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Quotes From The Slaughterhouse

Timothy Walker of the United States Department Of Agriculture (USDA):

"Improperly stunned cattle can regain consciousness after they've been shackled and hoisted onto the overhead rail. In addition to kicking & thrashing as they hang upside down, they'd be blinking & stretching their necks from side to side & looking around really frantic. Allot of the times the stickers can't get a good bleed. Within seconds of being stuck the animals arrive at the head skinner who strip all the hide from the animals head. A lot of the time the skinner finds out the animal is still alive conscious when he slices the side of the head and it kicks wildly. If that happens the skinners strove a knife into the back of it's head and cut the spinal cord." (this renders the animal paralyzed, but does not kill or make him unable to feel pain)

Hector Rendroza (cow sticker):

"There's too many cows there & the men killing them doesn't have enough time to do it. They hang 'em up anyway, kicking real hard. 60-70 today were kicking when they were hung up. Sometimes they fall down and then they try to stand up again."

Albert Cabrera (cow knocker):

"In the morning the big hold up was the calves. To get them done faster, we'd put 8-10 of them in the knock box at the same time. As soon as they go in, you start shooting, the calves are jumping & piling up on eachother. You don't know which ones got shot & which didn't & you forget to do the bottom ones. They're hung anyway and down the line they go, wiggling and yelling. It's not just the calves who go through conscious. It's a serious problem with the cows & bulls that have harder skulls. A lot had to be hit like 10 times before they go down. Sometimes they'd still be alive. The USDA people used to watch the animals stand up after I knocked them. She'd get mad at me but never stop the line. That line didn't stop for anything."

Tommy Vadak (hog sticker):

"It all begins at the lead up the chutes where hogs are brought in from the yard. 2 or 3 drivers bring the hogs up. They prod them a lot because hogs don't want to go. When hogs smell blood they don't want to go. Improperly stunned hogs could jump off the shackling table so a catch pen was built below. When hogs end up down there alive the shacklers beat them over the head with a pipe. That dazes them enough to get the chain around their leg and hoist them up. Then they wake up and scream their heads off. When you're standing there night after night digging that knife in these hogs and they're fighting you, squealing, trying to bite you and doing whatever they can to get away from you-after a while you don't give a shit."

Ed VanWinkle (sticker):

"When I first started sticking, the blood in the collection tank only had a 2 inch pipe to drain out all the blood, so it filled up fast. When the hogs came through the stick pit, their whole heads may be hanging in the blood. If the line is running, they aren't submerged long, but if the chain stopped they were stuck in the blood. I can remember conscious pigs blowing bubbles in the blood collection tank. It's sickening... The sticker doesn't have time to go digging around for arteries. If the hog is conscious, he tries to hold onto his blood by constricting his muscles...if the blood comes out at a trickle, it takes long time for him to bleed out."

Virgil Butler (former chicken slaughterer):

"I've stood there on the kill floor and seen how they look at you.  They try everything in their power to get away.  They may not be able to read and write, but they know what's going on."