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STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY
Endangering Life: Working at a Slaughterhouse - P1/2
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The images
in the following program
are very sensitive
and may be
as disturbing to viewers
as they were to us.
However,
we have to show the truth
about cruelty to animals.
Conscientious viewers,
this is Stop Animal Cruelty
on Supreme Master
Television.
This week in the first
of a two-part series
on abattoir employees,
we’ll look closely at
the slaughterhouse,
one of the most dangerous
workplaces on Earth,
and examine how
meat consumption means
our fellow human beings
laboring at these sites
are subjected daily
to extremely
traumatic experiences
that damage their physical,
emotional, mental
and spiritual well-being.
In 1906, meat sales
in the US dropped by 50%
after publication
of “The Jungle” by
journalist Upton Sinclair.
The novel, which depicts
the shocking labor
conditions of the era’s
slaughtering and
meat processing industries,
led then US President
Theodore Roosevelt
to institute a series of
industry-wide
legislative reforms.
Over a century has passed
since the release
of Sinclair’s book
and US citizens are now
eating more meat
per person than
they were 100 years ago.
The gruesome picture
painted in “The Jungle”
has been mostly forgotten,
and the chilling story
behind the pallid flesh
wrapped in plastic
at supermarkets
remains largely a mystery
to the public.
In 1997, the meat
industry’s dark secrets
were again unveiled by
another American author,
Gail A. Eisnitz,
chief investigator
for the Humane Farming
Association.
In her award-winning
book “Slaughterhouse,”
Ms. Eisnitz describes
the horrendous treatment
of animals,
the disease-ridden products
and the appallingly filthy,
dangerous
work environment
of the industry’s
mass-killing facilities.
Her report is
based on interviews with
a large number of former
slaughterhouse workers,
whose experience
in such workplaces
amounts to more than
two-million hours.
More and more former
meat industry employees
are coming forward
to testify as to
what’s really happening
behind the concrete walls
of these places of death.
For example,
the late Virgil Butler,
who worked at a large
US poultry slaughterhouse,
quit and became a vegan
advocate for
animal and human rights,
publicly exposing
the obscene conditions
of these murder houses
where workers have to
butcher as many as
80,000 chickens
in an eight-hour shift.
I was born in
a small rural community
and grew up
in small rural community
in Southern Ozarks in
northwestern Arkansas.
I started catching chickens
when I was
fourteen years old.
I caught chickens
all the way through
my high school years.
Over the decades,
the meat industry
in the US and elsewhere
has consolidated
and been in pursuit of
ever higher profits.
The result is
extreme animal abuse
and worker injuries
being the norm as an
utterly disgusting product
contaminated with
feces, pus, pathogens,
chemicals, and drugs
is mass produced.
They work
day in and day out,
shackling animals,
sending them
to their deaths
and slitting their throats.
It’s a violent place to work
and is not only physically
dangerous and demanding
but it’s also
emotionally damaging
for the workers themselves.
So we see
that slaughterhouses are
not only one of
the most dangerous jobs
in the nation to work at,
but many of the people
that are working there
suffer themselves
from having to witness
so much cruelty
and violence
on a regular basis.
Injuries and illness are
so numerous that
it would be hard for me
to describe them all.
I have arthritis
in my hip my knee,
my wrist, my knuckles,
my elbows, my shoulders,
and that’s not at all
uncommon.
Mr. Butler’s account
does not describe
an isolated case.
In the Human Rights
Watch report,
“Blood, Sweat and Fear:
Workers’ Rights in US
Meat and Poultry Plants,”
almost all
the slaughterhouse workers
interviewed
suffered severe injuries
“reflected in their scars,
swellings, rashes,
amputations, blindness,
or other afflictions.”
In the book
“Slaughterhouse,”
Ed Van Winkle, a former
abattoir employee recalls
the following regarding
a large scar on his neck:
“I got cut
across my jugular.
I was scared,
scared to death.
Stitches go
with the territory
in a packing house.
I can live with stitches.
I can live with getting cut
once in a while.
What I can’t live with is
cutting my own throat.”
According to the US
Department of Labor,
one out of every three
slaughterhouse workers
is plagued with
work-related injuries
or ailments.
The actual rate is believed
to be even higher,
because the workers are
afraid of losing their jobs
if they report their cases.
And even if they do,
their claims are
largely dismissed
by management in order to
reduce insurance costs.
One major factor
in the high incidence
of slaughterhouse injuries
is fast line speed.
Each year,
60-billion animals are
slaughtered worldwide
for meat.
In the US alone,
270 chickens are
massacred every second.
To kill the innocent
at such a pace, workers
are required to slaughter
more and more animals
in less and less time.
In large facilities,
a sickening 400 cows,
1,100 pigs
or 8,400 chickens
are killed every hour.
To achieve these levels
of death, workers have to
cut a staggering number
of animals each minute
on lines
that never slow down.
As recorded in a 2009
Human Rights Watch
report, a worker from
a North Carolina, USA
pig slaughterhouse states,
“The line is so fast,
there is no time
to sharpen the knife.
The knife gets dull and
you have to cut harder.
That’s when it really
starts to hurt, and that’s
when you cut yourself.”
And a former
slaughterhouse nurse
commented, “I could
always tell the line speed
by the number of people
with lacerations
coming into my office.”
After these messages,
Stop Animal Cruelty will
continue with more on
the profoundly dangerous
working conditions
in slaughterhouses.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.
