April 3, 2025 • 19 mins
George Noory and author Gail Eisnitz discuss the importance of humane conditions in the meat industry, her investigations into abusive slaughterhouses, and why many slaughterhouse employees suffer emotional distress from their work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back George Norie with Gail Eisenetts. As an
author and winner of the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal for
Outstanding Achievement and Animal welfare. Gyale is the chief investigator
for the Humane Farming Association. Her book is called Out
of Sight, An Undercover Investigators Fight for Animal Rights and
her own survival.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Gail, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Thanks George, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
How did you get involved in fighting for animal rights?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, it's a kind of long story, but.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
You're on for two hours, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
About Oh okay, Well, it took quite a while to
get involved in the animal protection movement because it was
a bird It was just a small movement back in
the nineteen eighties when I started. But I hired on
with the largest animal protection organization in the country at
the time, and I did all sorts of investigations into
(01:03):
all sorts of crazy things like dog fighting and cock
fighting and slaughterhouses and dog racing and Santa Ria animal
sacrifice things like that. But everything changed one day when
I had a complaint come across my inbox from an
(01:27):
anonymous source who said that he worked in a slaughterhouse
down in Florida. It was largest slaughterhouse in the southeast.
And this may sound grizzly, but he said he was
a USDA employee, and he said that the cows at
that slaughterhouse were having their head skinned while they were
(01:49):
still fully conscious. And he was really really worried about
the workers because it was extremely dangerous for the workers,
and he was really upset about the poor cow. So
I investigated his complaint, and I figured out who he was,
and he was ultimately fired by USDA, the agency that's
(02:11):
supposed to enforce humane regulations, and because he was a whistleblower,
and the other workers were issued a gag order and
no one was to speak with me. But I was
able to corroborate the fact that many, many, many cows
at that slaughterhouse were having their heads skinned while they
(02:31):
were still fully conscious. So that was the beginning of
it all. And that plant, mysteriously, as soon as it
came out that this was going on, that plant mysteriously
closed down and went out of business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You know what's interesting, Galas we would never think of
abusing our pet dog or cat but nobody thinks about
the slaughterhouses where they're making you know, pork and beef
and all that.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
That's definitely true. That's kind of why I wrote both
of my books. The first one was called Slaughterhouse and
then exposed violations of federal laws inside slaughterhouses, and the
second one is called Out of Sight, which is a
memoir to get this information out to the public, because
(03:24):
I feel like Americans have a right to know what
the animals suffer to get to their dinner tables. And
I've had an extraordinary amount of challenges in getting this
information out because outside of radio, the media wants to
keep this issue very very quiet.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Well, we won't.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Are Are you more concerned about the abuse of animals
in general or those specifically that are used for food.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Well, I am concerned about all animal abuses, but my
work in the last thirty years has focused on farm animals,
so I'm concerned with both. But my area of expertise
is in farm animal production.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
If you had your your others, if you had your
ability to make a magic wish, would you wish that
no animal was killed for food?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well? I don't really go there. I mean, I just
let people make their own personal choices when it comes
to eating eating animal products. But there are wishes that
I would have that would make the process less violent.
(04:51):
For example, I'll just give you a little background. Sure,
in the last few decades, we've seen great consolidation in
the slaughter industry, and that means that thousands of small
to mid sized slaughterhouses have been forced out of business
by just a handful of these giant mega slaughterhouses. And
(05:16):
that means that we're killing more animals and fewer plants.
And that means that production line speeds in the plants,
the rate at which they process the animals, has increased dramatically.
And what I would wish is that line speed, line
(05:36):
speeds would be reduced and instead, just this week, the
Trump administration announced that it's planning on increasing line speeds
from what they already are.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Just on the average, in an average slaughterhouse, how many cattle,
for example, are killed each day, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Can give you an hourly rate, because they vary as
to how many hours they slaughter. But cattle they kill
at a rate of three hundred and ninety per hour.
