Slaughterhouse

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Workers and cattle in a slaughterhouse.

A slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (French, ultimately from the verb abattre which means "to strike down"), is a facility where farm animals are killed and processed into meat products. The animals most commonly slaughtered for food are cows (for beef and veal), sheep (for lamb and mutton), pigs (for pork), fowl (for poultry), and horses (for horsemeat).

The design, process, and location of slaughterhouses respond to a variety of concerns. Slaughtering animals on a large scale poses significant logistical problems and public health concerns. Most religions stipulate certain conditions for the slaughter of animals. Public aversion to meat packing, in many cultures, influences the location and practices of slaughterhouses. More recently, animal rights groups have levelled ethical charges at slaughterhouses.

1 Slaughterhouse process
2 Slaughterhouse design
3 International variations
4 History
5 Law
6 Major slaughterhouses
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Slaughterhouse process

A steer restrained for stunning just prior to slaughter.

The slaughterhouse process differs by species and region and may be controlled by civil law as well as religious laws such as Kosher and Halal laws. A typical procedure follows:

Animals are received by truck or rail from a ranch, farm, or feedlot.
Animals are herded into holding pens.
Animals receive a preslaughter inspection.
Animals are usually knocked unconscious by applying an electric shock of 300 volts and 2 amps to the back of the head, effectively stunning the animal. ^{[citation needed]} If unsuccessful, secondary methods include the use of a captive bolt pistol to the front of the animal's head. Livestock are also rendered unconscious by CO₂ captive bolt stunning and CO₂/inert gas stunning (This step is prohibited under strict application of Halal and Kashrut codes).
Animals are hung upside down by one of their hind legs on the processing line.
The main arteries and veins are severed with a knife mainly in the neck and the animal's blood drains, causing death through exsanguination.
The hide/skin/plumage is removed by down pullers, side pullers and fisting off the pelt (sheep and goats)
The internal organs are removed and inspected for internal parasites and signs of disease. The guts, referred to as viscera, are separated for inspection from the heart and lungs, referred to as the "pluck." Livers are separated for inspection, tongues are dropped or removed from the head and the head is sent down the line on the head hooks or head racks for inspection.
The carcass is inspected by a government inspector for safety. (This inspection is performed by the Food Safety Inspection Service in the US, and CFIA in Canada.)
Carcasses are subjected to intervention to reduce levels of bacteria. Common interventions are steam, hot water, and organic acids. Carcasses are chilled to prevent the growth of microorganisms and to reduce meat deterioration while the meat awaits distribution.
The chilled carcass is broken down into subprimals and primals for boxed meat unless customer specifies for swinging sides of meat. Beef and horse carcasses are always split in half and then quartered, Pork is split into sides only and Goat/Veal/Mutton and Lamb is left whole
The remaining carcass may be further processed to extract any residual traces of meat, usually termed mechanically recovered meat, which may be used for human or animal consumption.
Waste materials such as lard or tallow, are sent to a rendering plant.
The waste water, consisting of blood and fecal matter, generated by the slaughtering process is sent to a waste water treatment plant.
The meat is transported to distribution centers that then distribute to retail markets.

[edit] Slaughterhouse design

Curved cattle corrals designed by Temple Grandin are intended to reduce stress in animals being led to slaughter.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the layout and design of most US slaughterhouses has been significantly influenced by the work of Dr. Temple Grandin. Grandin is also well known for being autistic and it was a fascination with patterns and flow that first led her to redesign the layout of cattle holding pens.

Grandin's primary objective was to reduce the stress and suffering of animals being led to slaughter. In particular she applied an intuitive understanding of animal psychology to design pens and corrals which funnel a herd of animals arriving at a slaughterhouse into a single file ready for slaughter. Her corrals employ long sweeping curves so that each animal is prevented from seeing what lies ahead and just concentrates on the hind quarters of the animal in front of it.

Grandin now claims to have designed over 54% of the slaughterhouses in the United States as well as many other slaughterhouses around the world.

[edit] International variations

The standards and regulations governing slaughterhouses vary considerably around the world. In many countries the slaughter of animals is virtually unregulated by law; often, however, it is strongly regulated by custom and tradition. In the non-Western world, including the Arab world, the Indian sub-continent, etc., both forms of meat are available: one which is produced hygienically in modern mechanized slaughterhouses, and the other of the animals slaughtered in local butcher-shops.

In some communities animal slaughter may be controlled by religious laws, most notably halal for Muslims and kashrut for Jewish communities. These both require that the animals being slaughtered should be conscious at the point of death, and as such animals cannot be stunned prior to killing. This can cause conflicts with individual national regulations when a slaughterhouse adhering to the rules of kosher preparation is located in some western countries.

