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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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Statement of Dr. Temple Grandin,
Consultant to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Meat Institute
About the procedures captured on videotape at AgriProcessors, she wrote:
Removal of the trachea and other internal parts before the animal has become insensible would cause great suffering and pain. Many of the cattle on this tape had this dressing procedure performed when they were still fully sensible. Several cattle were walking around with the trachea and other parts hanging out of them. To provide an acceptable level of welfare, the animals MUST be allowed to become fully insensible after shehita before any dressing procedure is done.
ALL cattle must be completely insensible before trachea removal or any other skinning procedure is conducted. Shehita (religious slaughter) is the ONLY procedure that can be conducted on a sensible animal.
This plant also has some serious cattle handling and restraint problems. About 50 percent of the cattle were vocalizing during handling and restraint. This is due to bad practices such as using an electric prod to position the animal�s head in the head holder. In a well-run kosher plant, the percentage of cattle that would vocalize during handling and restraint would be 5 percent.
In conclusion, many of the cattle that had their trachea removed were fully conscious and fully sensible. The duration of complete sensibility was probably prolonged by the pain of having their inner tissues cut and pulled during this dressing procedure.
Globe Gazette, December 7, 2004
Temple Grandin, an associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consults on slaughter practices with some of the nation's top meatpackers. Her clients have included Swift, Excel, and IBP/Tyson as well as a number of kosher plants around the world.
She called the video showing AgriProcessors workers ripping the trachea out of cattle while they were still alive and conscious "horrific."
"I thought it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe it. I've been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before," Grandin said.
The video also showed rough handling of the cattle and the improper use of electric prods on the cattle's heads, Grandin said.
Most of the country's meatpacking plants have worked hard to improve animal welfare at their facilities in recent years, said Grandin, who called the AgriProcessors situation a black eye on the industry.
"I've seen kosher slaughter really done right, so the problem here is not kosher slaughter. The problem here is a plant that is doing everything wrong they can do wrong," Grandin said.
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