Transport and Slaughter

Transported to slaughter through all weather extremes, pigs sometimes suffocate in summer and freeze to trucks in winter.

In nature, pigs live for 15 years, but pigs on factory farms are sent to slaughter after just six months of life.^23,24 To get the terrified pigs onto the transport trucks bound for the slaughterhouse, workers may beat them on their sensitive noses and backs or stick electric prods in their rectums. Crammed into 18-wheelers, pigs struggle to get air and are usually given no food or water for the entire journey (often hundreds of miles). A former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are “packed in so tight, their guts actually pop out their butts—a little softball of guts actually comes out.”²⁵ Pigs suffer from temperature extremes and are forced to inhale ammonia fumes and diesel exhaust.

According to a 2006 industry report, more than 1 million pigs die each year from the horrors of transport alone.²⁶ Another industry report notes that, in some transport loads, as many as 10 percent of pigs are “downers,” animals who are so ill or injured that they are unable to stand and walk on their own.²⁷ Downer pigs have no protection from the most unthinkable cruelty: These sick and injured pigs will be kicked, struck with electric prods, and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths.

Individualized veterinary care is considered too expensive, so sick and injured pigs are left to die or are killed.

Pigs are transported for hundreds of miles through all weather extremes to the slaughterhouse. One worker reports: “In the wintertime there are always hogs stuck to the sides and floors of the trucks. They [slaughterhouse workers] go in there with wires or knives and just cut or pry the hogs loose. The skin pulls right off. These hogs were alive when we did this.”²⁸ In her renowned book, Slaughterhouse, Gail Eisnitz writes: “When hogs arrive frozen at slaughterhouses—which is a common occurrence—their protections under the Humane Slaughter Act are mysteriously waived. Since they are of no value for human consumption, antemortem inspectors neither examine them nor make a decision as to their disposition. Nor are they provided shelter or promptly stunned. Instead they are left to fend for themselves until they die.”²⁹

Pig-transport trucks regularly crash, killing many animals and leaving others to die on the highway.

In 2004, a transport truck owned by Smithfield Foods and loaded with 180 pigs flipped over in Virginia. Many pigs were killed in the accident, while others lay along the roadside, injured and dying. PETA officials arrived on the scene and offered to humanely euthanize the injured animals, but Smithfield refused to allow the suffering animals a humane death because the company could not legally sell the flesh of animals who had been euthanized. Similar accidents involving animal transport trucks occur almost every day. After an accident in April 2005, Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter told one reporter, "I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time."

A typical slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every hour.³⁰ The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for them to be given humane, painless deaths. Because of improper stunning, many pigs are alive when they reach the scalding-water bath, which is intended to soften their skin and remove their hair. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) documented 14 humane-slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who “were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.”³¹

Pigs’ throats are slit before they are dunked into the scalding-hot water of the hair-removal tanks.

An industry report explains that “continuous pig squealing is a sign of … rough handling and excessive use of electric prods.” The report found that the pigs at one federally inspected slaughter plant squealed 100 percent of the time “because electric prods were used to force pigs to jump on top of each other.”³² According to one slaughterhouse worker, “There’s no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they’re still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time.”³³ A USDA report reveals that the stress and inhumane treatment that animals endure on factory farms and in slaughterhouses contributes to a condition that affects the color and texture of the flesh of one in seven pigs, making it more difficult to sell.³⁴

You Can Help

Pigs are intelligent, friendly animals whose complexity of social interaction is more advanced than even that of dolphins and elephants. When in their natural surroundings rather than on factory farms, they are social, playful, protective animals who bond with each other, make beds, relax in the sun, and cool off in the mud. Please don’t support an industry that abuses these fascinating animals by the billions. Learn how you can help save pigs from miserable lives and painful deaths.

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²³ Olympus Microscope, “Pig Embryo,” Olympus Microscope Global Web Site.
²⁴ Viva! USA, “Murder She Wrote,” VivaUSA.org, 2005.
²⁵ Carla Bennett, “The Joy and Sorrow of Pigs,” Animal Times, Fall 1996.
²⁶ Feedstuffs, “Research Looks at Transport Losses,” 17 Apr. 2006.
²⁷ Harold Gonyou, “Stressful Handling of Pigs,” ThePigSite.com, Jan. 2005.
²⁸ Eisnitz 133.
²⁹ Eisnitz 101-2.
³⁰ Lance Gay, “Faulty Practices Result in Inhumane Slaughter,” Scripps Howard News Service, 30 Jan. 2001.
³¹ Joby Warrick, “‘They Die Piece by Piece’; In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost,” The Washington Post, 10 Apr. 2001.
³² Temple Grandin, “2001 Restaurant Audits of Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef and Pork Slaughter Plants,” 2002 Meat Institute Animal Handling and Stunning Conference, Colorado State University: Department of Animal Sciences, 2002.
³³ Eisnitz 71.
³⁴ Economic Research Service, “Hog Contracts Signal Producers to Improve Quality,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Apr. 2005.