12-24-2015, 01:39 AM
Quotes from pig slaughterhouse workers across the country ranging in title from worker, to foreman, to supervisor, to USDA employee..... Something to consider when planning your Christmas dinner:
“We get them in from Canada. I’ve seen as many as sixty dead ones off a truck.”
“In the wintertime there are always hogs stuck to the sides and floors of the trucks. They go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs loose. The skin pulls right off. These hogs were alive when we did this.”
“They freeze to that steel railing. They’re still alive, and they’ll hook a cable on it and pull it out, maybe pull a leg off.”
“The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute. It’s called ‘piping.’ All the drivers use pipes to kills hogs that can’t go through the chutes.”
“Two or three drivers chase the hogs up [the chutes]. They prod them a lot because the hogs don’t want to go. When hogs smell blood, they don’t want to go.”
“These hogs are raised in confinement and the trip through the plant is probably a half-mile long. They’ve never walked like that in their lives.”
“Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in the chute that’s had the s*** prodded out of him and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him backwards. You’re dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I’ve seem hams-thighs-completely ripped open. I’ve also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward.”
“I’ve seen hogs beaten, whipped, kicked in the head to get them up to the restrainer (restricts pigs on their sides, and transports them to the stun operator). I’ve seen hog drivers take their prod and shove it up the hog’s ass to get them to move.”
“If you get a hog that refuses to go in the chutes and is stopping production, you beat him to death. Then push him off to the side and hang him up later.”
“If a hog don’t want to go up to the restrainer and you don’t have a pipe handy, you shove the [electric] prod in his eye. And you hold it in his eye. And that changes his attitude.”
“You’re under all this stress, all this pressure. And it really sounds mean but, I’ve taken prods and stuck them in their eyes and held them there.”
Hogs are stunned electrically rather than mechanically; electrodes held to the pig’s head and back send a three-second jolt of current through its body; knocking the animal out. If the animal was excessively prodded on its way to the stunner, or if the stun operator improperly applied the electrodes, the jolt would burst capillaries in the hog’s back making the meat look bruised or bloody, thus lowering its value.
“Management was constantly complaining to us about blown loins. They claimed that when the stunner voltage was set too high it tore up the meat. The supervisors always wanted it on low stun no matter what size hogs we were stunning. Then when you got big sows and boars in the restrainer, the stunner wouldn’t work at all.”
Adequately stunned or not, the hogs then slide down onto a conveyor table where a shackler wraps a shackle around one of the hind legs and hoists the animal up onto the moving chain.
“The blood collection tank filled up so fast, when they hogs came through the stick pit, their whole heads might be hanging in the blood…. I can remember conscious hogs blowing bubbles in the blood collection tanks – it was sickening.”
“I yelled so much about having to stick (severe the major blood vessels leading to and from the animal’s heart) live hogs, the stun operator would double-stun them. I’d watch him hitting them two and three times, and still they’d come through conscious. I’ve seen hogs stunned up to twelve times…. It’s amazing the willpower these animals have.”
“I was sticking about nine hundred hogs an hour, which wouldn’t be that hard if they were stunned right. But when most of them are fully conscious, kicking and biting at you, it’s like…”
“They’d say, ‘That’s just muscle reaction, nerves. It’s not alive.’ I’d say, ‘Then why’s the damn hog trying to BITE me? Just how stupid do you think I am?”
“It got to the point where if I had a live hog come at me and I had time, I’d take a lead pipe and beat if over the head until it was knocked out enough for me to stick it. When the supervisor would complain about cracked skulls I’d say, ‘Look, I’m just trying to keep my own skull from being busted’.”
“When that hog comes at me alive, I don’t care where I him – whether I hit him high or I hit him low. I just poke a hole in him and get out as fast as I can. That’s all that’s required of me. I don’t care if he bleeds good or not.”
“The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in that stick pit for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things, but doesn’t let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that’s walking around down in the blood pit with you and think, God, that really isn’t a bad looking animal. You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them – beat them to death with a pipe. I can’t care.”
“Down in the blood pit they say that the smell of blood makes you aggressive. And it does. You get an attitude that if that hog kicks me, I’m going to get even. You’re already going to kill the hog, but that’s not enough. It has to suffer. When you get a live one you think, Oh good, I’m going to beat this sucker.”
“After a while you become desensitized. And as far as animals go, they’re a lower life-form. They’re maybe one step above a maggot.”
“Because of the line speed, the sticker only gets one chance to make a good stick hole, or the hog bleeds real slow. The sticker doesn’t have time to go digging around for arteries.”
“After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they’re dunked in 140 degree water. That’s to scald their hair off. There’s no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they’re still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time.”
“These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water and start screaming and kicking… it was obvious what was going on because I could hear them screaming. Sooner or later they drown. There’s a rotating arm that pushes them under, no chance for them to get out. I’m not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing.”
“What the public sees is fancy labels, but those of us inside the walls can tell the truth about what the vast majority have never seen.”
