2020: “Welfare” not improving at slaughterhouses

Animal Rights Center Japan has collected signatures and submitted the petition calling for improvements to slaughterhouse animal welfare, and has worked on various slaughterhouses 1 2 3.  But at the moment there is almost no information suggesting improvements.

The problem of inadequate drinking water at slaughterhouses has not been solved.  Animal welfare education for slaughterhouse staff is not provided, either.  Dragging immobile cows with chains, not caring for lactating dairy cows (not milking etc), moving to slaughterhouse weak animals with hernia etc not suitable for transportation, twisting cows’ tails to move them… these present practices violate the animal welfare standards of the OIE (World Animal Health Organization) to which Japan is a member, but none has been resolved.

The video is from slaughterhouses in Japan in 2020.

How are the pigs being treated?  The slaughterhouse staff all carry stun guns in their hands (some have then in both hands). Seems like they don’t know how to move them except with stun guns.  There are also transport workers who shove stun guns at them many times even when they can’t move because they’re stuck, or move pigs by pushing on their sensitive eyes.

Can you see how much these acts are scaring the pigs?  Pigs are very delicate creatures. Pigs are thought to experience high levels of fear towards humans, not only with strong kicks, blows, slaps, and pushes, but even with moderate slaps and pushes.  It’s not hard to imagine how the treatment like in this video will make pigs distressed.  Some people think that pigs scream exaggeratedly, but that’s not the case.  If handled gently, pigs don’t scream.  Pigs’ screams are proof that they are poorly treated.

Perhaps due to the large number of pigs moored, some pigs are left in a passage too narrow to turn around in.  Slaughter is the next day. Pigs can’t turn around for a long time before being killed, and if they lie down, they will be trapped in a corridor filled with their bodies.

The next footage shows cows at slaughterhouses in Japan from January to May 2020.
All the cows in the video are “slaughtered the next day”.  There is no drinking water facility, and the cows sometimes can’t drink water for nearly 24 hours (or longer, including transit time) before being slaughtered.  Furthermore, the mooring ropes are unusually short and their movements are severely restricted.  (Other slaughterhouses also moor them with short ropes.)  Some cows are moored with tethers so short that they can’t even sit.  Even if they could sit down, however, the floor is a mud pile.   Cows lying down on top of that to sleep at night get their bellies soaked.

Why do animals have to suffer such distress and pain on the last day before being killed?
Questionnaires have been sent to the slaughterhouses in the video.  We’d like to keep asking for improvement, but there have been almost no cases in which improvements have been made by addressing the slaughter issues.  Additionally, there are 187 slaughterhouses and 144 poultry processing plants (chicken slaughterhouses) throughout the country.  In the situation where not letting them drink water at the slaughterhouse is the norm, and not even stunning the chickens before slaughter is the norm, animals are suffering and being killed while we work on each of these slaughterhouses demanding improvements.

We have no intention of blaming the slaughterhouses or their workers one-sidedly.  This is a problem of the society as a whole.  Each one of us who built the society in which animals are mass produced and consumed and treated like objects is responsible.

We have long exploited and profited from animals.  But you should be able to see from the video how much the industrial use of animals are resulting in cruel consequences for the animals.  Please think once again how much the practice of farming animals, killing them, and eating them is making them suffer and hurting them.