Pigs to the slaughter
October 8, 2010 5:46 AM   Subscribe

Your future food being kicked, stamped on and inappropriately stunned. "Sickening" footage of British slaughterhouses captured by animal welfare charity Animal Aid may lead to CCTV footage being installed in all British abattoirs. Via The Guardian.
posted by londonmark (58 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Sickening" footage of British slaughterhouses captured by animal welfare charity Animal Aid may lead to CCTV footage being installed in all British abattoirs.

It is the British way!
posted by ninebelow at 6:00 AM on October 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


This would never, ever happen in the United States.

Cameras being installed in slaughterhouses, that is.
posted by Pants McCracky at 6:02 AM on October 8, 2010 [29 favorites]


CCTV was meant to keep human animals under control - not to protect the welfare of non-human ones. Don't pervert it that way.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:03 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


And what happens when it becomes entertainment? Britain's Got Slaughter!
posted by three blind mice at 6:08 AM on October 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


I saw a video over the summer of a chicken processing plant where they were de-beaking the chicks, sexing them, and the ones they didn't want (assuming male) were tossed live into... sorry, not going to continue since I don't know how to hide the text.
Not sure if knowing how food gets to our plate is a good or bad thing. I know it hasn't changed how I eat.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 6:15 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Cheap food has a cost. That cost is mostly paid in misery and pain.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:16 AM on October 8, 2010 [11 favorites]


In my moral universe, there's nothing wrong with eating meat. There's everything wrong, however, with our industrial food production (including both meat and plants) -- the impacts on the animals themselves, our environment, and eventually our health are just shameful.
posted by Forktine at 6:24 AM on October 8, 2010 [19 favorites]


Not sure if knowing how food gets to our plate is a good or bad thing. I know it hasn't changed how I eat.

--------------

Because you are ruled by corporations that bombard you with the message that your base survival instinct should be your primary motivator. There's no money to be made in enlightenment therefore it must be annihilated by fear at every turn.
posted by any major dude at 6:29 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Cheap food has a cost. That cost is mostly paid in misery and pain.

Yes, but just because Taco Bell causes me misery and pain when I eat it is no reason for it to trouble anyone else.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:30 AM on October 8, 2010 [3 favorites]


Next, ir cameras on the front of harvesting equipmentconnected to comical robot arms (with white gloves) that gently pick up and remove small animals from the path of the harvesting machinery instead of grinding them up.
posted by thylacine at 6:34 AM on October 8, 2010


There's no money to be made in enlightenment

Sure there is. Look at the boom in the organic food industry - people care about the how and where. Knowledge of the supply chain is good for the consumer, too - it makes choosing healthy food that supports your regional economy easier and more effective.

Would you really not care if the chicken you ate was raised free-range on a farm 30 minutes from where you live vs force-fed in a cage on a Chinese container ship? Is there a difference between pain felt by an animal and pain felt by a human?
posted by jimmythefish at 6:36 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


We need more Temple Grandins.
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:38 AM on October 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


I like this. Put webcams in for everyone to watch. And give every animal an RFID so you can match it up with pictures and track it from birth to slaughter to plate.
posted by pracowity at 6:44 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


I have a feeling we'll get lab grown meat long before we'll have humane slaughterhouses.
posted by geoff. at 6:44 AM on October 8, 2010 [8 favorites]


Because you are ruled by corporations that bombard you with the message that your base survival instinct should be your primary motivator. There's no money to be made in enlightenment therefore it must be annihilated by fear at every turn.

Say what? So eating is a base action and we should instead sit on a mountaintop and consume sunlight and air? (but those are wrong, too, because we're taking light away from plants and air away from other animals!) I guess sex and taking a good shit are base actions too, and we should never do them.

I grew up on a working farm, and I helped to raise and feed cows in addition to working in the field. I never had a direct hand in slaughtering a cow, but I did watch it. There is flat-out no non-disgusting way to render an animal down into it's component parts where it can be sold, stored, frozen, eaten, and etc.
That being said, there is a wide difference between slamming a sledge into a cow's head and outright tourtering them.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 6:46 AM on October 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


I have a feeling we'll get lab grown meat long before we'll have humane slaughterhouses.

