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The Iowa secretary of agriculture, chief rabbinate in Israel, and the Orthodox Union weigh in on AgriProcessors. Read their reactions here.
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AgriProcessors workers ignore the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer. The animals stagger and slip in blood while their tracheas dangle from their necks.
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Videotaped Horror
( Five-minute video 
Full-length video )
PETA�s investigator started his job at AgriProcessors on July 21, 2004, and ended it on September 12, 2004. In that short time, he saw more cruelty to animals than most people will see in their entire lives. On August 2, our investigator videotaped the cow-killing floor for the first time—he said it was like looking into hell:
The cow was loaded into a machine that resembles a large metal tube. His head stuck out of the front, then a metal bar clamped under his neck and forced his head upwards and back, cocked in an awkward and painful-looking position. The entire machine rotated, turning the cow upside-down. This process seemed to terrify him—his eyes were wide with fright—I imagine because he had never been in such a helpless position. The cow�s exposed neck was scrubbed with a hose and brush, then a rabbi came out of a small room and slit the cow�s throat. Another worker followed the rabbi and gouged a chunk of flesh out of the cow�s neck and then pulled his trachea or esophagus (I�m not sure which one) outside of his throat so that it hung down. Then the machine reverted the cow into an upright position. The trap door on the side opened up and the cow was dumped onto the floor, where another worker attached a chain to the animal�s ankle so that he could be hoisted into the air and sent down the line.
In the same kill area on five different days, our investigator captured on videotape cows who were being shocked with a cattle prod (which is against Jewish law), bellowing in the machine before their throats were slit and their tracheas yanked out, and, time and again, trying to stand on their feet after being dumped onto the bloody, slippery floor. One cow videotaped on August 27 stood up with his trachea hanging out. He walked into a corner of the kill room, finally went down on his haunches, and, for what seems an eternity on tape, repeatedly tried to get up again while swinging his almost-severed neck back and forth.
The device used to hold cows for slaughter at AgriProcessors is called a �Facoima� pen. It rotates the animal�s body 180 degrees prior to slaughter. It is believed that AgriProcessors is the only kosher slaughterhouse in the U.S. that still uses these pens. Other kosher slaughterhouses use a device that cradles the cows in a less frightening and more secure upright position so that they are not as panicked by having their world turned upside-down.
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