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.
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.
Compassionate viewers,
this is
the Stop Animal Cruelty
program on
Supreme Master Television.
Last week
we presented the first
in a two-part series on
the extremely hazardous
workplace conditions
found in slaughterhouses.
Today we’ll present
the second half
of the series, focusing on
the even more traumatic
mental and emotional toll
taken on slaughterhouse
employees and
the people around them.
Participating daily in
violence and destruction
would desensitize
any person.
Former pig abattoir worker
Ed Van Winkle,
an interviewee
for Gail Eisnitz’s book
“Slaughterhouse,” recalled,
“You may look a hog
in the eye
that’s walking around
down 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 and
nuzzled me like a puppy.
Two minutes later
I had to kill them –
beat them to death
with a pipe.
I can’t care.”
Tommy Vladak, another
slaughterhouse employee
interviewed for the book
stated,
“When you’re standing
there night after night,
digging that knife
into those hogs,
and they’re fighting you,
kicking at you, squealing,
trying to bite you ….
And then it gets to a point
where you’re
at a daydream stage.
Where you can think
about everything else
and still do your job.
You become
emotionally dead.”
These people that
work in these facilities
oftentimes
become desensitized to
what’s taking place there,
because they have to,
for the sake of their job,
participate in this abuse
and as a result oftentimes
take out their anger
and frustration
on these animals.
Virgil Butler, a former
chicken abattoir worker
who became a vegan,
regularly witnessed
absolutely horrific scenes
at the facility
where he was employed.
I saw people rip the heads
from them (chickens),
throw them on the floor
and stomp on them,
and rip them in half.
Pull their heads off and
put them onto their finger
and go around like this…
Loss of empathy
not only causes brutal
and savage behavior
toward animals,
but also fosters
a violent mentality
toward other people.
Mr. Van Winkle
related to Ms. Eisnitz
how the job fundamentally
changed him as a person:
“Sometimes
I looked at people
that way too.
I’ve had ideas of hanging
my foreman upside down
on the line and sticking him.
I remember
going into the office and
telling the personnel man
that I have no problem
pulling the trigger
on a person –
if you get in my face
I’ll blow you away.”
“Every sticker I know
carries a gun,
and every one of them
would shoot you.
Most stickers I know
have been arrested
for assault.
A lot of them have
problems with alcohol.
They have to drink;
they have no other way
of dealing with killing live,
kicking animals
all day long.
If you stop
and think about it,
you’re killing several
thousand beings a day.
It happened
every single night,
every single night
that I worked there
for years and years, and
in more than one plant.
We saw fights
at the back dock
on a regular basis.
The psychological impact
for people
who work in an industry
that requires them to
exist in a death-saturated
environment,
day in and day out,
in the killing fields
is tremendous.
Slaughterhouse workers
have high rates of
developing addiction.
Violent behavior
is not uncommon
toward the animals and
toward other humans.
It really kind of begs
the question of
what kind of industry
requires people to develop
anti-social behaviors,
violent behaviors as a norm.
Witnessing violence
traumatizes people,
whether that’s violence
toward humans or
violence toward animals.
After studying more than
500 federal and regional
crime reports from the USA,
criminologist
Dr. Amy Fitzgerald
found a direct correlation
between the number of
slaughterhouse workers
in a community
and the incidence
of murder, rape and
other aggressive crimes.
In December 2007,
former Canadian
pig farmer Robert Pickton
was sentenced to life
in prison without parole
for 25 years
for killing 26 women.
Studies also show
that abattoir workers
have higher rates
of domestic violence.
Even in less abusive
relationships,
family functions
are severely impaired.
Mr. Vladak disclosed the
following to Ms. Eisnitz:
“The worst part, even
worse than my accident,
was what happened
to my family life…
I’d blow up
at the drop of a hat,
come home every night
and find something
to complain about,
take my frustrations
from work out
on my family.
Mentally stressed
slaughterhouse employees
often indulge
in alcoholism and
other forms of addiction.
Ed Van Winkle was
no different.
“A lot of the guys …
just drink and drug
their problems away.
Some of them end up
abusing their spouses
because they can’t
get rid of the feelings.
They leave work
with this attitude and
they go down to the bar
to forget.
Only problem is,
even if you try to
drink those feelings away,
they’re still there
when you sober up.”
“I’ve taken out
my job pressure and
frustration on the animals,
on my wife
– who I almost lost –
and on myself,
with heavy drinking.
I actually thought I was
going crazy at one point.
I’d hit the bar after work
every day, pound down
four or five beers,
come home and just sit
and stare off into space
through three or four more.”
Stop Animal Cruelty
will return
after this brief message.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.
You’re watching
Stop Animal Cruelty
on Supreme Master
Television.
Due to the gristly
working conditions
they endure,
abattoir employees
often suffer from injury,
sickness, alcoholism,
and a high rate
of violent crime.