While not a bad idea, you're running the risk of a monoculture.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 6:47 AM on October 8, 2010


jimmy, you are preaching to the converted. I was speaking in the voice of a corporate executive who refuses to stray from a profitable strategy because he's judge quarter to quarter. The only way to implement enlightened change is for us the consumer to demand it. Corporations are sociopaths when it comes to profits; they will do whatever they can get away with. The only reason "organic" has become popular is because consumers are demanding it. But of course, in true corporate fashion, corporations are just buying up organic brands then lobbying the government to relax organic standards.

As a meat eater I force myself to watch every video I come across of animal cruelty because I don't want to live in ignorance and I want to know the true price of of that $1.00 hamburger I can purchase without getting out of my car.
posted by any major dude at 6:50 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Sure there is. Look at the boom in the organic food industry

When that boom began, there was a lot of debate whether everyday people would pay significantly more for food just because it was safer, kinder, and more wholesome.

What we've learned over the years since is that yes, plenty of people will pay more for these qualities, but it's often the illusion of these qualities that they're buying instead. The boom in the organic food industry is actually a boom in the advertising and marketing industry, and while some legitimate organic food providers have certainly grown formidably, what most industry leaders have learned is that how their chickens or soybeans are actually treated in the field matters far less than what's written on the package and what store it ends up in -- it makes the difference between a 150% and a 350% retail markup.
posted by hermitosis at 6:51 AM on October 8, 2010 [5 favorites]


Cheap food has a cost. That cost is mostly paid in misery and pain.

Well, and in a reduction of regulation and a corresponding increase in foodborne illness.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:53 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I guess sex attacking the next village and raping all the local females are base actions too, and we should never do them.

You can change if you make the decision to do so.
posted by biffa at 6:54 AM on October 8, 2010


Intentional Ragefilter perhaps?
posted by timsteil at 6:57 AM on October 8, 2010


Say what? So eating is a base action and we should instead sit on a mountaintop and consume sunlight and air?

That's a Reductio ad absurdum argument. We don't need to eat meat every meal, we choose to do so because we are trained to believe it tastes better than any other option. If we all cut our meat eating down by half, we'd still eat plenty of meat but maybe out slaughterhouse workers wouldn't be under such deadline stress that they take out their frustration on the animals.
posted by any major dude at 6:58 AM on October 8, 2010


Too be fair it looks like those workers are placed in horrible positions where they are expected to control several full sized pigs by themselves. It isn't surprising that someone in that position uses electric tongs for purposes other than stunning or takes deliberate shortcuts in their work. It looks dangerous, exhausting and frustrating.

I'd say this is more extreme mismanagement than an example of deliberate pointless animal cruelty.
posted by srboisvert at 7:08 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


This doesn’t look like malicious maltreatment, as unpleasant as it is to watch. I suspect it’s symptomatic of the volume of animals going through the system and my fear is it will only get worse as the world population continues to grow. I'd like to think the trend for organic produce reveals a more conscientious attitude among the public, but I also dislike the organic industry tremendously for being smug and elitist; we cannot feed the world on pampered pigs.
posted by londonmark at 7:12 AM on October 8, 2010


I'd say this is more extreme mismanagement than an example of deliberate pointless animal cruelty.

Honestly, I think about 3/4 of the evil in the world is due to bad management. Sometimes it's just laziness and incompetence, sometimes it is cutting resources to the point where illegal or unethical activities are the only way to meet quotas. That saves money, gets the job done, and let's management say "it wasn't us, it was our underlings" when the shit hits the fan.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:13 AM on October 8, 2010 [10 favorites]


For me that's old news... the whole thing with the Seaboard Food video of the Guymon, Okla. plant back in 2000 or 2001 turned me solidly against most meat processors and opened my eyes to the magnitude of how immigrant labor is exploited. On top of that it's been our experience that a lot of older children have no idea where food comes from and sometimes don't even connect meat with its animal origins. That's understandable, but with generations of people growing up that way and regulators getting in bed regularly with agribusiness (what with lobbying and the revolving door) I suspect we are heading towards even more opacity of food sourcing and a lot less labelling. That's depressing. I feel like the only salvation here is from people like Temple Grandin who have managed to properly yoke humane treatment with efficiency.

