Students Fighting Campus Slaughterhouse Funded by JBS

Time and again, COK’s investigations inside slaughterhouses uncover egregious abuse of animals, from the first look inside a US lamb slaughter operation, to high-speed horrors at a Hormel supplier.

Soon, a new slaughterhouse could be built on a college campus. Yes, that’s right. It’s part of a so-called “ongoing educational program” planned for the Fort Collins campus of Colorado State University (CSU), and many students are not happy about it.

As KUNC reports, the construction of the campus-based cattle and poultry slaughterhouse is partly funded by $12.5 million from JBS — the world’s largest meat producer.

You probably saw JBS in the news recently, as Brazil raided major meat corporations for alleged bribery. And a 2014 COK investigation of a JBS subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Corp., revealed chickens buried alive in outdoor pits.

Outraged? So are more than 60,000 people who have signed a petition started by CSU student Becca Bliel, in an effort to stop the “JBS Global Food Innovation Center” from being built.

Bleil writes: “We’ll be facing the stench and screams of innocent animals in agony every time we walk to class. An on-campus slaughterhouse will mean that living, breathing animals come into the heart of campus and never make it out alive.”

Bliel and signers are expressing concern not only for animals, but also for slaughterhouse workers and the environment. The petition states that “workers are subject to intense psychological trauma and severe physical injuries such as amputations,” and cites animal agriculture’s leading contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

CSU is, believe it or not, not the first college to have a slaughterhouse on campus. Thankfully, students are speaking up and saying a school is no place to kill animals.

Nine billion farm animals are slaughtered each year in the US alone, the vast majority suffering for their entire short lives on factory farms.

View Compassion Over Killing’s undercover investigations for more information.