From Animal To Meat

Book review: Slaughterhouse March 23, 2012

It sucks that the people who most need to read this book will never pick it up. The people who most need to read it are the ones who eat meat and dairy from conventional producers, and they’ll never pick it up because the title will scare them off. In fact, I’m not sure who would pick up this book, other than already converted vegans looking for something to confirm their righteous anger at the livestock industry.

And that’s a shame, because there’s a lot to learn from Slaughterhouse. Author Gail Eisnitz, an avowed animal welfare activist who counts the Humane Society of the US and the Humane Farming Association among her employers, set out to expose violations of the federal Humane Slaughter Act at American slaughterhouses. Much of the book consists of interviews with slaughterhouse employees that reveal a morally and physically disgusting industry in which live animals are subjected to no end of abuse. I was prepared for some pretty gory stuff as I dug into Slaughterhouse, but nonetheless felt my stomach drop reading snippets like this one from Donny Tice, a “sticker” (guy who slits animals’ throats) at the Morell packing plant in Sioux City, IA:

One time I took my knife – it’s sharp enough – and I sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt left on my hand – I was wearing a rubber glove – and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass. The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. (p. 93)

OK, so abuse occurs at slaughterhouses, but I knew that before opening the book. What I was hoping Eisnitz would illuminate was how widespread inhumane treatment was. Industry representatives often try to write off people like Tice as bad apples in a mostly good industry.

But the breadth of Eisnitz’s research and the range of her sources convinced me that problems like animals getting “stuck,” hung by their hooves on hooks, and even scalded or skinned while still alive are not exceptions. Eisnitz interviews employees of five slaughter plants and two hog farms, stretching geographically from Florida to Washington state. One is owned by Smithfield and another by Tyson. Eisnitz also talks with USDA officials who are willing to admit that welfare issues are not isolated occurrences, but endemic problems.

But why do people treat these animals so horribly? Eisnitz rarely indicts the line workers, choosing instead to blame their supervisors, who want to maximize production at any cost. She also asks why the USDA, which has staff at each and every plant to enforce the Humane Slaughter Act, so rarely stops the abuse. Again, she refrains from blaming the inspectors themselves, and in fact documents them complaining to their supervisors and even to other agencies. She points out that the USDA has an inherent conflict of interest (something I’ve written about before here) and that agency bigwigs are often plucked straight from the companies they’re supposed to regulate. Case in point: JoAnn Smith, former president of the National Cattlemen’s Association and a client of one of the slaughterhouses profiled by Eisnitz, became Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for the USDA’s Marketing and Inspection Services. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

So, Slaughterhouse is eye-opening. If you can stomach it, read it. But do yourself a favor – not at bedtime.