Killing and dismembering sentient beings has an enormous toll on the workers who do it.
A Call to Action: Psychological Harm in Slaughterhouse Workers
Category: Slaughterhouse
Should CCTV cameras be mandatory in slaughterhouses?
There are a number of countries around the world, including Israel the UK and France, that have made the installation of CCTV cameras mandatory in slaughterhouses. Here in New Zealand there have also been calls for CCTV cameras. not only in slaughterhouses but also in dairy sheds. This was in response to undercover organisation FARMWATCH’s 2018 expose, showing a Northland farmer terrorising and abusing his cows.
It is difficult to know how much of a step forward it is to have cameras in slaughterhouses.
Commenting after the UK Law was passed, Animal Welfare Minister Lord Gardiner said: “The Government shares the public’s high regard for animal welfare and we are proud to have some of the highest standards in the world. Today we welcome the new law which requires mandatory CCTV in all abattoirs in England”.
On the face of it, it seems obvious that CCTV cameras on the farm would diminish the many horrific instances of abuse that have been captured by undercover activists around the world. Yet a moment’s reflection shows that it also represents a contradiction in terms, just as ‘humane slaughter’ does. For example installing CCTV cameras in dairy sheds implies that it is fine to carry on dairy practices –including AI and the removal of calves immediately from their mothers. Putting cameras inside slaughterhouses is even more contradictory; it is tantamount to saying ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll see that the execution is done according to the rules, and that will make it alright.’
A Northland dairy farmer was caught on camera terrorising his cows,
and hitting them with a steel pipe
Except it doesn’t make it alright. Installing CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses could have the effect of reassuring people that it is fine to kill and eat animals, and encourage them to continue. Where is there concern for the true interests of the animals here? As George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian, said: ‘If animals could talk the first thing they would say is Please Don’t Eat Me!’ No animal walks willingly to his or her death. Putting CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses could favour the animal agriculture industry, enabling them to improve their profit maximisation and efficiency as they go about their business of exploiting and killing animals.
Ultimately, there is only one rational answer if people believe that animals matter morally, and that is to go vegan. While promoting the use of CCTV cameras in the animal exploitation industry may be acceptable as an interim welfare measure, the clear goal should be to work towards shutting down all slaughterhouses forever.
Sandra Kyle
‘Stranger things have happened’…
In this opinion editorial Frank Greenall suggests we could be ‘laying off the animals’ any year now….
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503423&objectid=12203616&fbclid=IwAR1jl6UlUC7msV40bd8LDi9Hckpnw_Fd311FW-7qOIgWKC_IOb-KF–qT-k
SLAUGHTERHOUSE VIGIL, WHANGANUI, 24 FEBRUARY 2019
At our vigil outside Land Meats today I told Kirsty that I had managed to make some enemies here in Whanganui. “It’s not surprising though’, I said, ‘when you raise your head above the parapet you will get shot down.” Kirsty agreed and mentioned something about Tall Poppies. Mean-spiritedness is an unpleasant human trait. We often do not rejoice in other people’s success (or recognition) and would like to see them ‘taken down a peg or two’. At its extreme end it is ‘schadenfreude’ or feeling pleasure at another’s misfortune. If only we realised that we cannot harm others, even in thought, without harming ourselves.
Pure-faced sheep crowded into large trucks, await to be unloaded and killed.
We’re a callous, selfish, jealous, vindictive lot we humans, but fortunately that’s not all we are. We are also compassionate, caring, open, just, and selfless. My ability to read people has improved over the years and I tend to avoid contact with people who are overly negative, backbiting, selfish or otherwise ‘toxic’ to me, but some of the situations I get myself in mean I cannot avoid it.
I stuck my head above the parapet again at the vigil today, this time above the fence where the cows are herded before they are slaughtered. The groundsman who is always rude and aggressive and childish in his interactions with us can be seen at the back of the photo, taking a photo of me. I am not sure if I broke the law or not, and if I did I can expect to hear from someone in authority, I suppose. I don’t care. I just feel sick at the barbaric traffic in animal souls that goes on day in and day out in this city, in this country, all over the planet. Can this be the twenty first century, or are we still in the stone age? Why in the name of all that is good and true can we not see that this practice is abhorrant and unnecessary, and needs to stop now!