That said, we're lucky to live out in the country and be in a position where we can take care of chickens and goats, give them good food, and get our meat and eggs from them. If you want something diametrically opposite of the meat processing horrors, take a look at this page (not ours) to regain sanity.
posted by crapmatic at 7:28 AM on October 8, 2010


Cut to Morrissey in 3, 2, 1...
posted by punkfloyd at 7:33 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Oh please, like the British would actually make anything resembling food.
posted by nomadicink at 7:41 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Ok, but no idea why: Morrissey. What, were you thinking something else?
posted by cjorgensen at 7:45 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


I saw a video over the summer of a chicken processing plant where they were de-beaking the chicks, sexing them, and the ones they didn't want (assuming male) were tossed live into... sorry, not going to continue since I don't know how to hide the text.

oh just put the text in with the undesirable chicks
posted by mannequito at 7:51 AM on October 8, 2010


This is the Morrissey link that punkfloyd probably meant.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:55 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


As an aside, the UK is often cited as having the highest number of CCTVs per population (source).
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:55 AM on October 8, 2010


Cheap food has a cost. That cost is mostly paid in misery and pain.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:16 AM on October 8

Actually here in Tescoland - oops, I mean, the UK - organic and free-range foods generally cost more or less the same as the evil variety.

One might speculate it is due to our public concern for this sort of thing. The fact that it made pretty big news today corroborates this. If anything I'd say the public Zeitgeist tends towards excessive sentimentality about animals.

Totally hate this kind of animal abuse though. Glad it was exposed.
posted by KMH at 8:00 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'd say this is more extreme mismanagement than an example of deliberate pointless animal cruelty.

I've worked with livestock including cattle and pigs and I have to somewhat agree with srboisvert here. Those workers should not have been placed in those dangerous conditions to start with. I don't think we can dismiss the workers' actions, but we should also take their situation into account. One of those full-sized pigs alone could tear a man apart and no one should be left in a box with three or four of them like that. Better working conditions can often mean better workers.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:02 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


Anything which increases the price of meat is OK by me.

Of course, any actual legislation will cause more of the meat to be produced overseas leading to an extra reliance on international trade and deeper unemployment.

But hey. As long as we all get cheap burgers.
posted by seanyboy at 8:03 AM on October 8, 2010


Of course, any actual legislation will cause more of the meat to be produced overseas leading to an extra reliance on international trade and deeper unemployment.

Yup. Not to mention putting the bulk of farm animals back in the path of unregulated slaughterhouses.
posted by londonmark at 8:20 AM on October 8, 2010


Anything which increases the price of meat is OK by me.

Already happening, so I guess you're happy, but hey, so is the cost of veggies!
posted by Old'n'Busted at 8:25 AM on October 8, 2010


The boom in the organic food industry is actually a boom in the advertising and marketing industry

This is certainly true, but they coexist, rather than strictly contrast. If the attraction of a whacking premium brings about more ethical standards in farming or food production, then great.

What is actually happening is not that food manufacturers are rolling in cash at unearned mark ups on organic food. For one thing, at the start of the recession, organic sales dropped quite significantly in lots of places. In other words, it shook out a lot of stuff where shoppers didn't think the premium was worthwhile.

Shopper expectations are pretty dynamic and responses to this work in cycles. The premium for just being "organic" erodes as organic supply goes up. If you take an example of [washed] UK carrots, for example, the organic premium in Asda is about 32%, like for like. Not bad, but organic produce is inherently costlier to produce, so some of the premium is taken by costs.

In time, if not "organic" then "more ethical" becomes more mainstream. Cadbury, for example, now sources plain old Dairy Milk chocolate fairtrade, where it was once the preserve of its premium Green & Blacks brand.

The same is true of animal products - in the UK, an early revolution in free range eggs has also led to a more general movement away from battery farming. It's a long journey, and producers certainly aren't there yet, but the marketing-led premiums are a useful incentive in changing both patterns of demand and husbandry.

Admittedly, the US is behind the curve on this - I'm still amazed at how much crappy, processed shit forms part of the main supermarket offering in the US. By contrast, Whole Foods has struggled over in the UK because our supermarkets got on the organic/ethical wagon early and commitedly.
posted by MuffinMan at 8:26 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


KMH: "Cheap food has a cost. That cost is mostly paid in misery and pain.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:16 AM on October 8

Actually here in Tescoland - oops, I mean, the UK - organic and free-range foods generally cost more or less the same as the evil variety.

One might speculate it is due to our public concern for this sort of thing. The fact that it made pretty big news today corroborates this. If anything I'd say the public Zeitgeist tends towards excessive sentimentality about animals.