Please think about what these non-human animals and human workers had to go through before you buy, cook, or eat a ‘Christmas ham’ this holiday.
“We get them in from Canada. I’ve seen as many as sixty dead ones off a truck.”
“In the wintertime there are always hogs stuck to the sides and floors of the trucks. They go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs loose. The skin pulls right off. These hogs were alive when we did this.”
“They freeze to that steel railing. They’re still alive, and they’ll hook a cable on it and pull it out, maybe pull a leg off.”
“The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute. It’s called ‘piping.’ All the drivers use pipes to kills hogs that can’t go through the chutes.”
“Two or three drivers chase the hogs up [the chutes]. They prod them a lot because the hogs don’t want to go. When hogs smell blood, they don’t want to go.”
“These hogs are raised in confinement and the trip through the plant is probably a half-mile long. They’ve never walked like that in their lives.”
“Hogs get stressed out pretty easy. If you prod them too much they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in the chute that’s had the s*** prodded out of him and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone. Then you drag him backwards. You’re dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I’ve seem hams-thighs-completely ripped open. I’ve also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward.”
“I’ve seen hogs beaten, whipped, kicked in the head to get them up to the restrainer (restricts pigs on their sides, and transports them to the stun operator). I’ve seen hog drivers take their prod and shove it up the hog’s ass to get them to move.”
“If you get a hog that refuses to go in the chutes and is stopping production, you beat him to death. Then push him off to the side and hang him up later.”
“If a hog don’t want to go up to the restrainer and you don’t have a pipe handy, you shove the [electric] prod in his eye. And you hold it in his eye. And that changes his attitude.”
“You’re under all this stress, all this pressure. And it really sounds mean but, I’ve taken prods and stuck them in their eyes and held them there.”
Hogs are stunned electrically rather than mechanically; electrodes held to the pig’s head and back send a three-second jolt of current through its body; knocking the animal out. If the animal was excessively prodded on its way to the stunner, or if the stun operator improperly applied the electrodes, the jolt would burst capillaries in the hog’s back making the meat look bruised or bloody, thus lowering its value.
“Management was constantly complaining to us about blown loins. They claimed that when the stunner voltage was set too high it tore up the meat. The supervisors always wanted it on low stun no matter what size hogs we were stunning. Then when you got big sows and boars in the restrainer, the stunner wouldn’t work at all.”
Adequately stunned or not, the hogs then slide down onto a conveyor table where a shackler wraps a shackle around one of the hind legs and hoists the animal up onto the moving chain.
“The blood collection tank filled up so fast, when they hogs came through the stick pit, their whole heads might be hanging in the blood…. I can remember conscious hogs blowing bubbles in the blood collection tanks – it was sickening.”
“I yelled so much about having to stick (severe the major blood vessels leading to and from the animal’s heart) live hogs, the stun operator would double-stun them. I’d watch him hitting them two and three times, and still they’d come through conscious. I’ve seen hogs stunned up to twelve times…. It’s amazing the willpower these animals have.”
“I was sticking about nine hundred hogs an hour, which wouldn’t be that hard if they were stunned right. But when most of them are fully conscious, kicking and biting at you, it’s like…”
“They’d say, ‘That’s just muscle reaction, nerves. It’s not alive.’ I’d say, ‘Then why’s the damn hog trying to BITE me? Just how stupid do you think I am?”
“It got to the point where if I had a live hog come at me and I had time, I’d take a lead pipe and beat if over the head until it was knocked out enough for me to stick it. When the supervisor would complain about cracked skulls I’d say, ‘Look, I’m just trying to keep my own skull from being busted’.”
“When that hog comes at me alive, I don’t care where I him – whether I hit him high or I hit him low. I just poke a hole in him and get out as fast as I can. That’s all that’s required of me. I don’t care if he bleeds good or not.”
“The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in that stick pit for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things, but doesn’t let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that’s walking around down in the blood pit with you and think, God, that really isn’t a bad looking animal. You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them – beat them to death with a pipe. I can’t care.”
“Down in the blood pit they say that the smell of blood makes you aggressive. And it does. You get an attitude that if that hog kicks me, I’m going to get even. You’re already going to kill the hog, but that’s not enough. It has to suffer. When you get a live one you think, Oh good, I’m going to beat this sucker.”
“After a while you become desensitized. And as far as animals go, they’re a lower life-form. They’re maybe one step above a maggot.”
“Because of the line speed, the sticker only gets one chance to make a good stick hole, or the hog bleeds real slow. The sticker doesn’t have time to go digging around for arteries.”
“After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they’re dunked in 140 degree water. That’s to scald their hair off. There’s no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they’re still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time.”
“These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water and start screaming and kicking… it was obvious what was going on because I could hear them screaming. Sooner or later they drown. There’s a rotating arm that pushes them under, no chance for them to get out. I’m not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing.”
“What the public sees is fancy labels, but those of us inside the walls can tell the truth about what the vast majority have never seen.”
Please think about what these non-human animals and human workers had to go through before you buy, cook, or eat a ‘Christmas ham’ this holiday.