The meat industry
has long been known
for having
low employee retention.
Nobody is going to stay
in that plant that long,
even maintenance
personnel because
they get paid so little.
So you have a lot of people
coming and going,
coming and going,
so they don’t waste a lot
of time training people.
They have what they called
a training program.
I was considered a trainer;
the trainers job wasn’t
to teach the new hire
how to work,
how to do the job,
it wasn’t to teach them
how to do it more humanely.
It was to catch
what he missed
until he managed
to either get it right
or they fired him,
one or the other.
Slaughterhouse workers
are constantly at risk
of losing their jobs,
and so are afraid
to express their opinions
or even talk about
their injuries or ailments.
The supervisors are
telling them straight up
“This plant has to run,
these chickens
have to be run.
You can either do it, or
we’ll find somebody else
that will, and you can
go back to the line
and bust your hump.”
As soon as you become
no longer useful,
they get rid of you.
If you go to the doctor and
you complain too much,
they’re going
to drug test you, knowing
that you are going to fail,
because if you manage to
work there any time at all,
you’re going to do it
by doing drugs, absolutely.
That’s the only way
you can keep up,
night after night after night.
If they have a person that
they want to get rid of,
but they want them to quit,
so they don’t have to
pay unemployment
or at least don’t have to
pay it as soon,
they will do things to
force that person to quit.
They take
the urine analysis, and
they use that selectively;
as long as
you’re not causing them
to spend any money,
they are not going
to mess with you.
They use it as a tool to
get rid of those in the plant
that they don’t want.
Or in the case of
somebody that is injured,
that is going to need
a lot of doctor’s care,
they’ll do it
to get rid of somebody
so that they don’t have to
pay that.
“Well this person was
using drugs on the job,
therefore
we don’t have to pay.”
Abattoirs in the US
often hire undocumented
immigrants, because
they are more likely
to endure the low pay
and not complain
about their suffering
as they are afraid of
being reported
to the authorities
and face deportation.
One of the largest meat-
production companies
in North America
was indicted for 36 cases
of human trafficking
in 2001 alone.
Use of child labor is also
associated with
the meat industry.
During a 2008 raid
of a slaughterhouse
in Iowa, USA,
officials detained
388 immigrant workers,
among whom were
26 minors hired from
Mexico and Guatemala.
Investigators found
that these teenagers
had to work
up to 90 hours a week
handling power saws
and sharp knives
in an environment
rampant with
highly toxic chemicals.
Many female immigrants
become victims
of assault and abuse
while working at
these types of facilities.
Again,
out of fear of deportation,
incidents are not reported
to the police.
Despite the meat industry’s
notorious record
with respect to injury,
infectious diseases,
violent crime, labor
and human rights issues,
the gruesome practice
of producing meat
continues.
Cheaply priced and
aggressively marketed
as “essential”
for people’s health,
the cleanly wrapped corpses
which are sold in markets
hardly reflect
the torturous agony
of countless animals
and abattoir workers.
Calculated moves
are made to minimize
public knowledge about
what really happens
behind the concrete walls
of slaughterhouses.
The people
that work in those places,
most of them are
very uneducated,
some of them can’t
even read a comic book
without some help.
They also have
a lot of Hispanic people
that can’t speak English.
So you’ve got
a bunch of people here
that really
couldn’t possibly hope
to get a really good job.
They (the industry)
pick rural communities
for that reason.
The meat industry
systematically exploits
its voiceless line workers
for profit, and
each hamburger or
chicken patty produced
is loaded with the blood,
suffering and anguish of
both innocent animals and
our fellow human beings.
By not consuming meat
and other
animal products,
we can eliminate
the extreme cruelty
imposed on our fellow
brothers and sisters
around the world and
on our animal friends.
On the way home one night,
me and Laura
were driving along and
we were talking about
the chicken plant,
and I had taken her in
and showed her
what the hanging room
looked like that night
and she was appalled
and I realized
for the first time in my life
that I was actually
ashamed of the way
I made my living.
I turned vegetarian and
I realized that chickens
weren’t the only animals
that suffered because of
this factory farming thing.
I realized
it was spread across
the entire animal spectrum,
so I decided just
to quit eating all meat and
I feel better because of it.
Virgil Butler,
the courageous
former abattoir worker
turned animal advocate,
passed away in 2006,
however, his work exposing
slaughterhouse practices
and the rampant violence
occurring
in these workplaces
still remains
of great importance.
May his soul
rest peacefully in Heaven.
We also respectfully
salute Ms. Gail Eisnitz
and others for showing
how abattoirs
destroy communities.
Blessed be your
noble endeavors to
remind our fellow humans
to always choose
a compassionate,
animal-free way of life!
Merciful viewers, thank you
for being with us today
on Stop Animal Cruelty
on Supreme Master
Television.
Enlightening Entertainment
is next after
Noteworthy News.
May humankind soon
create a peaceful world
through love
for all animals.