Totally hate this kind of animal abuse though. Glad it was exposed.
"

Not sure I see that - for instance non-battery farmed whole chickens round my way (Edinburgh, Tesco across the road for reference) are £3-4 more than 'Tesco Value' chickens.

Agreed on this being exposed. It doesn't surprise me though. A friend of mine worked in an abattoir as a cleaner for a summer job and said working in that kind of environment can lead to a real destruction of empathy for animals, especially livestock.

Some of the things in this video are beyond the pale. Booting an animal in the side, sticking shock tongs in their side, shocking an animal over and over again for no apparent reason. It's sickening.

At best, these abattoir workers are being lazy and using brute force to deal with frightened animals. At worst, they're willingly torturing them.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:33 AM on October 8, 2010


Would you really not care if the chicken you ate was raised free-range on a farm 30 minutes from where you live vs force-fed in a cage on a Chinese container ship?

I'm late to this thread, but care to provide a citation for this? Last I read, China is reacting to the US dumping chicken into it's market. It might only be a small tit-for-tat reaction on China's part, but I think China chicken exports would be raised as a counter argument in the links if they had container ships delivering chooks to the US.
posted by michswiss at 9:13 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I have a feeling we'll get lab grown meat long before we'll have humane slaughterhouses.

But we'll get human slaughterhouses someday, right?

Wait, I read that wrong.
posted by swift at 10:01 AM on October 8, 2010


Oh please, like the British would actually make anything resembling food.

I'm so bored of this shit. It's such an ignorant thing to say. And bizarre, coming from someone from the land of American Cheese.
posted by Lleyam at 10:33 AM on October 8, 2010 [7 favorites]


Actually here in Tescoland - oops, I mean, the UK - organic and free-range foods generally cost more or less the same as the evil variety.
posted by KMH at 4:00 PM on October 8


No way!

Tesco "Market Value" chicken breast fillets: £6.56/kg
Tesco Finest (the only option for FR) free range chicken breast fillets: £13.19/kg

Whole "Market Value" chicken: £3.56
Whole free range chicken: £9.55

...It just ain't true.
posted by dickasso at 10:33 AM on October 8, 2010


I helped move a cow this year, get it ready to head to the slaughter house. Reason being, if I helped move the cow I'd get some of the meat. So I said, "let's do this thing."
I'd seen the cow, petted the cow, asked about the cow. It was my uncle's, he decided to raise a grass-fed cow. Not because he's a progressive, but because, in his words, "didn't want to deal with all that feed and stuff." So the cow took three years to grow instead of one.

The thing I remember most about moving the cow was the fellow from the slaughterhouse. He brought a trailer to the barn, and we had to somehow get the cow in the trailer. And he said, "now be nice, and the cow will move itself." And he was so kind to that cow, he had a little cane that he used to gently convince her to leave her stall, and he kept saying, "now now, sis, now now, come on sis." There was absolutely nothing "brutal" or horrible about it. And I asked about his slaughter house and he said he keeps it very clean and the cows don't know they're going to die before they die. It's over in an instant.

I don't know if there's a point to this story but it really reinforced, for me, some deep longing I had to know more about where my food comes from and how it gets to the plate.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:01 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


In time, if not "organic" then "more ethical" becomes more mainstream. Cadbury, for example, now sources plain old Dairy Milk chocolate fairtrade, where it was once the preserve of its premium Green & Blacks brand.

Which is awesome because currently fair trade / organic certification is the only assurance one can have that their chocolate isn't being picked by child slaves.
posted by jtron at 11:02 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Happened in Germany a few years ago, and even in tidy and orderly Sweden. 2 self-links here and here (can't very well be avoided unless you read Swedish).
posted by Namlit at 11:13 AM on October 8, 2010


And bizarre, coming from someone from the land of American Cheese.

Great, now you've gone and pissed off Wisconsin. But if you were talking about slice/processed cheese food product, that would be a Swiss invention and not actually (legally) an American cheese or American Cheese (which is more of a chedder/colby mix) for that matter.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:20 AM on October 8, 2010


Incidentally, I recently learned that if you removed all the food coloring from a brick of Velveeta, it would be clear.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 11:22 AM on October 8, 2010 [2 favorites]


Tesco "Market Value" chicken breast fillets: £6.56/kg
Tesco Finest (the only option for FR) free range chicken breast fillets: £13.19/kg

IIRC, Co-op's free-range chicken costs 6 pounds and tastes like chicken.
posted by ersatz at 11:30 AM on October 8, 2010


Oh please, like the British would actually make anything resembling food.