Can this be the twenty first century, or are we still in the stone age? Why in the name of all that is good and true can we not see that this practice is abhorrant and unnecessary? It needs to stop now!
We saw two trucks unloaded today. One was packed with pure-faced sheep going to the sheep slaughterhouse down the road, stopping at the cattle slaughterhouse briefly to unload a couple of cows, and the second truck was filled with mature cows. Standing way back, my singing sounded more like shouting, and I cannot see how it would have comforted them; however I noticed that when the cows were on the ramp a number of them looked over at me before descending. I was consciously sending them love and comfort, and at one point called out to them ‘I’m sorry, I love you, We’ll stop this, It’s alright.’ Of course it wasn’t all right. As I write this scores of sentient beings are huddled together in bleak pens, without food, their instincts telling them that a terrible thing is awaiting them. That terrible thing will happen to them first thing tomorrow morning when they will be shot in the head and have their neck sliced; every last one of these beautiful, gentle souls will die for your palate.
The groundsman started targeting me again as I took my photos, but Kirsty, she of the stentorian voice, came to my aid and frightened him off. 😊 When you have to stick your head above the parapet you cannot expect everyone to like you, but it’s better to have a few loyal friends than many who secretly wish you harm.
Some cows being unloaded stopped to look over to where I was standing. The hardest thing about doing vigils is knowing I can do nothing to save the animals.
Sandra Kyle
SLAUGHTERHOUSE VIGIL, 17 February 2019
Sandra Kyle and Kirsty Thompson do regular weekly vigils outside two slaughterhouses in Whanganui, New Zealand as part of the International Save Movement. To look for a vigil near you, or to start your own Save Movement group, go to thesavemovement.org
WE SAW an enormous black steer making a panicked attempt to climb over the top of a slaughtertruck today. He was probably standing on another steer, perhaps a downed one, but he couldn’t get over and fell back. Straddling the animals on the top tier was the truck driver. I had watched him for some moments beforehand electrically shocking the animals to try and get them off the truck. He was roughly jabbing them in short sharp movements, and it looked as if he was shocking the same animal several times. I was nearly choking with anger, and screamed out at him to stop electrocuting them. He didn’t react. He was also yelling at them and making movements with his arms: ‘Go! Get!’ or something similar. It took nearly ten minutes before the animals started to unload and during a lot of that time he was using his electric prod.
SEEING THAT STEER suddenly rise up out of the half-hidden, anonymous cargo, seeing his large ears, his open mouth and wild eyes, seeing his legs hanging over the side, has haunted me in the hours since. He could have hurt or bruised himself in the attempt also, and to suffer electric shocks and be yelled at, on top of that, set my heart beating faster with disbelief and anger. When I moved up closer to the truck. the groundsman told me to get off the pedestrian strip. I pointed out the symbol painted on the ground. He said ‘I don’t give a rat’s a*se, get the hell back.’ When I told Kirsty what he said she was furious and marched up to where I had been standing. He told her to move too, and then with a huge voice that boomed out of her small body she told him where to go. ‘We are ALLOWED to stand here….. This is not about YOU.’ He was quite taken aback, as usually Kirsty doesn’t say much. 
On the way home I congratulated her on her megaphone voice and she said she was so angry that he was throwing his weight around as usual.
THERE WERE MORE toots today, mostly positive but some negative too, probably as a result of the publicity this week. When we had just arrived someone passing us in a car veered towards me as if to run me down (he was just making a point). A car stopped over the other side of the road and I went across to talk to the two young women. ‘We want to become vegans too’ they said. Another two women on a motor scooter stopped and one said she only ate chicken, was that alright? Kirsty and I spoke to them for a while, then the pillion passenger started to get a bit aggro. ‘That’s just your opinion’, she said as they moved off.
