Brutality of meat industry on display during pandemic

The meat industry prefers to work behind the closed doors of factory farms and slaughterhouses, but the pandemic is giving Canadians a rare glimpse into the dirty business of animal slaughter, and the unique and intense forms of suffering the industry unleashes on animals, workers and sometimes even farmers.

By now it’s old news that Canada’s largest COVID-19 outbreaks have all been at slaughterhouses (the industry prefers the term “processing plants”). In Alberta, over three times as many slaughter workers have fallen ill than have healthcare workers. Nationwide, these killing factories are closing or running at reduced capacity, throwing a wrench in the meat supply chain.

The meat industry raises animals on a strict, just-in-time basis, and slaughter disruptions are most keenly felt in the pig and chicken meat industries because those animals have shorter lifespans and higher turnover. Slaughter-ready animals are immediately trucked to the abattoir to maximize farmer profits, and clear space for new, younger animals. Genetically manipulated to grow grotesquely fast, chickens reach slaughter size in only six to eight weeks. Pigs reach market weight of about 270 pounds in a mere six months.

Many farmers are now making a business decision to “depopulate”— a euphemistic term for killing off slaughter-ready animals whom they can’t slaughter for profit.

At least 200,000 chickens have been killed on farms in Quebec, and reports suggest up to 90,000 pigs have met the same fate. There is no publicly available data, so actual numbers could be significantly higher.

In Minnesota, farmers are killing 3,000 pigs a day and running their bodies through a woodchipper. No public inspectors oversee on-farm killings, and industry-accepted methods include braining piglets by bashing in their heads in, shooting pigs and gassing entire barns of chickens. Some may wring their hands about food waste, but more importantly, these animals are individuals. As MP Nathaniel ErskineSmith pointed out at a recent Industry Committee meeting, “this is what happens when we treat sentient animals as commodities.”

Farmers are now claiming that shooting pigs and gassing chickens is affecting their mental health. Apparently even farmers — involved in the daily confinement and exploitation of animals, often in appalling conditions — don’t like to contemplate the fate that awaits animals once trucked away.

But what of the mental well-being of workers in slaughterhouses to whom we normally outsource the business of killing? What is it like to kill, disassemble bodies and constantly try to disassociate from the horror of it?

Slaughterhouse workers are disproportionately marginalized people from immigrant communities, temporary foreign workers and other folks with few options. We shunt this dangerous, damaging work onto the vulnerable, and the mental toll it takes is evident in the higher rates of violence in slaughterhouse communities. Now, these workers are also dealing with the added risk of COVID-19 infection.

The secretive brutality of the meat industry is on display for all to see, and it’s more apparent than ever before that a post-pandemic food system must include a shift toward growing plants, and a move away from the slaughter-based food system that hurts animals, workers and our food supply.