Slaughterhouses: How Are Animals Killed In a Slaughterhouse?

Historically, butcher shops and slaughterhouses have been pushed from bustling city centers and respectable neighborhoods to poorer and often unsafe districts. Over the last century, as meat production has become more concentrated, the largest slaughterhouses have moved away from cities entirely. Now, a majority of slaughterhouses are located in small rural communities, much to the detriment of the people living and working there.

What is a slaughterhouse?

A slaughterhouse is a facility designed expedite the slaughter of live farmed animals. After these facilities kill animals, they reduce the animal's bodies into meat and meat byproducts.

How many slaughterhouses are in the US today?

According to the USDA, there are over 3,000 slaughterhouses in the United States. 2,785 slaughterhouses exist to execute and butcher large mammals such as cows, pigs, and sheep, while the rest are committed to the perpetual mass extermination of birds and fish.

How are animals killed in slaughterhouses?

Slaughter of large animals

Technically, per slaughterhouse guidelines, large animals like cows, pigs, and sheep are supposed to be killed slowly by loss of blood, or exsanguination. Because the cruelty of this is self-evident, regulations also require animals be "stunned" before having their throats slit. However, no method of stunning is guaranteed to avoid causing distress or pain. Two of the three methods of stunning were originally conceived to be lethal and are now widely regarded as inhumane. All three methods of stunning are prone to failure, frequently resulting in animals being fully conscious as they bleed to death.

Captive bolt

In the novel and film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, the menacing villain's weapon of choice is a pressurized air gun that, in an instant, drives a metal bolt through the skulls of his victims and into their brains. This weapon—known as a captive bolt—induces catastrophic brain damage, but does not immediately kill the victim. Death occurs later, from brain hemorrhaging or blood loss.

In slaughterhouses, this device is routinely used on cows, to "stun" them before their throats are slit. However, captive bolt guns are highly prone to malfunctions, and slaughterhouse workers are susceptible to human error. Even under scrutiny and observation by researchers over a five-day period, one slaughterhouse adequately stunned only 84% of cattle. The animals who weren't properly stunned the first time endured repeated shots from the captive bolt gun. Fourteen bulls were shot more than three times. One animal ended up being shot five times before losing consciousness. Researchers also noted that only one in three animals killed at this slaughterhouse were over 30 months old. As cows are not considered adults until they are three years old, this reveals that most cows slaughtered for meat are still only calves.

In another study spanning slaughterhouses across three countries, captive bolt stunning worked without fail only 28% of the time. Overall, this method of stunning is highly unreliable, and can even subject animals to more excruciating pain.

Electrocution / Electrical Stunning

Before being electrically stunned or electrocuted, pigs are hosed down. Then, an electric clamp or wand is held to each animal's head for several seconds as the current is forced through their brain. Researchers have found that electrical stunning of pigs fails up to 31% of the time, meaning roughly one in three pigs is still fully conscious as they bleed to death. The meat industry also considers electroction to be an acceptable way for pig farmers to kill "non-viable" piglets.

Gas stunning, or Controlled Atmospheric Stunning

In 1853, physician and anesthetist Benjamin Ward Richardson designed the first gas chamber, purportedly as a "humane" way to kill non-human animals. After WWII, Hormel began installing gas chambers in slaughterhouses as a way to kill animals. In slaughterhouses to this day, groups of pigs are forced together into gas chambers and subjected to high concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is alleged to render the animals unconscious, but only gradually, and not 100% of the time. Whether an animal loses consciousness or not, simply breathing concentrated CO2 is painful and causes acute respiratory distress.

Slaughtering poultry

Electrical stunning

Whereas large animals are only strung upside down by their feet after they are stunned, hurried workers haphazardly shackle chickens and turkeys upside down before the birds enter the stunner. Shackling alone results in injuries, with nearly half the birds suffering broken bones. Stunning then occurs as the birds are forced together through an electrified bath. Electrical stunning is intended to induce not only unconsciousness but also cardiac arrest. Even then, however, not all the birds end up being stunned. Chickens are often fully conscious and in pain when their throats are mechanically slit. Many chickens survive stunning and the blade only to reach the scalding tank meant to loosen their feathers. Those birds are boiled alive.

Gas killing

In poultry slaughterhouses, crates holding up to 500 live birds are placed in gas chambers, subjecting the birds to high concentrations of gas. Some gas chambers use carbon dioxide, while others use an inert gas like argon or nitrogen, or a combination of both inert gas and carbon dioxide. CO2 is less effective at stunning birds than an inert gas, but an inert gas like argon is more expensive, and so the use of less effective—and more painful to breathe—CO2 makes financial sense to the meat industry.

Despite the stress and discomfort of forced CO2 inhalation, veterinarians and animal welfare scientists consider gas to be a more humane alternative to electrical stunning. Birds that have been gassed don't panic and fight back when they're shackled. But, whether they've been electrocuted or gassed, whether they're unconscious or wide awake, they're forced along to the mechanical blade and scalding tank to a gruesome death.

What really happens in slaughterhouses?

All slaughterhouses have rules and regulations around animal welfare. Yet, safety and welfare violations are the norm. Time and again, government inspections and undercover investigations reveal gross mistreatment and horrific abuses. There is simply no incentive to treat animals with kindness or respect when the meat industry only profits off animals that have been killed, skinned, disemboweled, dismembered, and cut into pieces.

