What really happens in slaughterhouses?

All slaughterhouses have rules and regulations around animal welfare. Yet, safety and welfare violations are the norm. Time and again, government inspections and undercover investigations reveal gross mistreatment and horrific abuses. There is simply no incentive to treat animals with kindness or respect when the meat industry only profits off animals that have been killed, skinned, disemboweled, dismembered, and cut into pieces.

Every single day, a staggering 200 million land animals—cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, and ducks—are sent to slaughterhouses. None go willingly, and none leave alive or intact. This doesn't happen without relentless violence.

Those 200 million land animals are just the ones who survive long enough to reach the slaughterhouse. 26% of farmed animals die from injury, illness, or neglect on factory farms. During transport to slaughter, in the U.S. alone, more than 20 million animals die each year from existing injuries, new injuries incurred while being loaded, being crushed under the bodies of their families and friends, dehydration, or some agonizing combination of all of the above.

Animals are brutally beaten and abused

Any animal who survives long enough to reach the slaughterhouse is beyond frightened and confused. In fact, in that last stretch of the drive to slaughter, the terror only intensifies for cows, who've been proven to be intelligent and emotional, and who can smell blood from a half-mile away. Pigs, also renowned for being smart and sensitive, are highly empathic. Each pig feels when others are scared or stressed, and so they feed off each other's emotions—not unlike a crowd of people. The last thing any of these animals wants to do is step off the truck and march into the place that, to them, reeks of danger and death.

In spite of the fear and chaos animals experience upon arrival, these facilities attempt to quickly funnel each animal into the slaughter line to maximize efficiency. To keep the frightened and injured animals moving, one slaughterhouse worker recalls routine—yet extreme—violence:

“If you get a hog in a chute that... has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his [anus]. You’re dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out... I’ve seen 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.”

It's horrific enough to imagine the treatment that animals endure in slaughterhouses—however, these words are a testament to what working in a slaughterhouse does to people, too. This is but one of many candid first-hand accounts documented in Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz.

Psychological trauma and PTSD in slaughterhouse workers

The meat industry tasks slaughterhouse workers—who are demoralized, underpaid, overworked, and even denied bathroom breaks—with killing as many animals as possible, as quickly as possible. Such grueling, grisly work leads to slaughterhouse workers suffering much higher-than-average rates of serious psychological distress (SPD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), the latter of which is brought on by the repetitive infliction of harm.

The violence doesn't end when slaughterhouse workers clock out, either. Research shows that routine, institutionalized animal abuse feeds into violence against other people. In fact, communities dominated by slaughterhouses face increased crime rates.

A slaughterhouse worker describes being desensitized to violence and killing:

"The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] 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 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 to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care. I was killing things. My attitude was, it's only an animal. Kill it. Sometimes I'd look at people that way, too. I've had ideas of hanging my foreman upside down on the line and sticking him."

Workers who are able to leave the killing behind them are forever haunted. For the BBC, a former slaughterhouse employee confesses:

"I didn't suffer physical injuries, but the place affected my mind... At night, my mind would taunt me with nightmares, replaying some of the horrors I'd witnessed throughout the day... I still sometimes see hundreds of pairs of eyeballs [of severed cows' heads] staring back at me."

Why are slaughterhouses to cruel?

Simply put, there is no humane or ethical way to kill an animal who does not want to die, much less one animal after another. No animal volunteers to be reduced to a hamburger, strip of bacon, pink slime, or "fingers." No animal donates their thighs or ribs to satiate the craving of a person who could just as easily eat something that never trembled in fear.

Every animal that winds up at the slaughterhouse is terrified. Each animal can smell, hear, see, and feel the anguish of the other creatures being killed and butchered before them. But, no animal can ever fathom why any of this is happening. There is no point of reference elsewhere in the animal kingdom. No other species inflicts this much harm upon billions of other animals year after year.

How can we stop slaughterhouses?

Slaughterhouses only exist for as long as we outsource the killing and butchering most of us don’t even have the stomach for. Production and supply ends when consumers demand slaughter-free foods.

Leave animals off your plate and go vegan

It's never been easier—or more socially acceptable—to embrace a plant-based lifestyle. In fact, 62% of US households regularly buy plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs to prepare for family and friends at home, and that number has been growing year after year.

Supporting slaughter-free, plant-based meat alternatives

Plant-based but super meaty Beyond and Impossible Burgers are taking over the menus of fast-food chains everywhere, along with tacos and burritos, and even corned beef. Beyond fast food, eat locally and support small businesses while discovering new favourite restaurants on Happy Cow. Every dollar you spend on plant-based foods is a vote to close slaughterhouses.

Raising awareness

Although it may feel like you're bucking the status quo, you're not alone in  caring about the suffering of animals, and wanting to put a stop to it. There's a whole movement of compassionate individuals who are working to put a stop to the abuse of animals raised for food. And, this movement grows when you raise awareness for the cruelty of factory farms and slaughterhouses—even just by telling your friends and family.

In fact, you might already encourage family and friends to make choices that support the health of the planet and other beings, like recycle, or drive a fuel-efficient vehicle, or avoid products that are tested on animals. You might already be one of the people choosing plant milk over cow's milk because you know it's better for you, for the planet, and for the animals. Societal changes always start small. But when enough people care, that makes all the difference.

Demand an end to the atrocities

In 2022, records of investigations into poultry slaughterhouses across the country exposed the myriad of shocking violations that take place within them, every day. USDA inspectors found broken legs, broken necks, and birds boiled alive, still fluttering their wings and blinking their eyes. Chickens deserve better than this horrific violence in our broken food sytem. Together, we can raise awareness and call on the chicken industry to put an end to this cruelty.