we can boycott their products.

 

 

 

Sandra Kyle and Rob McNeil are part of the global Animal Save Movement that bears witness to animals at the gates of slaughterhouses, and seeks to expose animal exploitation industries. 

There Can Be No Animal Agriculture When We Colonise Mars

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

NASA is already considering what kind of habitation we’ll need to survive on the surface of Mars and are working towards colonising the planet by 2030, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, has settled for a date even before then.  Those of us old enough will recognise the parallels with President Kennedy’s 1962 speech: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth”.

The colonisation of Mars is now out of the realms of science fiction and into the realms of practical possibility.  Will we colonise Mars within the decade?  What will it mean for the human race and other animals?   Will the new food system be Humanity’s Do-Over?  Can we cease eating animals before we even set foot on Mars?

 

Read the Sentient Media article here

 

 

 

 

We can never be truly moral until such atrocities stop forever

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

How can any decent society condone what happens to pigs in piggeries?   Battering sick babies to death (‘thumping’), worn out sows with severe uterus prolapses forced to painfully walk to their own death – such things are commonplace in this industry.

Gandhi said ‘the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated’.  In reality, there is no nation on Earth that treats other animals well.    So long as we keep raising them in cruel circumstances and then slaughtering them for food,  we cannot claim to be moral beings.

 

Read the SURGE article here.  WARNING:  GRAPHIC CONTENT