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Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoCO2 buildup in the lungs triggers the breathing reflex in most mammals, with high levels of CO2 leading to the sensation of asphyxiation. Nitrogen, on the other hand, is completely imperceptible (at least in humans; I assume the same thing is true for other animals). People have died in nitrogen rich atmospheres because they had no idea they were in a hypoxic environment until they lost consciousness. So why not switch to nitrogen asphyxiation instead? Is it that much more expensive? The quality of meat might be better, since the animals would not be stressed moments before dying.
- InCityDreams 4y agoI have reduced my meat consumption to virtually zero. Is there any proof that a stressed animal gives worse quality meat? Even after cooking it? Could anyone double-blinded tell the difference?
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoI'd be surprised if anybody could tell. Natural variation in other factors that impact flavor far more are almost certainly going to be much stronger, e.g. how fatty is the cut of mean, how's the fat distributed, natural variations on muscle fiber, how long was it aged/dried, which piece got more heat from the heat source during cooking..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sofixa 4y agoYep, it results in worse quality meat: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-scared-animals-taste-worse https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-scared-animals-tas... I thought this was well known - it's the main reason why killing methods are 'stealthy' (the animals don't see them coming) in slaughterhouses.
- Ancapistani 4y agoStressed animals can panic and injure themselves trying to escape, which absolutely means quality issues. > Even after cooking it? Could anyone double-blinded tell the difference? It doesn't matter to the company, because it's apparent when you look at the packaged meat.
- Ancapistani 4y agoAFAIK, slaughterhouses don't use CO2 (carbon dioxide) - they use CO (carbon monoxide). The effect is identical to nitrogen, and doesn't trigger the physiological suffocation response.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoSounds like this one is different. > We have invested in research to understand which techniques cause the least pain and stress to the animals and to their handlers. For pigs weighing less than 65 pounds, we use either carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes painless loss of consciousness and death, or a device called a nonpenetrating captive bolt gun, which administers a controlled blow to the head without breaking the skin, instantaneously rendering the animal insensible and causing a quick death. For pigs larger than 65 pounds, we use a penetrating captive bolt gun that fires a retractable metal bolt into the brain, resulting in insensibility and death. https://www.smithfieldfoods.com/animal-care https://www.smithfieldfoods.com/animal-care (near the bottom is a section labelled "Humane Euthanasia and Slaughter")
- Ancapistani 4y agoSurely that's a mistake - if not, it's a huge problem. I'm going to reach out to them and ask for clarification, because that statement is entirely inconsistent with reality.
- Ancapistani 4y agoHmm. I'm doing some digging, and apparently CO2 is used, at least in some context, for a lot of large processors. Here's an example of a product advertising it: https://www.frontmatec.com/en/pork-solutions/unclean-line/stunning/co2-stunning-system# https://www.frontmatec.com/en/pork-solutions/unclean-line/st... Mea culpa. I'll do a bit more digging first, to make sure I understand how it's being used. Just putting an animal into a chamber with a concentrated CO2 atmosphere would be identical to putting a bag over their head - obviously inhumane. Logically, that doesn't make sense to me. If nothing else, the animals would struggle and be very loud, which would panic the rest of the queue. I'll follow up once I know more.
- LarryMullins 4y agoA handful of times I have encountered people with the mistaken belief that CO2 euthanasia is painless because "that's how we kill lab rats" and "that's how the vet put my dog to sleep." They're wrong about CO2 being painless of course, but it seems to be a somewhat common misconception. Also many people get carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide mixed up, adding to the confusion. More education is necessary. Right now a lot of people have no clue that they're wrong.
- tsuujin 4y agoI feel like carbon monoxide would be so much more humane too. I used to work a job where we had to vigilantly check for CO because it could kill a whole family without anyone realizing they were in danger. 1200 parts per million is fatal. Pump like 2500 PPM of CO into the chamber to be sure, everything dies, no suffering needed.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> that's how the vet put my dog to sleep Do vets really do this? My dog was put down with a tranquilliser.
- LarryMullins 4y agoAs far as I can tell, euthanizing pets with CO2 is presently contrary to recommendations but used to be common. And CO2 is still often used for euthanizing wild animals.
