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.

Book review: Eating Animals April 22, 2010

Once I read this book I had to forgive Jonathan Safran Foer for stealing my original blog name for its title. (For a brief moment in time before it became From Animal To Meat, this blog was called Eating Animals.) Well, since he was working on the book for a couple of years before the blog even became a twinkle in my eye, I guess he didn’t really steal it, but still.

Eating Animals is pretty wonderful, in a grim, gory, factory-farm exposé sort of way. From my own research, I’d say Safran Foer’s descriptions of the revolting underside of conventional livestock production are not sensationalized but merely accurate. He also stresses, and often has statistical data to back up, the depressing frequency of inhumanity. For example, he notes that welfare auditor Temple Grandin reported in 1988 that she’d witnessed “deliberate acts of cruelty occurring on a regular basis” at 32% of the slaughter plants she’d visited. After over a decade of supposed improvements, reviews and audits in 2005 and 2008 revealed inhumane treatment at 26% of chicken slaughterhouses and 25% of cattle facilities.*

What I find even more intriguing about EA than its revelations on factory farming, though, is that Safran Foer asks tough questions about the purportedly humane alternatives. Unlike Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, who uncritically champions small-scale, back-to-nature farming, Safran Foer examines these methods with a gaze just as penetrating as the one he applies to factory farming.  What he finds is that in almost all cases, even the most compassionate farmers still brand, castrate, and dehorn their cattle, or rely on unscrupulous breeders to supply their stock. For him, this is a reason to turn away from eating meat and advocate vegetarianism. (Why he doesn’t take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and promote veganism, I’m not sure. His failure to even mention it is a disappointing omission.)

This is where I part ways with Safran Foer. He would subject the livestock industry to an impossibly high standard – guaranteeing a completely pain-free life and death to its animals – to justify consuming its products. But no life, whether on the farm or in the wild, whether animal or human, is completely free from suffering. That inescapable fact does not imply that no life is worth living. If the lives we provide farm animals are reasonably good, the unattainability of perfection should not keep us from breeding, raising, and, yes, killing them for food.

Respectful disagreements aside, thanks and kudos to Safran Foer for confronting the issue honestly and thoughtfully. I just hope the title of his book doesn’t deter those who perhaps haven’t been as reflective about their own omnivorous habits from picking it up.

*pp. 255-256.