In many societies, traditional cultural and religious aversion to slaughter led to prejudice against the people involved. In Japan, where the ban on slaughter of livestock for food was lifted only in the late 19th century, the newly found slaughter industry drew workers primarily from villages of former eta (outcasts), who traditionally worked in occupations relating to death (such as executioners and undertakers). In some parts of western Japan, prejudice faced by current and former residents of such areas (burakumin "hamlet people") is still a sensitive issue. Because of this, even the Japanese word for "slaughter" (屠殺 tosatsu) is deemed politically incorrect by some pressure groups as its inclusion of the kanji (Chinese symbol) for "kill" (殺) supposedly portrays those who practice it in a negative manner.

Some countries have laws that exclude specific animal species or grades of animal from being slaughtered for human consumption. The former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, suggested in 2004 introducing legislation banning the slaughter of cows throughout India, where the cow is a sacred animal to Hindus, for whom the slaughter of one is unthinkable and offensive (note that already in all the federal states of India except two, cow-slaughter is not banned by law). The slaughter of cows and the importation of beef into the nation of Nepal are strictly forbidden under Nepalese law. Several U.S. states have banned the slaughter and consumption of dogs, which are frequently eaten in parts of Asia. Horse meat is a taboo food in the USA and Canada, where sale and consumption of horsemeat is illegal in Illinois and California,[1] although horses are slaughtered for meat export to Europe and Japan for human consumption and for the USA domestic pet food market.

[edit] History

In the slaughterhouse, Lovis Corinth, 1893.

Slaughterhouses are needed primarily to serve the large-scale demand for meat in urban areas where there is no livestock. Thus the slaughterhouse has developed as an adjunct of the city. Early maps of London show numerous stockyards in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air. A term for such open-air slaughterhouse is a "shambles." There are streets named "The Shambles" in some English towns (e.g. Worcester, York) which got their name from having been the site on which butchers killed and prepared animals for consumption.

Open-air slaughter inside cities produced very substantial concerns about public health, morals, and aesthetics. This antipathy towards slaughterhouses is mentioned at least as early as the 16th century, in Thomas More's Utopia. In the 19th and 20th century, slaughterhouses were increasingly sited away from the public view, and took pains to portray themselves as clean, innocuous businesses. In this they have been responding not only to increasing regulation, but also to public sentiment. Most Westerners find the subject of animal slaughter to be very unpleasant and prefer not to know the details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. As such, in the West, the connection between packaged meat products in the supermarket and the live animals from which they are derived is obscured.

In recent years, animal rights groups and some vegetarians and vegans have accused slaughterhouses of secrecy, and have tried to highlight the practices inside a slaughterhouse. Examples include the PETA produced film, Meet Your Meat. This tactic has been in part to expose and correct allegedly inhumane treatment of animals, or unhygienic standards. It has also been used to encourage people to inform themselves about meat production, which the activists hope will lead to more people choosing a meat-free or reduced-meat diet.

[edit] Law

USDA inspection of pig.

Most countries have laws in regard to the treatment of animals at slaughterhouses. In the United States, there is the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, a law requiring that all swine, sheep, cattle, and horses be stunned unconscious with just one application of a stunning device by a trained person before being shackled and hoisted up on the line (chickens are exempt from this Act). The USDA is opposed to the Humane Slaughter Act, and violations of the Act carry no penalties. Since stopping the line to re-knock conscious animals causes "down time" and results in fewer profits, the Humane Slaughter Act is usually bypassed and ignored by USDA supervisors (Eiznitz 1997). There is some debate over the enforcement of this act. This act, like those in many countries, exempts slaughter in accordance to religious law, such as kosher shechita and dhabiĥa halal. Most strict interpretations of kashrut require that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.

The novel The Jungle detailed unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industry during the 1800s, leading to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. A much larger body of regulation deals with the public health and worker safety regulation and inspection.

[edit] Major slaughterhouses

The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, North Carolina. It is capable of butchering over 32,000 pigs a day. The Dutch Stork Food Systems is the world largest manufacturer of chicken slaughtering installations with an annual turnover of € 149m.

The largest slaughterhouse in India and also in Asia is located at Deonar, a suburb of Mumbai.

See List of major slaughterhouses for a list of places around the world.

[edit] See also

Ethics of eating meat
List of abattoirs in the UK
Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle
Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

[edit] References

Eisnitz, Gail A. Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry. Prometheus Books, 1997.