- puffybuf 4y agoWe used CO to kill mice in my lab. Concentrated CO, filling the chamber first with it. They would take two breaths and pass out, maybe twitch once or twice, and that was it. If I had to die I’d like to go that way.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoCost I'm sure. Nitrogen is slightly lighter than air, carbon dioxide is heavier than air. They are lowered into the CO2 chamber. If it were nitrogen it would need to be redesigned. Why are no startups exploring nitrogen? The world isn't going to go vegan. Cost effective nitrogen gas chambers could reduce a fair amount of animal suffering in a pragmatic way.
- throw_away1525 4y agoAir is 30% nitrogen. Air separation (into N2 and O2) is a well understood process, liquid nitrogen is abundant. Lowering them into the chamber, putting them in a chamber and filling it up, it makes no difference. The only reason is that no one cares.
- shoelessone 4y agoI'll admit I just skimmed this article and don't know the source, so happy to be shown the light, but I seriously doubt it's because no one cares. https://www.ri.se/en/what-we-do/projects/replacement-of-carbon-dioxide-for-stunning-purposes-in-pigs https://www.ri.se/en/what-we-do/projects/replacement-of-carb...
- Ancapistani 4y agoI'd say that pretty much everyone involved cares - either about the animal's experience, or about the financial impact. As I said elsewhere, at least in this case those incentives are largely aligned.
- atmavatar 4y agoAir is actually ~78% nitrogen. That merely furthers the point, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
- etrautmann 4y agocompanies in this business will not change until forced via regulation or consumer preference. It's not like they can advertise or explain more human slaughter methods on the package.
- loufe 4y agoI know the feeling well. I really like carbonated water. At work I take a large 54 floz growler full to drink every half shift. It took me a while, after I started, to realize that I was inhaling concentrated CO2 before actually drinking. I was feeling awful as I went to take a sip. I have a habit now of blowing into the growler to empty it of CO2 after opening the lid, which works perfectly. It felt like you haven't taken a breath for 30 seconds.
- oliwarner 4y ago> So why not switch to nitrogen asphyxiation instead? Is it that much more expensive? Food grade gasses (for brewers, at least) seem to put N2 as much cheaper. And that makes sense, it's aggressively abundant in the atmosphere. Concentrating it feels like it should be easy. But I wonder if there's a safety aspect. If you're handling these gasses, you know if you're in a high CO2 area. Your blood acidity climbs and everything in your body tells you to get to better air. And it's rapid so you still have oxygenated tissues. In a nitrogen environment, you slowly deplete your reserves, faint and die. Maybe they could spike it with an odour like they do methane.
- nhchris 4y ago> On its website, Smithfield Foods claims that its CO2 chambers lead to “painless loss of consciousness and death.” They made a claim, but did their best to prevent any recordings from being made, and their claim turned out to be a knowing lie. How many more cases of companies asking us to trust them while hiding evidence will it take, before we finally learn that hiding implies we should assume the worst? Edit: Specific to this case, is there a good argument for not requiring that the method of slaughter is public? I.e. making those spy cameras mandated by law.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago> Specific to this case, is there a good argument for not requiring that the method of slaughter is public? That's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, there will likely be bad arguments ("I don't want to watch that!" ignoring the rebuttal of, "Don't watch it?") which become annoyingly persistent. Then "workarounds" like fake camera feeds. Still, requiring that this is auditable by the general public doesn't sound bad on its face when it's considered that the general public is eating the things being audited.
- metadat 4y ago> She’d barely slept that night, waking every hour or two to check that the feed was transmitting from three pinhole infrared cameras she’d hidden in the Farmer John meatpacking plant 20 miles away. Is there off-the-shelf hardware available to do this? Perhaps something that links to a cleverly placed nearby concealed mobile phone? Edit: It's revealed deeper into the article. Not generally available to civilians, which is probably a good thing because creeps would abuse it. > Deerbrook also used tiny cameras, specifically ones produced by Sony that are sometimes sold to law enforcement for hidden camera surveillance. But she was able to power them for days with small lithium-ion batteries and connected them via Wi-Fi to a hotspot generated by an Android phone that she hid on the top of the Marel gas chamber.
- Alupis 4y ago> "specifically ones produced by Sony that are sometimes sold to law enforcement for hidden camera surveillance" This statement from the article does not mean: > Not generally available to civilians There are very few pieces of technology a regular person can't get their hands on. A camera is not a controlled device or something. People who make IoT devices regularly use similar cameras and hand-soldered batteries, etc. The setup from the article wouldn't even raise an eyebrow over at HackADay or similar.
