Big Ag Doesn’t Care About Animals or Workers

Behind the closed doors of factory farms, billions of animals suffer. And these industrial facilities are not just cruel places for the animals raised and killed for human consumption, but also for workers who endure dangerous conditions and grueling hours.

A powerful, eye-opening Bloomberg article, “America’s Worst Graveyard Shift is Grinding Up Workers,” details the harsh reality that these underpaid workers, many of them immigrants, must endure, as well as the reality of what happens to animals in these facilities.

“She worked as a cleaner on the graveyard shift at Tyson Foods Inc.’s cavernous meatpacking plant in Holcomb, Kan. Every day up to 6,000 cows clamber off 18-wheelers lined up at the facility, 200 miles west of Wichita. They’re watered, then ushered into the kill box, knocked unconscious by a bolt gun, hung upside down with their hearts still pounding, and bled to death by a slash to the jugular.

“No one knew her real name. At work she was Tiffany Sisneros, until her arm got crushed in a conveyor belt…As she tried to brace herself, her left hand got caught in the machine’s roller, which reeled her in past her elbow, twisting and cracking her forearm.”

Reports are showing that horrifying injuries may be a very common danger in factory farming. Earlier this year, the National Employment Law Project, which tracks severe workplace injuries, reported that “the number of incidents reported by the meat and poultry processing industry is startling.” 

In these plants, the faster they slaughter the animals, the greater the profit for big ag – at the expense of both the workers and the animals. Workers race to keep up with the fast pace of slaughter and processing lines. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that employees are being denied bathroom breaks, working in a fast-paced “assembly line environment.”

Yet, the USDA is considering expanding its dangerous high-speed pig slaughter program to facilities nationwide, and the chicken industry has proposed increasing the speed of its already dangerously fast slaughter lines.

Animal Outlook is working to oppose both of these hazardous increases that will place animal welfare, worker safety, and consumer safety at risk. Join us today — sign & share: Not So Fast, USDA: Stop the Unhealthy & Inhumane High-Speed Slaughter.