US Legislators Call for Expansion of High-Speed Slaughter Audit For Animal and Consumer Safety

Two members of Congress have fired off a letter to the USDA’s Inspector General, urging it to expand its review of the agency’s dangerous high-speed pig slaughter program to its impacts on animals and consumer safety. 

As the USDA continues attempts to pass its dangerous new rule, things are getting heated. After widespread public outcry, the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announced in June that it would be conducting a probe of the agency to see if it concealed information and used flawed data on worker injury rates to push the line speed rule forward. 

Now, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) have penned a letter to the OIG, urging it to include the potentially disastrous consequences to animals and consumers in its review, as well. The legislators write that they “are deeply concerned that USDA failed to adequately assess and consider the impacts of the proposed rule on animal welfare” and that the agency “cannot credibly argue that decreasing inspector oversight of the sorting of pigs while increasing the volume of animals slaughtered will not undermine animal welfare.”

They also cite COK’s shocking 2015 undercover investigation of a model plant for the program’s expansion, explaining that it “revealed that plant workers who were facing the pressure of faster slaughter line speeds improperly stunned pigs or did not stun them at all. The undercover investigator observed pigs regaining consciousness after their throats had been cut open and continuing to move down the slaughter line–without the line ever being stopped.”

As the Inspector General weighs the mountain of evidence condemning this plan, you can help put an end to it once and for all. Leave a quick, polite Facebook comment on the USDA’s latest post, urging it to put the brakes on cruel and dangerous high-speed pig slaughter TODAY!

Here’s some sample language for your comment: I’m writing to urge you to put the brakes on cruel, dangerous high-speed pig slaughter. A Compassion Over Killing investigation of high-speed pig slaughter plant Quality Pork Processors documented pigs being shocked, dragged, and improperly stunned, as well as pigs covered in feces or pus-filled abscesses being processed for human consumption–with a USDA inspection seal of approval. Please don’t increase animal suffering–and put workers and consumer safety on the line–under the guise of “modernization” of slaughter. Thank you.