- nullfield 4y agoIf anything, the WiFi hotspot would’ve been been rapidly detected and, perhaps, suppressed by certain hardware that runs WiFi - it’s somewhat surprising this was successful.
- interestica 4y agoSoon a startup will start selling radio jammers to slaughterhouses?
- kierenj 4y ago> Reynolds says he watched at least 10 of DxE’s clips from its investigation, and they left him disturbed for days. “I’ve actually seen a lot of horrible videos. This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I’m not eating pork from the United States anymore until somebody fixes these problems.” What a hopelessly optimistic statement. As if a different kind of meat, or different country of origin, would be any better?
- barbazoo 4y agoWho knows. What _is_ a "better" way to kill millions of animals a year?
- miles 4y ago> What _is_ a "better" way to kill millions of animals a year? Not millions. Billions. https://animalclock.org https://animalclock.org
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoJust don't
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoThen what do we eat
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoIs that a serious question? I haven't eaten meat since 2002
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoI don't consider non-beef products real food. Everything but the beef is just seasoning. I'd say beef has been my main source of nutrition for... not 2002, but a long time. Including a couple times of carnivore, but that wasn't quite for me. I miss the seasoning :)
- jshaqaw 4y agoThis is what the meat industry lobbies for laws to prevent people from knowing. Everyone has the right to eat meat just as everyone has the right to know where it really comes from when they make that decision.
- barbazoo 4y agoAnd not just the US, the same is being done here in Canada [0] [0] https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-275 https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-275
- loufe 4y agoThanks for sharing, what obviously BS wording.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoEveryone knows that eating meat requires the slaughtering of animals. But I think people prefer not to know the details. The kill is never a pleasant thing to watch however it is carried out and this method is overall quite humane. I suspect most of the stress is created by the transportation (which is often not very kind on the animals) and the unknown environment.
- Ancapistani 4y agoBetween transportation and slaughter, if I had to say which is more stressful/harmful to animal I'd definitely say transportation. Near me at least, pigs are usually transported in semi trailers with perforated sides. They can see out, hear the traffic around them, and are mostly exposed to the elements. You don't want to try to slaughter a group of pigs that was just unloaded off a truck - ideally, you want to pen them overnight so they have a chance to calm down and become accustomed to their surroundings. Otherwise they'll be very resistant to being herded into a chute or separated from their herd.
- jshaqaw 4y agoOf course people prefer not to know. I happen to be a vegetarian. I’m not a preachy vegetarian (I hope!) and people should eat what they want to eat. Willfully blind meat eating does offend me though although I’m open to being convinced I’m wrong. I feel if one eats meat one should know and respect its origins like a grownup. The consequences one draws from that knowledge is up to the individual.
- Ancapistani 4y agoFor context: I believe large slaughterhouses use CO chambers to slaughter, but those chambers are relatively expensive. I've worked in a family member's small meat processing facility, and they offered slaughtering for hogs and cattle. The method there was to use a captive bolt gun - basically a gun, but instead of propelling a bullet from a cartridge, it used .25 caliber blanks to push a metal piston ~6" out the end. It was quiet enough that no hearing protection was required. The process was basically: * animals in queue were kept outside, in a covered holding area, separated from the kill floor by a concrete block wall * a chute door was manually opened to allow a single animal into the building * the animal was killed by placing the bolt gun on the head, driving the piston and parts of the skull into its brain * the carcass was raise with a winch and hooked to an overhead rail system. The rail system was used throughout the operation, from slaughter to when the carcass was broken down into parts. They didn't have enough employees to always have every workstation in operation, so there were freezers throughout the area that would be used to store the carcasses while slaughtering was taking place. Basically each one would be skinned, dressed, and stored in a freezer. Once slaughter was complete, there'd be a similar setup to break the animals down into quarters or large cuts (depending on the customer's order), and yet another to butcher from quarters into packaged cuts like you'd find in a store. Making finished products like sausages would be another workflow still. My understanding is that this operation is pretty typical of small meat processors, and every one that I've visited seems to follow a similar pattern. From an empathetic perspective, it honestly seems fairly optimal to me. Yes, the animals are uncomfortable because they're in unfamiliar surroundings, but they're insulated from the sights and sounds of the kill floor until literally moments before they're killed. I don't think oxygen deprivation is necessarily any better in that respect. I suspect it's more easily scaled, requires less labor per animal, and cheaper overall once a certain volume is reached. ETA: To be clear, I am not making a political or moral statement here. My background is very different from most people that I've encountered in tech, and I'm only sharing my experiences here to contribute to the conversation in a way that I expect isn't possible for most of us. I assume that most people reading HN haven't spent time in places like this, much less spent participated in the process.