EVERY TIME I APPROACH THESE HELL HOLES my heart sinks and then starts beating faster with anxiety and sorrow. It felt worse today, maybe because of the steer and the driver hurting the animals, but also because I am reading a book by Gail A Eisnitz called ‘Slaughterhouse’. Gail sent it to me to read ahead of my interviewing her on my Animal Rights radio and podcast show, ‘Safe and Sound’. I have copied an excerpt below that shows how cows are killed and processed in most western slaughterhouses. Gail’s investigations and sources proved that it often doesn’t happen according to plan and this could be for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons include a foreman pushing cows through at speed to increase profits, or because of dilapidated equipment, or poorly trained operators. Sometimes the animals are skinned while still alive. Don’t read on if you haven’t the stomach for it.
‘Cattle in a slaughterhouse are prodded along a chute to a ‘knocking box’.. The stun operator or ‘knocker’ shoots each animal in the forehead (they see it coming… my note) with a compressed air gun that drives a steel bolt into the cow’s skull and then retracts it. If the knocking gun is sufficiently powered, well maintained and properly used it knocks the cow unconscious or kills the animal on the spot.
The next man on the line ‘the shackler’ wraps a chain around one of the stunned cow’s hind legs. Once shackled the animal is automatically lifted onto a moving overhead rail. The cow, now hanging upside down by a leg, is sent to the ‘sticker’ – the worker who cuts the throat….. Next the cow travels along the ‘bleed rail’ and is given several minutes to bleed out. The carcass then proceeds to the ‘head skinners’, the ‘leggers’ (who chop off the legs, my note) and on down the line where it is completely skinned, eviscerated and split in half’.
IN MANY PLANTS it takes only minutes to turn a warm, breathing animal into a ‘split in half’ carcass. This is why Kirsty and I, and the SAVE groups in Wellington and Auckland and all over the world do vigils outside slaughterhouses. To say goodbye to the animals, to bear witness to their suffering, and to dig deep to find that power within us to continue working until we’ve put a stop to the carnage once and for all.
Sandra Kyle
When Old Age is a ‘Blessing not a Curse’.
Farmed animals are routinely sent to their deaths at a very young age, but what happens when they are allowed to grow old….?
‘Paying for Cruelty by the Pound’ by Lynley Tulloch
The shocking stabbing of a beloved miniature horse has shocked New Zealand, but our love of animals is selective and hypocritical, says End Animal Slaughter contributor Dr Lynley Tulloch.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1902/S00473/star-the-minature-horse-and-our-cultural-blinders-to-cruelty.htm?fbclid=IwAR2Jm_j9qVPAGATiXSfwugHYIO8o_EDClCxzhFyTlC2f4NAvOyhDGtx2vy4
Slaughterhouse Vigil, Land Meats Whanganui, New Zealand, 3 Feb 2019
Sandra Kyle does weekly slaughterhouse vigils to ‘bear witness’ to animals going to slaughter, as part of the Worldwide Save Movement. For more information about how to start a Save group in your area, go to thesavemovement.org
If we truly had seeing eyes and an empathetic heart then we would know that animals too possess souls. We would know this because we would ‘feel’ their souls within them, in the same way that we feel the souls of other people.
A couple of years ago I spent Xmas Day driving around the King Country, looking at farm animals. If I spied horses, cows or sheep near to the fenceline, I stopped my car to say hi. What I most remember about that day was leaning over a paddock fence and chatting to a couple of large, brown horses. Initially cautious about me, after a while they let me pat them and lean my head on their neck. I could see them communicate between each other as well, although I understand little about horse behaviour. I could certainly feel the ‘being’ in them, just as I can feel the being in my companion animals and if you think about it, you probably can too. This is what I term their ‘soul’ – the ‘being’ within. If you have felt the being in your companion animals, then why do you think that farmed animals don’t possess it also? If you make such a distinction between your pets and farmed animals then you are guilty of idiotic speciesism.
