A Former Slaughterhouse Worker Describes Her Job

The Science Is Clear.
The world is treating the health and economic symptoms of the corona-virus pandemic but not the environmental cause.
As a result, a steady stream of diseases can be expected to jump from animals to humans in coming years.
The number of such “zoonotic” epidemics is rising, from Ebola to Sars to West Nile virus and Rift Valley fever, with the root cause being the destruction of nature by humans and the growing demand for meat.
Even before Covid-19, 2 million people died from zoonotic diseases every year, mostly in poorer countries.
A “one health” approach that unites human, animal and environmental health is vital, including much more surveillance and research on disease threats and the food systems that carry them to people.
There has been so much response to Covid-19 but much of it has treated it as a medical challenge or an economic shock.
But its origins are in the environment, food systems and animal health.
This is a lot like having somebody sick and treating only the symptoms and not treating the underlying cause, and there are many other zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential.
An intense surge in human activity is affecting the environment all across the planet, from burgeoning human settlements to food production, to increasing mining industries.
This human activity is breaking down the natural buffer that once protected people from a number of pathogens.
It’s critically important to get at the root causes, otherwise we will consistently just be reacting to things.
The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead.
( Damian Carrington, 06.07.2020 )  ..   theguardian.com

Our parents keep telling us how important it is to eat fruit and vegetables, and then freak out when we tell them we are vegan.

The suppression of awareness required by our universal practise of commodifying, enslaving, and killing animals for food generates the “built-in mental disorder” that drives us toward the destruction not only of ourselves but of the other living creatures and systems of this earth.
Because this practise of exploiting and brutalising animals for food has come to be regarded as normal, natural, and unavoidable, it has become invisible.
( Will Tuttle )

If you find it too difficult to watch farm animals being abused and slaughtered, why do you find it so easy to keep contributing to it?

Millions Of Baby Animals Killed Just So Humans Can Have Their Mother’s Milk.
Cow’s milk and other dairy products are an everyday part of life for many Australians.
But how much do we really know about how these products got from the farm to the fridge?
The reality is that every dairy cow is a mother.
But in the dairy industry, ‘motherhood’ is anything but ‘natural’.
Most people aren’t aware that in order to produce milk, dairy cows are kept almost continually pregnant.
Unwanted male calves (known as ‘bobby calves’) are usually slaughtered in their first week of life so that their mothers’ milk can be harvested for human consumption.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Australian ‘bobby calves’ are either sent to slaughter (more than 2 million over the past 5 years) or are killed on farm in their first week of life so that the milk intended for them can instead be collected and sold to humans.
Considered economically insignificant, male calves, and the females who are excess to the dairy industry’s needs, are separated from their mothers on their first day of life.
From as young as 5 days old, they can be loaded onto trucks and sent to sale yards or slaughterhouses.

Cows are renowned for their maternal instinct.
Like humans, a mother cow bonds quickly with her calf.
So, when he is taken away from her, both mother and calf can often be heard calling out for each other for hours.
In heart-wrenching scenes, cows have been witnessed chasing after a trailer carrying their calf away.
Mothers have been known to grieve for days after their calf is removed, bellowing loudly in distress.
To make matters worse, dairy cows are kept almost continually impregnated.
Each year, she is forced once again to go through the physical demands of pregnancy and calving only to once again face the stress of having her newborn calf taken away — all to enable her continued milk production.

Calves can be deprived of food (milk) for the last 30 hours of their life.
This means that they can be fed in the morning, then transported and kept at the slaughterhouse overnight without any food before being killed the next day.
To go without food for such an extensive period of time has an enormous negative impact on the wellbeing of these young animals – coupling a feeling of hunger with the already stressful event of transport and being away from their mothers.
While calves normally suckle about 5 times a day, the Australian Standards for transporting animals fail to require them to be fed and so allow them to go hungry for the last hours of their short lives.

Numerous investigations in Australian slaughterhouses have documented the terror dairy calves face prior to and during the slaughter process.
It’s the final cruelty for these babies who have been born – and killed – for one reason; to keep their mothers producing milk for humans.
( Animals Australia, 20.12.2021 )  ..  animalsaustralia.org

Why animals?
Because that’s the root, the most universally accepted form of oppression.
And it’s not about the animals.
It’s about us.
It’s about who we are, how we treat the least defensible, the most oppressed, the weakest in our society.
What does it say about us?
( Alex Hershaft )

So, if you love animals, or care about animals, why do you pay others to kill them, why do you eat them?
Are they not worthy of life and you think you are?