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoYou really shouldn't be getting downvoted. The super majority of us eat meat! We are all complicit to (even encouraging of) the mass execution of these animals. It has to happen somehow - none of which would be pleasant to read about. Thank you for describing your experience. Yes its a shitty thing to have had to normalize, but you're right it does sound like a decent enough method of mass execution. Anyone that wants to instinctively downvote the parent comment, please reconsider. Its hard enough to need to be a part of this normalization, let alone get negative reinforcement for something the super majority of us positively reinforce at the grocery store.
- Ruq 4y agoThere should be an epilepsy warning on that banner graphic. I'm not epileptic, but still.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoSo it seems the pigs are put into a sort of elevator which takes them into the chamber. When the CO2 starts coming in they panic and thrash for about 10 seconds, after 20 seconds they're starting to fall over. At 30 seconds, they're out cold. Maybe we have different definitions of "painless" here but that seems very harmless for "The Inhumane Cruelty Of Factory Farming." I was imagining something really vicious from the headline.
- LarryMullins 4y agoTry holding your breath for as long as you can bear, then hold it longer still. The rapidly increasing distress you feel is a consequence of CO2 concentration in your blood, not a lack of oxygen.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoI know.
- cm2187 4y agoAlso the activist claimed they have recorded many of those for days. I am ready to bet we are not looking at the mildest take.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoRight. If there was a crazy brutal one, we'd be seeing that one.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoThe chamber is more like a subterranean pit full of CO2 that the hogs are lowered into and back out of in a continuous conveyor fashion.
- amalgamated_inc 4y agoOh, thanks for the explanation. I couldn't really tell from the video since you can only see the inside of the pen and the pigs themselves. This actually makes sense.
- Geeek 4y agoI am very much not a vegan and I love my meat, but as someone whos family was gassed in gas chambers during the holocaust - I had intense anxiety watching this. Not sure how I feel about it.
- miles 4y agoIsaac Bashevis Singer, who fled Nazi Germany in 1935 (while his family who stayed behind were killed in the concentration camps)[1], had this to say in "The Letter Writer"[2] "What do they know—all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of the world[...]? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-apr-21-oe-dujack21-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-apr-21-oe-dujac... [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=WjTgvykUFNcC&lpg=PA9&vq=Treblinka&pg=PA270#v=onepage&q&=false https://books.google.com/books?id=WjTgvykUFNcC&lpg=PA9&vq=Tr...
- virtualritz 4y agoI believe if kids were shown this in school most of them would grow up vegans or vegetarians by choice. I have three people in my circle of friends who have been vegetarian or vegan since they were little. All despite coming from a family background where meat consumption was the norm. Two are German, one is Croatian. All of them witnessed animal slaughter firsthand from close distance at a very early age.
- Ancapistani 4y agoPeople should be exposed to this, so they can make informed decisions. I still eat meat, and definitely know what's involved. If nothing else I don't take it for granted. I think our ancestors whose spiritual practices included things like taking a moment to give thanks to the spirit of the animal before consuming it were on to something. It doesn't necessarily have to be spiritual, but feel like internal acknowledgement is a positive thing for the development of empathy.
- oliwarner 4y agoIt should not take "spy cams" to reveal the standard operating procedure of a fundamental part of our food-chain. I eat meat but I also believe that animal welfare is important. You can't do that in ignorance. Anybody and everybody who wants to know where meat comes from should be able to see how their meat lived and died. Given the mixed interests between parties, wouldn't it be easiest to just have public CCTV in all areas of slaughterhouses? Anyway, CO2 poisoning is a horrible way to kill something. Mammals have a blood-acidity panic reflex. It's objectively cruel. As others have said a pure-N2 environment would allow them to expel CO2, and just faint and die from hypoxia, calmly.