Every single day, a staggering 200 million land animals—cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, and ducks—are sent to slaughterhouses. None go willingly, and none leave alive or intact. This doesn't happen without relentless violence.

Those 200 million land animals are just the ones who survive long enough to reach the slaughterhouse. 26% of farmed animals die from injury, illness, or neglect on factory farms. During transport to slaughter, in the U.S. alone, more than 20 million animals die each year from existing injuries, new injuries incurred while being loaded, being crushed under the bodies of their families and friends, dehydration, or some agonizing combination of all of the above.

Animals are brutally beaten and abused

Any animal who survives long enough to reach the slaughterhouse is beyond frightened and confused. In fact, in that last stretch of the drive to slaughter, the terror only intensifies for cows, who've been proven to be intelligent and emotional, and who can smell blood from a half-mile away. Pigs, also renowned for being smart and sensitive, are highly empathic. Each pig feels when others are scared or stressed, and so they feed off each other's emotions—not unlike a crowd of people. The last thing any of these animals wants to do is step off the truck and march into the place that, to them, reeks of danger and death.

In spite of the fear and chaos animals experience upon arrival, these facilities attempt to quickly funnel each animal into the slaughter line to maximize efficiency. To keep the frightened and injured animals moving, one slaughterhouse worker recalls routine—yet extreme—violence:

“If you get a hog in a chute that... has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his [anus]. You’re dragging these hogs alive, and a lot of times the meat hook rips out... I’ve seen hams–thighs– completely ripped open. I’ve also seen intestines come out. If the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook into his cheek and drag him forward.”

It's horrific enough to imagine the treatment that animals endure in slaughterhouses—however, these words are a testament to what working in a slaughterhouse does to people, too. This is but one of many candid first-hand accounts documented in Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz.

Psychological trauma and PTSD in slaughterhouse workers

The meat industry tasks slaughterhouse workers—who are demoralized, underpaid, overworked, and even denied bathroom breaks—with killing as many animals as possible, as quickly as possible. Such grueling, grisly work leads to slaughterhouse workers suffering much higher-than-average rates of serious psychological distress (SPD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), the latter of which is brought on by the repetitive infliction of harm.

The violence doesn't end when slaughterhouse workers clock out, either. Research shows that routine, institutionalized animal abuse feeds into violence against other people. In fact, communities dominated by slaughterhouses face increased crime rates.

A slaughterhouse worker describes being desensitized to violence and killing:

"The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's walking around in the blood pit with you and think, 'God, that really isn't a bad looking animal.' You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care. I was killing things. My attitude was, it's only an animal. Kill it. Sometimes I'd look at people that way, too. I've had ideas of hanging my foreman upside down on the line and sticking him."

Workers who are able to leave the killing behind them are forever haunted. For the BBC, a former slaughterhouse employee confesses:

"I didn't suffer physical injuries, but the place affected my mind... At night, my mind would taunt me with nightmares, replaying some of the horrors I'd witnessed throughout the day... I still sometimes see hundreds of pairs of eyeballs [of severed cows' heads] staring back at me."

Why are slaughterhouses to cruel?

Simply put, there is no humane or ethical way to kill an animal who does not want to die, much less one animal after another.No animal volunteers to be reduced to a hamburger, strip of bacon, pink slime, or "fingers." No animal donates their thighs or ribs to satiate the craving of a person who could just as easily eat something that never trembled in fear.

Every animal that winds up at the slaughterhouse is terrified. Each animal can smell, hear, see, and feel the anguish of the other creatures being killed and butchered before them. But, no animal can ever fathom why any of this is happening. There is no point of reference elsewhere in the animal kingdom. No other species inflicts this much harm upon billions of other animals year after year.

How can we stop slaughterhouses?

Slaughterhouses only exist for as long as we outsource the killing and butchering most of us don’t even have the stomach for. Production and supply ends when consumers demand slaughter-free foods.

Leave animals off your plate and go vegan

It's never been easier—or more socially acceptable—to embrace a plant-based lifestyle. In fact, 62% of US households regularly buy plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs to prepare for family and friends at home, and that number has been growing year after year.

Supporting slaughter-free, plant-based meat alternatives

Plant-based but super meaty Beyond and Impossible Burgers are taking over the menus of fast-food chains everywhere, along with tacos and burritos, and even corned beef. Beyond fast food, eat locally and support small businesses while discovering new favorite restaurants on Happy Cow.Every dollar you spend on plant-based foods is a vote to close slaughterhouses.

Raising awareness

Although it may feel like you're bucking the status quo, you're not alone in caring about the suffering of animals, and wanting to put a stop to it. There's a whole movement of compassionate individuals who are working to put a stop to the abuse of animals raised for food. And, this movement grows when you raise awareness for the cruelty of factory farms and slaughterhouses—even just by telling your friends and family.

In fact, you might already encourage family and friends to make choices that support the health of the planet and other beings, like recycle, or drive a fuel-efficient vehicle, or avoid products that are tested on animals. You might already be one of the people choosing plant milk over cow's milk because you know it's better for you, for the planet, and for the animals. Societal changes always start small. But when enough people care, that makes all the difference.

Demand an end to the atrocities

In 2022, records of investigations into poultry slaughterhouses across the country exposed the myriad of shocking violations that take place within them, every day. USDA inspectors found broken legs, broken necks, and birds boiled alive, still fluttering their wings and blinking their eyes. Chickens deserve better than this horrific violence in our broken food sytem. Together, we can raise awareness and call on the chicken industry to put an end to this cruelty.