It is because I can feel the souls of animals that my slaughterhouse vigils never get any easier. When I look through the sides of the truck at the frightened beings inside, or see them descending the ramp into the slaughterhouse holding pens, my throat always tightens. I can feel their fear, their confusion. I have been at slaughterhouse vigils when a farmer arrived with days-old shaky-legged calves behind him in a trailer. I have seen lambs transported in this way too. In the name of Heaven they are just babies! They have a will to live and a unique personality, yet they will soon have the light taken from their eyes because you want to eat their flesh or organs, or in the case of bobby calves, because you want to drink their mothers’ milk.
Today at my vigil a cow stopped at the top of the ramp and looked straight over at where I was standing, around fifteen metres from the truck. What was he thinking? A mixture of fear, curiosity perhaps, maybe even hope. He had travelled some distance in the hot slaughter truck, and maybe he was dehydrated and confused. I am sure that he and his companions will provide some comfort to each other as they huddle together, but tomorrow morning their slayers will stumble in to the first shift of the day, and their trembling hearts will be stopped forever.
We destroy ourselves and all that is most precious in us when we hurt others – Paul Stevenson
When I read or force myself to watch videos about what goes on in our treatment of other animals, I am beside myself. I am always in mourning. I mourn not only for the animals but for us too, for having the callousness to go on with our lives as if nothing evil is happening. I weep for our indifference, and also for our ignorance. As my poet friend Paul Stevenson puts it: ‘We destroy ourselves and all that is most precious in us when we hurt others’.
The Poetry of Paul Stevenson
In this moving poem Paul Stevenson asks ‘who shall mourn’ for the life and death of a factory-farmed pig.
Debbie Nelson: ‘Life and Death on a Dairy Farm’
Debbie Nelson saw all the events described here from the road, without trespassing. She speaks in the voices of the cows and calves.
Life
I was born at midday. Birthing was hard work for both my mother and I. I had the wet stickiness all over me. Before I knew it my mother was lovingly giving me a bath. First she licked me lying down. Then, when I started to learn to stand securely she continued to bathe me, I was squeaky clean by the time she was done. I was in a barn with my mother and lots of pregnant cows waiting to give birth and calves who were already born. When my legs were steady she nuzzled me affectionately to her udder to drink. The farmers let us stay together for a few such feedings so I could get colostrum for a healthy immune system. I saw other calves being born. I don’t know how to understand gender, but farmers do. Gender means life or death to us youngsters.
In what seemed like a short time with my mother a large man came into the enclosure. He picked me up and carried me away from my mother.
Mother stop him!
I can’t!
Save me!
I can’t!
What’s going to happen to me? Life or death? Must I go?
Do what they say or they will hurt you more!
Goodbye forever?
I don’t know.
My mother had been through this so many times before. I must have been a female because I was put in a small stall. There was a row of these stalls, each one with a calf. We were mooing so loudly you could hear us on the road. Some other female calves were put in plastic hutches outside, all alone. There were several rows of these hutches with about 7 per row, and all the calves were tethered to their small hutch.
Death
I am a dead male jersey dairy calf. My lifeless body is lying on a cement slab about 4 feet above the ground My head is hanging over the slab, my tongue protrubing from my lifeless mouth. I will never moo for my absent mother again. I will never drink of her milk. I had committed no crime except to be born male. In my company are three other dead calves. One can see the four of us outside the slaughter facility from the road. The small slaughterhouse is close to the big dairy farm. Our bodies are useless because we didn’t even make it alive to be killed. This is a USDA inspected killing place, and our dead bodies cannot be used unless freshly murdered.
We are newborn calves who did make it to the slaughter facility alive. You can hear us crying piteously from the road. We are crying because we were taken from our mothers, put in a truck and transported to this place. They keep taking members of our group away never to be seen alive again. We are frightened. There is the smell of death everywhere in this place. Who is there to comfort us? Who is there to help us?