But hogs, for example, they kill at a rate of
one thy one hundred and six hogs every hour per line,
(06:20):
per slaughter line, and that means one hog every three seconds.
But that's not fast enough for the meat industry. They
want to go faster. So Trump administration is lifting that
cap on line speeds and now industry can kill hogs
as fast as it wants to. That means, like right now,
(06:43):
some of them are are slaughtering at fourteen something fourteen
hundred and something per hour, which means they have to
kill a hog every two point five seconds. And just
to give you another example, the viscera line speeds in
poultry plants, which is basically the slaughter line speed used
(07:06):
to be one hundred and forty birds per minute, and
now it's being changed to be one hundred and seventy
five birds per minute. That's three birds per second.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And that would include chickens and ducks and things like that.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Well, that's that figure is basically for broiler chickens, meat chickens.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yes, without being too gruesome, How do they kill how
do they slaughter these animals?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Well, there's a thing called the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act,
and it requires it was past sixty seven years ago,
and it requires that all farm animals except poultry be
humanely handled and rendered on conscious before they're they're bled
(08:02):
and butchered. So for hogs, for example, they either stun
them with an electrical jolt that is supposed to suppose
to render them unconscious, but doesn't always do that, and
then they slit their throat. They they shackle them and
slit their throats and bleed them out and into the
(08:22):
scalding tank they go to be dehaired or else they're
using CO two gas now, which is which is quite cruel.
They put they load them into these what they call gondolas,
and they go down into a CO two area, and
the hogs react rather adversely to that. They they gasp
(08:48):
and they scream and they convulse. So that's not exactly
the most humane method either.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
What do you say about the individual Gale who works
at the plant?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Yeah, I mean I spoke with and met many many
workers over the many decades, and in fact, I spoke
with individuals who spent a combined total of three million
hours on the kill floor alone. This is just in slaughter,
and they definitely, it definitely took a toll on those workers.
(09:27):
They became so desensitized and they took out their anger
and frustration on their spouses and with alcoholism and ending
up in jail carrying firearms and things like that. But
that's because the people that I spoke with were at
plants where violations were occurring and the animals were supposed
(09:48):
to be stunned and they weren't, and they were fighting
with the animals as they were going into the scalding
tank alive or being skinned alive as far as cows go.
So they were very outspoken. The people that I spoke
with were extremely forthcoming and telling me about the atrocities
(10:11):
they committed, because it was kind of like the floodgates
burst open and they wanted to tell me everything that
was going on. It was really sad.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
How many major slaughterhouses are there in the United States
right now?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
There are about eight hundred and something. Yeah, but there
used to be many more, and and now there are
only eight hundred, which accounts for why lione speeds are
so fast. There's really only a handful of giant megaslaughterhouses.
(10:50):
I mean, one slaughterhouse that I visited many years ago
killed I think it was about one hundred forty four
thousand pigs a week, and that was years ago. They've
increased their line speeds now, and they'll be increasing their further,
I'm sure because of this new Trump administration policy change.
(11:13):
But today now they slaughter thirty five thousand hogs a day,
so you can imagine what it takes to do that
many hogs in one day.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Let's talk about the intelligence of the animal for a second, Gale.
Are they aware of what's happening?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Oh, absolutely, they're terrified. I just ran an account the
other day of a hog that was being loaded into
the gondola to go down into the pit of Co
two and it was just shaking. Its legs splayed out
and it was shaking. It was so scared. Hogs are
(11:54):
are supposed to be as intelligent as dogs, so they're
very intelligent and they're very aware. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, I like the fact that you don't question whether
people should be eating meat or not, but the way
it's done. But is there a truly humane way to
kill an animal?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Is That's a great question. I don't think I can
answer that. I don't really know. All I know is
that I document violations that are occurring and trying to
educate the public about what's happening, because jeez, the public
has a right to know, and nobody wants to tell them.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I know, I personally have cut down on my meat
consumption dramatically because of just thinking about these things. And
it's changed my attitude, and uh, it's changed my taste woods.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I think, yeah, yeah, once you know, yeah, to take action.
