Animals don’t run happily into a slaughterhouse, throw themselves on their backs, shout, ‘Here you are, have a chop!’, and then die. There’s a sad truth that every carnivore has to face: If you eat meat then animals will be killed for you. How death is dished out depends on the animal.

Most of the animals killed for meat are chickens – 676 million of them each year in the UK alone. They’re taken from the broiler sheds to the ‘processing plants’ a much nicer expression than slaughterhouse! It’s all timed like clockwork with lorries arriving at set times throughout the day. The chickens are taken from the lorries and shackled upside down to a conveyor system by their feet. It’s exactly the same for turkeys and ducks.

There is something really strange about these chicken processing plants – they are so clinical and soulless. They are always brightly lit and, apart from around the actual slaughter point, fairly clean, if a bit wet and sloshy. They are also very mechanical and very automated. People walk around in white overalls and hats saying good morning to each other. It’s almost as if they’re making televisions or canning peas.

The give-away is the slowly-moving line of fluttering white birds, which never seems to stop. In fact this conveyor belt often keeps going day and night. The first thing the strung-up chickens meet is an electrified, water-filled bath. They are dragged across it by the conveyor so their heads dangle in the water. The electricity is supposed to stun them so they’re unconscious by the time they reach the next stage – the throat cutting.

Sometimes this cutting is done by a blood-stained human with a knife. Sometimes it’s done by a blood-stained automatic cutting machine. As the conveyor belt moves on, the chickens are supposed to bleed to death before being dunked into what’s called the scalding tank – very hot water that loosens the feathers.

Well, that’s the theory. The reality is often horribly different. At the stunning bath, some chickens raise their head and miss it so they are fully conscious when their throats are slit. When the cutting is done by a machine, which is more often the case, the blade is set at a particular height. But not all chickens are the same size, which means the shorter birds get cut on the head and the longer ones on the breast. Even if they are cut in the neck, most automatic machines sever the back or side of the neck and rarely cut the carotid arteries. Either way, it’s not enough to kill them, only to wound them very badly. Millions of birds reach the scalding tank alive and are literally boiled to death.

Dr Henry Carter, past President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, says in a 1993 report on the slaughter of chickens:
procedures in far too many poultry slaughterhouses do not ensure that the birds are adequately stunned, leaving an unknown number alive and still conscious when they enter the scalding tank. It is high times that politicians and legislators put an end to practices that are unacceptable and inhumane.

The slaughterhouses where the bigger animals such as lambs, sheep, pigs and cows are killed, are very different. They too are becoming more mechanised like a factory but, automated or not, they are one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. Most slaughterhouses are big, echoey places with huge shackles and dead animals hanging from the ceiling. The noise of clanking metal mixes with the sound of frightened animals squealing, bellowing or bleating. There is the sound of men laughing and joking with each other. They are all interrupted by the ‘crack’ of the special pistols. There is water and blood everywhere and if death has a smell, this is it – a mixture of shit which the frightened animals produce in quantity, dirt, opened guts and fear.

All the animals brought here die from the same cause – loss of blood after having their throats cut. However in Britain, they are all supposed to be made unconscious first. Two different methods are mainly used for this – electrical stunning and the captive bolt pistol. This is how they’re supposed to work.

To stun an animal into unconsciousness, electric tongs – like a big pair of scissors with headphones instead of blades – are clamped on to its head by the slaughterer. These are held there for a few seconds and an electric shock applied. The unconscious animals – usually pigs, sheep, lambs or calves – are then hoisted up in the air by a chain attached to one back leg. Then their throats are cut. It’s called ‘sticking’ and the animals are meant to die without regaining consciousness.

The captive bolt pistol is usually used on larger animals like adult cattle. The pistol is placed against the animal’s forehead and fired. A metal bolt about 10cm long flies out of the barrel, shatters the animal’s forehead and enters the brain, making it unconscious. To make sure, a ‘pithing rod’ is pushed through the hole and the brains are stirred. The cow or steer is then hauled up and its throat is slit.

What really happens is often very different. The animals are unloaded from the lorries into a series of pens called the lairage. One at a time, or in groups, they are taken to the stunning point. When electric tongs are used, the animals are often stunned in front of each other. Don’t let anyone tell you that animals don’t sense what is going to happen to them: just watch pigs getting more and more agitated and panicky as their turn gets closer. Their squealing is enough to tear you up.

Because the slaughtermen are paid by how many animals they kill, they try to work as quickly as possible and frequently don’t keep the tongs in place for longer than a second or two. With lambs they often don’t bother to use them at all. The animals which are stunned might collapse from the shock and even be paralysed but they are often still conscious when they are stuck. I have actually seen pigs hanging upside down with their throats cut, wriggle free of the chains, drop to the ground covered in blood and try to run away.

Cattle are forced into a special stunning pen before the captive bolt pistol is used on them. Done properly, they are made unconscious immediately, but it isn’t always like that. Sometimes the slaughterer hits the wrong spot and the cow is in agony while he prepares the pistol and has a second shot. Sometimes the cow jerks away and again the shot might miss. Sometimes, with old equipment, the bolt from the pistol doesn’t break through the cow’s skull. All these botched shots cause mental and physical agony to the animal.

One survey, carried out by the RSPCA, found that 7 per cent of animals weren’t stunned properly. With strong, active young bulls, it was a staggering 53 per cent. In a video which was shot secretly inside an abattoir, I witnessed one poor steer being shot eight times before he collapsed. I also saw much else that made me feel sick: uncaring, brutal treatment of defenceless animals carried out not as an occasional mistake but as the normal way of working. I saw pigs’ tails being broken as they were rushed to the stunning point; lambs being slaughter without any stunning at all; an old, frightened and panicking pig being ridden around the slaughterhouse like a rodeo horse by a callous young slaughterman.

For religious slaughter, sometimes called religious slaughter, different rules apply. For Jews it is called ‘Scechita’ and for Muslims ‘Halal’, but in both cases the animals are not stunned before being stuck, and it can take up to six minutes for them to lose consciousness as they bleed to death.

The methods of religious slaughter are laid down in Jewish and Islamic teachings which date back thousands of years. For Halal slaughter there are strict rules about the knife being sharp and not having any nicks or blemishes on the cutting edge. This was introduced out of concern for the animals to ensure they were killed as efficiently as possible and not hacked to death. In addition, the animals are killed one by one, so as to prevent them from panicking.

The animals are killed while still conscious because an unconscious animal might have been diseased and there were no ways of checking its health. In both religions, the blood is considered unclean and it was believed that a conscious animal would pump out its blood more efficiently from its dying body. In fact studies have shown that it makes no difference if the animal is conscious or unconscious, and some Muslim slaughterhouses do stun before slaughter.

Many Jews and Muslims are opposed to the whole process of slaughter, ritual or otherwise, and have become vegetarian because of it. So have a lot of other people!

Special Bonus Facts

The number of animals killed for meat in Britain in one year was:

Chickens 676 million
Pigs 15 million
Cattle 3 million
Sheep 19 million
Turkeys 38 million
Ducks 11 million
Geese 1 million
Rabbits 5 million*
Deer 10, 000*

(Figures taken from UK government’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Slaughter Statistics for 1994, except * which are estimates. The population of Britain is 56 million.)

‘I wouldn’t want to kill an animal and I don’t want to have them killed on my behalf. By not being involved with their death I feel I have a happy secret alliance with the world and I sleep much more peacefully because of it.’
Joanna Lumley, actress