Read more about the lives of dairy cows and calves
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/milk-life-is-no-life-at-all-for-dairy-cows/
https://www.animalbliss.com/18-images-big-dairy-do-not-want-you-to-see/
New Zealand perspective: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1804/S00047/the-alter-of-sacrifice-the-tragedy-of-bobby-calves.htm
http://www.vegans.co.nz/vegan-blog/the-horrific-life-of-new-zealand-bobby-calves/
Laurie Turunen: ‘What kind of loving person would choose to eat a tortured animal’?
End Animal Slaughter contributor Laurie Turunen describes some unpalatable facts that take place in places of ‘agony, horror and extreme violence.’
Recently someone posted a graphic video of a spent dairy cow on Facebook. She hung upside-down, her throat slashed open, head almost severed, while her legs were being cut off, one by one. Her whole body was still twitching. I’ve seen many slaughterhouse videos over the years that have absolutely horrified me. I have witnessed fully aware and alert cattle having their throats violently slashed as they bellowed in agony. Some animals will try to stand once their throat is slashed. They will slip and slide in their own pooling blood. I’ve seen screaming pigs, with neck gashes, immersed in scalding water, frantically trying to find their way out. There are far too many horrors I care to repeat.
Slaughterhouses are places of agony, horror and extreme violence. What in God’s name are we to do, as a species, about such behaviour? Continue to condone it!? Humans who support or condone the brutal killing of sentient beings have a long way to go in learning what true empathy and compassion are. What kind of loving person would choose to eat a tortured animal, when they could eat a heaped mound of tasty, healing plant foods? There are so many advantages to being vegan. For example, vegans on average live longer healthier lives than non vegans and that is a fact.
Most spiritual seekers are non vegan. They speak about kindness, compassion, love and light, yet to me so much of it is self righteous BS. How much delusion can a person have to say they love and respect others when they support the torture of animals and then salivate at the dismembered body parts that cover their plates? True, they act kind some of the time, but when it comes to other animals they put up a mental curtain and act just the opposite, willingly supporting the sadistic torture of other beings! Even if you are somehow unaware of the horrors that take place in a slaughterhouse, if you buy these “foods” you are still responsible for their continued existence. You may not like to hear that, but it’s the truth. It’s also the truth that most animals you choose to ingest live a nightmarish life before they meet their end on their way to your plate.
Are we still savages? It is no wonder there are so many flesh-eating zombie movies and vampire movies. So many humans love to eat dead bodies, soaked in blood, salivating when they think about it. This is how incredibly programmed humans are! You will only begin to understand just how insane this all is when you adopt a cruelty-free diet. Those who say ‘But plants have feelings too’ are blatantly disingenuous. An animal should never be compared to an apple or a potato. To compare cutting up a potato with cutting up a screaming, terrified pig is nonsensical. Animals are amazing sentient beings, deserving to live their lives without us savagely harming them. They are more similar to us than we realize. It’s a good thing most humans have not been programmed to eat other humans because that would likely be the norm today, too. It’s all so insane, when you really think about it. When I see a person eating a chicken, cow, pig…the feelings that well up in me could be compared to a meat eater witnessing someone roasting a friendly and faithful golden retriever. We have an enormous amount of healing, delicious plants to eat and there is no longer any need to feel that eating plant-based is somehow a sacrifice. Eating a proper plant-based diet is what has helped me the most with improving serious health issues. This is what everyone’s body is designed to eat, yours included. To believe otherwise is a lie.
We thrive on plants, which are carbohydrate rich, generally lower in fat, nutrient rich and fibre rich. There are more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in plants than in flesh, and a plant-based diet furnishes more than adequate protein to sustain us. Where do the strongest animals – the elephants, the rhinos, the gorillas – get their protein from? All protein originates from plants. All B12 originates from a bacteria in the soil. All DHA originates from algae. There is nothing that the body needs that cannot be gotten from the plant kingdom. You are not a lion, you are not a bear, you are not a cat. You are human, and humans are supposed to eat plants. Any other belief is simply more programmed misinformation.
