Animal Slaughter Factsheet

Pigs

After an arduous journey, pigs are electrically shocked and beaten off the trucks into holding pens at slaughterhouses. Here they can remain for 24 hours without food and water.

Prior to slaughter the pigs are stunned, using one of two methods. Electric tongs can be placed on their temples, sending an electrical current though their brain which is supposed to result in a temporary loss of consciousness. Alternately, CO2 gas can be pumped into an airtight chamber, causing the pigs to lose consciousness after about 30 seconds. Both procedures are problematic. Electrical stunning is imprecise and its effectiveness is reliant upon the competency of the employee. Often the voltage is inadequate to stun the pigs properly. CO2 gas causes the pigs to panic and hyperventilate prior to losing conciousness.

After stunning, the pigs are shackled by their rear legs to an overhead trolley system. They are hoisted upside down and moved to the "sticker" who severs their jugular vein and carotid artery. As the pigs bleed to death, they are conveyed through a scalding tank to bleach their skin. Next they are disembowled, dismembered, and packaged for sale in your local grocery store.

Chickens

Upon arrival at the slaughterhouse, the stressed chickens are roughly pulled out of the transport crates. Their legs are forced into metal shackles on a conveyer belt, whereupon they are moved, upside down, to the stunning area. Here their heads are dragged through water that is electrically charged - intended to stun the birds before slaughter. However, they will often lift their heads and thus end up being slaughtered alive. Additionally, the electrical current is often set lower than necessary to render the birds unconscious (too much electricity is thought to damage the carcass).

The chickens continue on to an automatic spinning blade which is supposed to slit their throats. However, many of the differently sized birds have their chest cut open or the tops of their heads sliced off instead. Death from blood loss should occur at this point, but often doesn’t. Many birds go into the scalding tank fully conscious. Evisceration, dismemberment and packaging follows. Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns, estimates that every day in the United States (where slaughter procedures are identical to those used in Canada) at least 30,000 to 60,000 chickens enter the scalding tank alive.

Cattle

Dairy cows, calves, bulls and steers are slaughtered in much the same way that pigs are. After being driven into the knocking box, they are stunned with a captive bolt pistol. This device is a pneumatic or cartridge powered gun that fires a retractable piston into the centre of the animal’s forehead, inflicting unconsciousness through penetrating or impacting the skull.

Once again, this stunning procedure is imprecise, and it’s effectiveness is reliant upon competent and conscientious employees, a rarity in Canadian slaughterhouses.

In a recent report written by Dr. Temple Grandin, 3 out of 7 federally and provincially inspected slaughterhouses were given a failing grade for inhumane stunning techniques. The audit found that in some plants up to 30% of the cattle and veal calves were not stunned properly with the first shot of the captive bolt pistol and had to be re-stunned. Notably all of the facilities were warned in advance of the audit and were presumably on best behaviour.

Once unconscious, the animals are shackled by a hind leg, hoisted, and have their jugular vein and carotid artery cut, and bleed to death. Disembowlement, skinning and dismemberment follow.