You know, knowledge is power, And I mean we now
kill more more paltry broiler poultry in one day than
we did in the entire year of nineteen thirty. We
kill nine billion, more than nine billion birds a year
(13:21):
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I'm really up a creek if I pull out a
carrot and it starts yelling at me, help me, help me.
Is there an agency they've been cutting back everything in government.
Is there an agency still around that looks into this.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Yeah? The US Department of Agriculture is supposed to enforce
the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. I'll tell you they
The law was passed. I think it was sixty seven
years ago. I think I said that already, come to
think of it, and it was zero budgeted. The Humane
(14:05):
Methods of Slaughter Act was provided zero funds to enforce it.
So only after my first book, Slaughterhouse came out and
I was able to convince a Washington Post reporter to
do a front page story on the atrocities taking place.
That's the first time money was ever appropriated to enforce
(14:30):
the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and that was in
two thousand and one. The law had been on the
books for forty three years and it had gone totally unenforced.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Give us a list of the animals that have been
slaughtered that are going through this process. You mentioned hogs, beef, cattle, chickens.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What else do we have out there?
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I mean you have everything. You have turkey's, goats, sheep, ducks, lamb, yeah, lamb,
a little bit of everything. And I mean I can
I can tell you that before we got any funding
(15:18):
for the enforcement of the Humane Methodsist Slutter Act, virtually
every person, without exception of the people that had spent
a combined total of three million hours on the kill floor,
including workers and meat inspectors, they all admitted to engaging
or observing live animals being strangled, beaten, boiled, skinned and
(15:42):
dismembered while fully conscious.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Gale kind of pain us a picture on the kinds
of abuses that have been out there.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Oh sure, Well, one plant in Iowa that I investigated
was lowering the electric current on the stunning device because
it was bruising the meat. So they were just shocking
the animals for the fun of it. And the animals
(16:16):
were being were alive when they had their throats slit,
which is against the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. And
they were being immersed into a scalding tank, alive and
fully conscious. Another plant, a huge beef plant in Washington State,
the caws weren't being properly stunned, and hundreds each day
(16:36):
were being skinned and dismembered while they were fully conscious.
And we have three and a half hours of videotape
showing more than one hundred violations of different sorts. But
just to give you an example, I have a little
list of the things that went on that went on
and probably still go on. But this has happened before
(17:00):
any funding was appropriated for enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act.
Workers told me that they routinely pounded away at cow's
heads with ineffective stunning equipment because they use a what's
called a knocking gun to knock the animal unconscious. Repeatedly
shocked hogs with defective stunning equipment gased hogs that screamed,
(17:23):
gashed and shook their heads, beat hogs with shackles and
lead pipes, drag disabled animals with meat hooks in their
mouths orses, or with cables around their necks. There aren't
too many more. I won't tell you too much more, George.
They put electric prods in animals anuses, eyes, and mouths
(17:48):
and held them there, and they skinned the heads, bellies,
sides and rumps, removed the legs, ears, horns, and tails
of cattle who were still fully conscious.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Are these work sadistic?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
They are just trying to keep up with the line speed.
I mean some of the workers were sadistic. Some of
the workers were shocking hogs just to watch them jump
in the air. Some of them were chasing them into
the scalding tank alive just for the fun of it.
But a lot of them are are just We're just
trying to keep up with the line speed, not stop
(18:25):
the line speed. They were required to skin cows alive.
I have a quote that's that says it all. It
says this is from a beef plant. I've seen thousands
and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive
since I've been at the plant. I've been up to
the side polar where they are alive. That's where they
(18:46):
pull the skin down. A machine that pulls the skin
peels the skin off the cow. The legs are gone,
the hide is stripped out down to the neck. There.
If I see an animal alive, animal, I cannot stop
the line because the supervisors have told us that you
can work on a cow that's alive.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I bet in the old days, if a farmer wanted
to kill his cattle, he just shot him in the head.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, that's probably a lot more humane or a lot
less inhumane.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back George Norie with Gail Eisenetts. As an
author and winner of the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal for
Outstanding Achievement and Animal welfare. Gyale is the chief investigator
for the Humane Farming Association. Her book is called Out
of Sight, An Undercover Investigators Fight for Animal Rights and
her own survival.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Gail, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Thanks George, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
How did you get involved in fighting for animal rights?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, it's a kind of long story, but.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
You're on for two hours, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
About Oh okay, Well, it took quite a while to
get involved in the animal protection movement because it was
a bird It was just a small movement back in
the nineteen eighties when I started. But I hired on
with the largest animal protection organization in the country at
the time, and I did all sorts of investigations into
(01:03):
all sorts of crazy things like dog fighting and cock
fighting and slaughterhouses and dog racing and Santa Ria animal
sacrifice things like that. But everything changed one day when
I had a complaint come across my inbox from an
(01:27):
anonymous source who said that he worked in a slaughterhouse
down in Florida. It was largest slaughterhouse in the southeast.
And this may sound grizzly, but he said he was
a USDA employee, and he said that the cows at
that slaughterhouse were having their head skinned while they were
(01:49):
still fully conscious. And he was really really worried about
the workers because it was extremely dangerous for the workers,
and he was really upset about the poor cow. So
I investigated his complaint, and I figured out who he was,
and he was ultimately fired by USDA, the agency that's
(02:11):
supposed to enforce humane regulations, and because he was a whistleblower,
and the other workers were issued a gag order and
no one was to speak with me. But I was
able to corroborate the fact that many, many, many cows
at that slaughterhouse were having their heads skinned while they
(02:31):
were still fully conscious. So that was the beginning of
it all. And that plant, mysteriously, as soon as it
came out that this was going on, that plant mysteriously
closed down and went out of business.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
You know what's interesting, Galas we would never think of
abusing our pet dog or cat but nobody thinks about
the slaughterhouses where they're making you know, pork and beef
and all that.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
That's definitely true. That's kind of why I wrote both
of my books. The first one was called Slaughterhouse and
then exposed violations of federal laws inside slaughterhouses, and the
second one is called Out of Sight, which is a
memoir to get this information out to the public, because
(03:24):
I feel like Americans have a right to know what
the animals suffer to get to their dinner tables. And
I've had an extraordinary amount of challenges in getting this
information out because outside of radio, the media wants to
keep this issue very very quiet.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Well, we won't.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Are Are you more concerned about the abuse of animals
in general or those specifically that are used for food.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Well, I am concerned about all animal abuses, but my
work in the last thirty years has focused on farm animals,
so I'm concerned with both. But my area of expertise
is in farm animal production.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
If you had your your others, if you had your
ability to make a magic wish, would you wish that
no animal was killed for food?
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well? I don't really go there. I mean, I just
let people make their own personal choices when it comes
to eating eating animal products. But there are wishes that
I would have that would make the process less violent.
(04:51):
For example, I'll just give you a little background. Sure,
in the last few decades, we've seen great consolidation in
the slaughter industry, and that means that thousands of small
to mid sized slaughterhouses have been forced out of business
by just a handful of these giant mega slaughterhouses. And
(05:16):
that means that we're killing more animals and fewer plants.
And that means that production line speeds in the plants,
the rate at which they process the animals, has increased dramatically.
And what I would wish is that line speed, line
(05:36):
speeds would be reduced and instead, just this week, the
Trump administration announced that it's planning on increasing line speeds
from what they already are.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Just on the average, in an average slaughterhouse, how many cattle,
for example, are killed each day, Well, I.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Can give you an hourly rate, because they vary as
to how many hours they slaughter. But cattle they kill
at a rate of three hundred and ninety per hour.
But hogs, for example, they kill at a rate of
one thy one hundred and six hogs every hour per line,
(06:20):
per slaughter line, and that means one hog every three seconds.
But that's not fast enough for the meat industry. They
want to go faster. So Trump administration is lifting that
cap on line speeds and now industry can kill hogs
as fast as it wants to. That means, like right now,
(06:43):
some of them are are slaughtering at fourteen something fourteen
hundred and something per hour, which means they have to
kill a hog every two point five seconds. And just
to give you another example, the viscera line speeds in
poultry plants, which is basically the slaughter line speed used
(07:06):
to be one hundred and forty birds per minute, and
now it's being changed to be one hundred and seventy
five birds per minute. That's three birds per second.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And that would include chickens and ducks and things like that.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Well, that's that figure is basically for broiler chickens, meat chickens.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yes, without being too gruesome, How do they kill how
do they slaughter these animals?
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Well, there's a thing called the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act,
and it requires it was past sixty seven years ago,
and it requires that all farm animals except poultry be
humanely handled and rendered on conscious before they're they're bled
(08:02):
and butchered. So for hogs, for example, they either stun
them with an electrical jolt that is supposed to suppose
to render them unconscious, but doesn't always do that, and
then they slit their throat. They they shackle them and
slit their throats and bleed them out and into the
(08:22):
scalding tank they go to be dehaired or else they're
using CO two gas now, which is which is quite cruel.
They put they load them into these what they call gondolas,
and they go down into a CO two area, and
the hogs react rather adversely to that. They they gasp
(08:48):
and they scream and they convulse. So that's not exactly
the most humane method either.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
What do you say about the individual Gale who works
at the plant?
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Yeah, I mean I spoke with and met many many
workers over the many decades, and in fact, I spoke
with individuals who spent a combined total of three million
hours on the kill floor alone. This is just in slaughter,
and they definitely, it definitely took a toll on those workers.
(09:27):
They became so desensitized and they took out their anger
and frustration on their spouses and with alcoholism and ending
up in jail carrying firearms and things like that. But
that's because the people that I spoke with were at
plants where violations were occurring and the animals were supposed
(09:48):
to be stunned and they weren't, and they were fighting
with the animals as they were going into the scalding
tank alive or being skinned alive as far as cows go.
So they were very outspoken. The people that I spoke
with were extremely forthcoming and telling me about the atrocities
(10:11):
they committed, because it was kind of like the floodgates
burst open and they wanted to tell me everything that
was going on. It was really sad.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
How many major slaughterhouses are there in the United States
right now?
Speaker 4 (10:26):
There are about eight hundred and something. Yeah, but there
used to be many more, and and now there are
only eight hundred, which accounts for why lione speeds are
so fast. There's really only a handful of giant megaslaughterhouses.
(10:50):
I mean, one slaughterhouse that I visited many years ago
killed I think it was about one hundred forty four
thousand pigs a week, and that was years ago. They've
increased their line speeds now, and they'll be increasing their further,
I'm sure because of this new Trump administration policy change.
(11:13):
But today now they slaughter thirty five thousand hogs a day,
so you can imagine what it takes to do that
many hogs in one day.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Let's talk about the intelligence of the animal for a second, Gale.
Are they aware of what's happening?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Oh, absolutely, they're terrified. I just ran an account the
other day of a hog that was being loaded into
the gondola to go down into the pit of Co
two and it was just shaking. Its legs splayed out
and it was shaking. It was so scared. Hogs are
(11:54):
are supposed to be as intelligent as dogs, so they're
very intelligent and they're very aware. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, I like the fact that you don't question whether
people should be eating meat or not, but the way
it's done. But is there a truly humane way to
kill an animal?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Is That's a great question. I don't think I can
answer that. I don't really know. All I know is
that I document violations that are occurring and trying to
educate the public about what's happening, because jeez, the public
has a right to know, and nobody wants to tell them.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I know, I personally have cut down on my meat
consumption dramatically because of just thinking about these things. And
it's changed my attitude, and uh, it's changed my taste woods.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
I think, yeah, yeah, once you know, yeah, to take action.