American-Style Mega Animal Farms In The UK.
Brexit will not spark a move towards U.S-style agribusiness in the UK, with animal welfare and environmental standards eroded, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said.
His comments came after the Bureau revealed there were now 800 U.S-style “mega farms” across the country, part of a 26% rise in intensive livestock farming over the last six years.
The biggest farms can house more than a million chickens, 20,000 pigs or 2,000 cattle in sprawling factory units where animals are usually confined indoors.
Campaigners have voiced concerns about the rising industrialisation of farming.
They fear our departure from the European Union could lead to U.S. systems and methods – some of which are currently banned in the UK – being adopted as British farmers try to compete with cheaper foreign imports.
Speaking in parliament during Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions on Brexit, Gove said he was committed to maintaining the current standards and did not want to see a move towards American-style agriculture.
Two Labour MPs, Kerry McCarthy and David Drew, questioned Gove and farming minister George Eustice about how Defra would resist the march of mega-farms.
Gove said: “One thing is clear: I do not want to see, and we will not have, U.S-style farming in this country. The future for British farming is in quality and provenance, maintaining high environmental and animal welfare standards.”
A mega farm is defined in the U.S. as a facility housing 125,000 broiler chickens, 82,000 laying hens, 2,500 pigs, 700 dairy or 1,000 beef cattle.
There is at least one in every county in England and Northern Ireland, and more scattered across Wales and Scotland.
Permits to operate such large facilities are issued regularly by the Environment Agency.
( Madlen Davies, 21.07.2017 )  ..   thebureauinvestigates.com

You can’t do ugly things to the animals we share this planet with and expect to live a beautiful life yourself.

When people use laughing emojis on posts depicting animal cruelty and abuse, they are letting everyone know what sad, pathetic, ignorant morons they are.

Gross And Grisly Stuff Fed To Chickens.
The average “broiler” chicken, meaning an animal raised specifically to be slaughtered for meat, is alive for about a month and a half, according to Compassion In World Farming.
They are hatched from the egg, alive for 40 days or so, and then killed and processed.
Allowed to live out their whole natural lives a chicken can live from five to 10 years.
So let’s assume an average chicken lifespan of seven years, which means these birds should live 60 times longer than they do.
The feed used to fatten up chickens at commercial-grade chicken farms is primarily made of corn and soybeans, but it also contains some gross and grisly stuff.
This includes things like poultry offal, including the heads and intestines and such from previously slaughtered birds, shell and egg scraps, often with dead chicks as well, bone and feathers, and lard from dead cattle, to name a bit.
According to The Human League, years of selective breeding that has seen the mating of ever-larger birds and the heavy, unhealthy feeding practices of the poultry industry have led to generations of chickens that are so obese they cannot walk for much of their lives.
Many broiler chickens end up so heavy they cannot even stand and end up dying even before the slaughter due to lack of hydration or nutrition.
( Steven John, 11.05.2022 )  ..  eatthis.com

I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy.
( Thomas Paine )

We have so-called humans who walk the earth, who walk among us, and who think nothing and feel nothing when they brutally kill innocent animals solely for financial gain.

A Former Slaughterhouse Worker Describes Her Job.
About 100 million animals are killed for meat in the UK every month – but very little is heard about the people doing the killing.
A former slaughterhouse worker describes her job, and the effect it had on her mental health:
When I was a child I dreamed of becoming a vet.
I imagined myself playing with mischievous puppies, calming down frightened kittens, and – as I was a countryside kid – performing check-ups on the local farm animals if they felt under the weather.
It was a pretty idyllic life that I dreamt up for myself – but it’s not quite how things worked out.
Instead, I ended up working in a slaughterhouse.
I was there for six years and, far from spending my days making poorly cows feel better, I was in charge of ensuring about 250 of them were killed every day.
Whether they eat meat or not, most people in the UK have never been inside an abattoir – and for good reason.
They are filthy, dirty places.
There’s animal faeces on the floor, you see and smell the guts, and the walls are covered in blood.
And the smell – It hits you like a wall when you first enter, and then hangs thick in the air around you.
The odour of dying animals surrounds you like a vapour.
I’m sure not all abattoirs are the same but mine was a brutal, dangerous place to work.
There were countless occasions when, despite following all of the procedures for stunning, slaughterers would get kicked by a massive, spasming cow as they hoisted it up to the machine for slaughter.
Similarly, cows being brought in would get scared and panic, which was pretty terrifying for all of us too.
You’ll know if you’ve ever stood next to one that they are huge animals.
As I spent day after day in that large, windowless box, my chest felt increasingly heavy and a grey fog descended over me.
At night, my mind would taunt me with nightmares, replaying some of the horrors I’d witnessed throughout the day.
One skill that you master while working at an abattoir is disassociation.
You learn to become numb to death and to suffering.
Instead of thinking about cows as entire beings, you separate them into their saleable, edible body parts.
It doesn’t just make the job easier – it’s necessary for survival.
There are things, though, that have the power to shatter the numbness.
For me, it was the heads.
At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows’ heads.
Each one of them had been flayed, with all of the saleable flesh removed.
But one thing was still attached – their eyeballs.
Whenever I walked past that skip, I couldn’t help but feel like I had hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me.
Some of them were accusing, knowing that I’d participated in their deaths.
Others seemed to be pleading, as if there were some way I could go back in time and save them.
It was disgusting, terrifying and heart-breaking, all at the same time.
It made me feel guilty.
I know things like this bothered the other workers, too.
I’ll never forget the day, after I’d been at the abattoir for a few months, when one of the lads cut into a freshly killed cow to gut her – and out fell the foetus of a calf.
She was pregnant.
He immediately started shouting and throwing his arms about.
I took him into a meeting room to calm him down – and all he could say was, “It’s just not right, it’s not right,” over and over again.
These were hard men, and they rarely showed any emotion.
But I could see tears prickling his eyes.
Even worse than pregnant cows, though, were the young calves we sometimes had to kill.
( As told to Ashitha Nagesh, 06.01.2020 )  ..   bbc.co.uk

You will never understand the misery and the fear and the pain and the suffering of farm animals until someone treats you the same.