I'm so bored of this shit. It's such an ignorant thing to say. And bizarre, coming from someone from the land of American Cheese.


This is of course both silly. I ate some awesome cheese in the States, apart from some of the most fantastic meals I've ever had. And I seem to be able to buy pretty decent food here in the UK too (and prepare it myself, so...).
posted by Namlit at 11:31 AM on October 8, 2010


I've visited a slaughterhouse twice in my life. Once as a kid when a mate and I decided it would be big yuks to go and get some organs for dissection. Well, "Big yuks" turned out to be not a very appropriate description of the experience, not least because a couple of the workers decided that grossing out stupid kids would be a pretty funny thing to do. We asked for that. The second time was when I worked on the Defra (then MAFF) project that dealt with the BSE crisis in the UK. On that occasion we saw nothing like these abuses although it certainly wasn't a pleasant experience (hard to imagine how killing animals en masse could be.) Of course, the fact that the workers knew a MAFF contingent was doing a tour might have been a factor there.

Oh please, like the British would actually make anything resembling food.
posted by nomadicink at 3:41 PM on October 8


I realise you're probably not serious here, but you should consider that this joke is so far past its sell-by date that when you make it the laugh is on you, because you are simply showing how ignorant you are of how good British food is today, and has been since the nineties.
posted by Decani at 11:43 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


must be tough to keep your morals straight when your job is to kill animals all day
posted by loggy23 at 12:54 PM on October 8, 2010


because you are simply showing how ignorant you are of how good British food is today, and has been since the nineties.

Oh, it's a total joke of course, based on personal dislike. I'm glad to hear that the British finally got decent food late in the 20th century.

And yes processed "American" cheese does suck, but luckily Vermont and Wisconsin saved us in that area.
posted by nomadicink at 1:10 PM on October 8, 2010


I realise you're probably not serious here, but you should consider that this joke is so far past its sell-by date

TOO RIGHT. WE GOT NYLONS AND DENTISTS AS WELL!
posted by MuffinMan at 1:20 PM on October 8, 2010


I'm quite disturbed by some of the comments here which go quite some way towards justifying the behaviours of workers shown in the video (e.g. that it "doesn't look like malicious treatment"). Administering electric shocks to the tail (i.e. the spinal cord) is unambiguously and wantonly cruel.

Just because this treatment is meted out to animals that are about to be slaughtered does not make it acceptable. This is no different to any other incidence of animal cruelty, for example, the recent case of a horse that was tortured or the older spate of possum (that's Australian possums) torturing that happened in my own neighbourhood, both of which are sickening.
posted by Alice Russel-Wallace at 8:14 PM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm glad to hear that the British finally got decent food late in the 20th century.

Dear god. Grow up. The British had pretty poor food for much of the 20th century because our economy was devastated from fighting a fucking war.
posted by Lleyam at 7:43 AM on October 9, 2010


The British had pretty poor food for much of the 20th century because our economy was devastated from fighting a fucking war.

The rationing (which did last a crazy long time) definitely played a role. But I don't think that it totally explains the deliberately and happily brutal approach to food that you still find in a lot of households there. You know, boiling the vegies until they are mush, emphasizing the bland, etc. Even though UK restaurant food is now amazing, and there have been small immigrant-run places serving tasty food in the cities for a good half a century or more, not much of that seems to have penetrated into the day to day cooking of many people.

It's like the British dentistry jokes -- those jokes are old and tired, and yet there's still something visually distinctive about British dentition, so those jokes keep being told.
posted by Forktine at 7:53 AM on October 9, 2010


You know, boiling the vegies until they are mush, emphasizing the bland, etc. Even though UK restaurant food is now amazing, and there have been small immigrant-run places serving tasty food in the cities for a good half a century or more, not much of that seems to have penetrated into the day to day cooking of many people.

I respectfully suggest that you are talking from a position of less-than-extensive recent experience of how modern British people cook at home.
posted by Decani at 11:58 AM on October 11, 2010


« Older "For his long and non-violent struggle for...   |   You May Say I'm a Dreamer Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments