Slaughterhouse
Line-Speeds
THE
BACKGROUND
At the meat industry’s urging, the USDA has taken steps to reduce regulatory oversight of chicken, pig, and cow slaughterhouses and grant them permission to operate at speeds even faster than before. Faster line speeds make it difficult for workers to ensure that animals are effectively stunned before slaughter—meaning more animals will be stabbed and even boiled alive while still fully conscious.
FASTER SPEEDS
INCREASED ABUSE
As slaughter line speeds go up, so does the pressure on workers to process animals more quickly. At chicken and turkey slaughterhouses, increased speeds result in rougher handling of the birds, with workers slamming them into shackles, breaking their delicate legs and wings, and improperly stunning and bleeding them so they are boiled alive. For larger animals like pigs and cows, workers often use forceful methods to get them moving – sometimes by dragging, beating, frightening, or electrocuting them.
THIS
IMPACTS HUMANS, TOO
As line speeds increase, more workers are needed to process the higher volume of animals and their body parts. This prevents workers from adequately social-distancing and makes it all but certain they will contract and spread COVID-19 in these virus hotspots. Slaughterhouse outbreaks have been disastrous for both animals and workers.
WHO’S
TRYING TO HELP
Thankfully, several federal lawmakers have taken notice of USDA’s blatant refusal to do anything to ameliorate the situation. The agency’s priority is clearly to protect the meat companies—not the workers, and certainly not the animals. So, Senator Cory Booker and Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Bennie Thompson introduced legislation designed to force USDA’s hand—to make sure the agency actually does the right thing and prioritizes the health and welfare of workers and animals over the industry’s already well-lined pockets.
We need legislation to stem the tide of a deregulatory process that has been decades in the making, fueled by the meat industry’s incessant pressure on USDA to allow it to operate its slaughterhouses at faster and faster speeds.