If you are a part of the milk-eating population, then you condone systems of torture.
( Morrissey )

My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.
( Leonardo da Vinci )

Denmark Mink Farming Hopefully In Decline After Covid.
Danish mink breeders have turned their backs on the industry en masse after being forced to cull their animals over fears a Covid-19 mutation could pose a risk to human health.
In November 2020, Denmark, at that point the world’s largest mink producer, controversially announced it would cull approximately 15 million animals due to fears a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.
The Danish government temporarily banned mink farming and the breeding of the animals for their fur, later extending the ban until 2023.
Officials have now said just a handful of producers in the country have chosen to resume business if the ban lifts in 2023.
Greece, Poland and North America are now expected to increase production to make up the shortfall.
The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (FVST) said that only 13 breeders had applied for the compensation that would allow them to potentially continue breeding mink in 2023.
Another 1,246 breeders applied for the compensation to end their mink farming.
The FVST said, since the cull, it had found three cases of illegally farmed mink, two in December 2021 and one in February 2022.
It added that £2.1 billion had been paid out in compensation to the industry after the ban.
Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI) confirmed that the mutated virus that sparked the cull, known as Cluster 5, is now considered extinct.
It has not been detected since September 2020.
( Sophie Kevany, 13.05.2022 )  ..   theguardian.com

Our planet is littered with prisons and cages full of innocent animals who have committed no crime nor done us any harm.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
( Thomas Paine )

All animals want to be free and left alone.
Why do so many people not understand that?

The Current Global Outbreak Of Bird Flu Continues.
The first human case of avian flu was confirmed in China at the end of May this year.
But over the past three months, millions of birds have died.
The ongoing bird flu global outbreak has resulted in the culling of tens of millions of birds all over the world.
The highly contagious virus was detected in the U.S. in January of this year, and since then over 37 million captive and wild birds across 36 states and 358 flocks have been exposed to avian flu as part of the ongoing outbreak, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Now, entire flocks are being culled for fear they might spread the disease to others.
The terms ‘culling’ or ‘depopulation’ are often used by the agriculture industry to refer to the intentional killing of farmed animals.
It is often the immediate, knee-jerk answer to contain a disease outbreak that impacts non-human animals.
But advocates say the practice often causes “extreme suffering” for the animals involved.
“They cooked those birds alive,” one of the workers that helped cull 5.3 million chickens at an Iowa egg farm in April this year.
Unlike the shorter bird flu outbreak of 2015, which saw over 50 million birds culled in the U.S. within a six-month time-frame, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) records indicate that the most recent outbreak of bird flu began in late 2019 in Africa and Asia, and since then recurrent outbreaks have resulted in multiple countries culling tens of millions of captive and wild birds periodically over the past two years.
To stop the spread of infection, an aggressive approach towards culling is undertaken and pre-emptive culling⁠ — when animals are culled before they are infected⁠ — is often used as a cautionary measure.
But despite the large-scale culling of infected and uninfected birds, the current outbreak continues.
( Matthew Zampa, 02.06.2022 )  ..   sentientmedia.org

What makes you think, or believe, that humans deserve a life and non-humans don’t?

You believe plants feel pain?
I’m trying to see things from your point of view, but I can’t stick my head that far up my ass.

We are all born vegan and then brainwashed.
Some see the light and come to their senses later in life.
The majority, unbelievably, remain brainwashed.
( Rose Winfold )

UK PM Johnson Breaks His Promise To Tackle Animal Cruelty.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had pledged to ban imports of foie gras and fur, but has reneged on his promise to tackle animal cruelty.
Both are said to have been dropped from the Animals Abroad Bill, after Johnson caved to complaining Tory ministers.
It’s claimed Cabinet ministers, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, Commons leader Mark Spencer and Scotland Secretary Alister Jack, moaned banning cruel food and clothing was “fundamentally unconservative”.
It’s already illegal to produce foie gras and farm fur in the UK.
But the UK imports around 200 tonnes of the pate a year, mainly from France and Spain where it is made by force-feeding geese and ducks until their liver grows to several times its normal size.
Oscar-winning actress Kim Basinger said: “The UK has to stop buying fur from Finland, China and the US to stop the bloodbath. It is so antiquated. Until we stop exchanging blood between countries, the suffering won’t stop.”
( Mikey Smith, 07.05.2022 )  ..   mirror.co.uk