You know, knowledge is power, And I mean we now
kill more more paltry broiler poultry in one day than
we did in the entire year of nineteen thirty. We
kill nine billion, more than nine billion birds a year
(13:21):
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
I'm really up a creek if I pull out a
carrot and it starts yelling at me, help me, help me.
Is there an agency they've been cutting back everything in government.
Is there an agency still around that looks into this.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Yeah? The US Department of Agriculture is supposed to enforce
the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. I'll tell you they
The law was passed. I think it was sixty seven
years ago. I think I said that already, come to
think of it, and it was zero budgeted. The Humane
(14:05):
Methods of Slaughter Act was provided zero funds to enforce it.
So only after my first book, Slaughterhouse came out and
I was able to convince a Washington Post reporter to
do a front page story on the atrocities taking place.
That's the first time money was ever appropriated to enforce
(14:30):
the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and that was in
two thousand and one. The law had been on the
books for forty three years and it had gone totally unenforced.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Give us a list of the animals that have been
slaughtered that are going through this process. You mentioned hogs, beef, cattle, chickens.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
What else do we have out there?
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I mean you have everything. You have turkey's, goats, sheep, ducks, lamb, yeah, lamb,
a little bit of everything. And I mean I can
I can tell you that before we got any funding
(15:18):
for the enforcement of the Humane Methodsist Slutter Act, virtually
every person, without exception of the people that had spent
a combined total of three million hours on the kill floor,
including workers and meat inspectors, they all admitted to engaging
or observing live animals being strangled, beaten, boiled, skinned and
(15:42):
dismembered while fully conscious.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Gale kind of pain us a picture on the kinds
of abuses that have been out there.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Oh sure, Well, one plant in Iowa that I investigated
was lowering the electric current on the stunning device because
it was bruising the meat. So they were just shocking
the animals for the fun of it. And the animals
(16:16):
were being were alive when they had their throats slit,
which is against the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. And
they were being immersed into a scalding tank, alive and
fully conscious. Another plant, a huge beef plant in Washington State,
the caws weren't being properly stunned, and hundreds each day
(16:36):
were being skinned and dismembered while they were fully conscious.
And we have three and a half hours of videotape
showing more than one hundred violations of different sorts. But
just to give you an example, I have a little
list of the things that went on that went on
and probably still go on. But this has happened before
(17:00):
any funding was appropriated for enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act.
Workers told me that they routinely pounded away at cow's
heads with ineffective stunning equipment because they use a what's
called a knocking gun to knock the animal unconscious. Repeatedly
shocked hogs with defective stunning equipment gased hogs that screamed,
(17:23):
gashed and shook their heads, beat hogs with shackles and
lead pipes, drag disabled animals with meat hooks in their
mouths orses, or with cables around their necks. There aren't
too many more. I won't tell you too much more, George.
They put electric prods in animals anuses, eyes, and mouths
(17:48):
and held them there, and they skinned the heads, bellies,
sides and rumps, removed the legs, ears, horns, and tails
of cattle who were still fully conscious.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Are these work sadistic?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
They are just trying to keep up with the line speed.
I mean some of the workers were sadistic. Some of
the workers were shocking hogs just to watch them jump
in the air. Some of them were chasing them into
the scalding tank alive just for the fun of it.
But a lot of them are are just We're just
trying to keep up with the line speed, not stop
(18:25):
the line speed. They were required to skin cows alive.
I have a quote that's that says it all. It
says this is from a beef plant. I've seen thousands
and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive
since I've been at the plant. I've been up to
the side polar where they are alive. That's where they
(18:46):
pull the skin down. A machine that pulls the skin
peels the skin off the cow. The legs are gone,
the hide is stripped out down to the neck. There.
If I see an animal alive, animal, I cannot stop
the line because the supervisors have told us that you
can work on a cow that's alive.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I bet in the old days, if a farmer wanted
to kill his cattle, he just shot him in the head.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, that's probably a lot more humane or a lot
less inhumane.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
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George Noory
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