You’re watching
Stop Animal Cruelty
on Supreme Master
Television.
Our topic today is
the brutal
working environment
of slaughterhouses.
As the line speed
becomes faster and faster
in abattoirs, the animals
are often inadequately
stunned or bled
before being passed on
to the next station.
To keep the line moving,
the employees are forced
to handle or cut on
fully conscious animals
thrashing about
for their lives.
Many worker injuries
are caused by
jerking cows or pigs
hung by their hind legs,
bleeding from cut throats,
vomiting, urinating
and defecating out
of extreme pain and fear.
In the case of poultry,
the amperage
of electrical stunners
is simply not set
high enough to knock
the animals unconscious,
but just enough
to loosen the muscles that
hold their feathers in place.
The savage goal
is to let the feathers
fall off easily without
bursting the blood vessels,
which creates
the “undesirable” color
of blood in the meat.
The fully conscious birds
thus kick, bite or scratch
the workers who hang them
on the moving racks until
their throats are slashed
by motorized blades.
We had 92,000,
92,000 chickens to run
in eight hours.
Well, here we are,
we started out,
at probably a half-hour
into the shift,
the machine broke down,
the killing machine
broke down.
Well, instead of
stopping the plant,
doing the maintenance,
putting the machine
back online
they sent two guys in there
to drag the machine out
and a guy standing there
with the knife
Aaron Harris had to kill
for the rest of the night
without the benefit
of the machine, which is
try to kill a hundred-and-
eighty-six chickens
a minute
without missing any.
It’s not uncommon
for a line worker
to repeat the same action
every other second, whether
it’s hoisting live animals
or cutting carcasses.
Due to the highly
repetitive nature of the job,
stress injuries afflict
slaughterhouse employees.
A former poultry worker
relates,
“I hung the live birds
on the line.
Grab, reach, jerk, lift.
Without stopping
for hours every day …
after a time,
you see what happens.
Your arms stick out and
your hands are frozen.
Look at me now.
I’m twenty-two years old,
and I feel like an old man.”
Serious injuries also arise
from workers slipping
on concrete floors awash
with blood, urine, vomit
and other body fluids.
One slaughterhouse
employee recalls,
“I slipped on remnants
on the floor.
I hurt my back, my hips
and my leg. …
I could hardly walk.
The company doctor
told me I was Okay
and to go back to work.
But I couldn’t
stand the pain.
I went out on sick leave.
The company fired me
for missing time.”
The equipment
and workspace
of a slaughterhouse are
coated with animal blood,
remnants of body parts,
pus and even tape worms.
After one investigation,
Joe Fahey
a former food processing
representative of a union
called the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters
said, “People were crying,
talking about
being covered in diarrhea
the entire shift
because the supervisor
wouldn’t let them
go to the bathroom.”
Contaminants
such as the pathogens
from sick animals
are deadly.
Livestock sold
to slaughterhouses
often carry oozing wounds,
pneumonia and cancers.
Disease agents such as
bacteria or viruses
can be transmitted
to the employees
through animal feces,
vomit, blood, direct contact
or polluted air.
A study conducted by
Professor Ellen Kovner
Silbergeld, Ph.D. of the
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School
of Public Health, USA
revealed that 50%
of poultry workers are
infected with the bacteria
Campylobacter jejuni,
which is
the second leading cause
of gastrointestinal disease
in the US.
This is not the end
of the story.
Because of the massive
overuse of antibiotics
such as penicillin and
tetracycline in animal feed,
some animal-borne
bacteria are
antibiotic-resistant
super-germs, like
Methicillin-Resistant
Staphylococcus Aureus
or MRSA
which render traditional
medicines useless.
These deadly pathogens
can be passed on to
workers’ family members
and further
into the community.
Slaughterhouse
environments are full of
allergy-causing agents,
which can lead to flare-ups,
asthma and even death.
In an interview with
Human Rights Watch,
one slaughterhouse
employee said,
“I am sick at work
with a cold and
breathing problems …
I have red rashes
on my arms and hands,
and the skin
between my fingers
is dry and cracked.
I think I have an allergic
reaction to hogs.
But I’m afraid
to say anything about this
because I’m afraid
they will fire me.”
Driven by greed
to maximize profits,
slaughterhouse owners
use poisonous chemicals
such as carbon monoxide
to make their meat
products look fresh
and ammonia to kill
the millions of microbes
in meat.
Exposure
to these substances
poses a major health threat
to workers,
as numerous incidences
of ammonia leaks
have been reported
in meat packing plants.
One such incident
occurred in August 2010
at a chicken-freezing plant
in Theodore, Alabama,
USA, leaving 130 workers
requiring treatment and
seven under intensive care.
Because of
meat consumption,
abattoir workers toil
in hazardous, violent
environments,
and their deep suffering,
as well as that of
the gentle animals
that are mass murdered,
are imprinted
on every package of meat
sold in the market.
May the day soon come
when we all adopt
the organic vegan diet
so the killing finally ends
and our fellow brethren
no longer work under
these horrific conditions
for the sake of meat
on our plates!
Concerned viewers,
please join us next week
on Stop Animal Cruelty
for the conclusion
of our two-part series
on the slaughterhouse
workplace.
Thank you for watching
our program today.
Enlightening Entertainment
is up next after
Noteworthy News.
May we have
compassionate hearts
and love all beings
on our planet.
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