Transport and Slaughter

Cows are shipped to slaughter through all weather extremes, without food or water, often across hundreds of miles.

Cattle who survive feedlots, dairy sheds, and veal farms face a hellish trip to the slaughterhouse. The animals are packed onto trucks where they go without food for duration of the journey, which sometimes takes days. In hot weather, many cows collapse in the heat, and in the cold, cows sometimes freeze to the sides of the truck until workers pry them off with crowbars.

Cows who are too sick or injured to walk, known as “downers,” may have ropes or chains tied around their legs so that they can be dragged onto and off of the trucks. According to former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, roughly 400,000 “dead and dying” cattle are forced onto trucks bound for slaughter each year.¹¹

Former USDA veterinary inspector Dr. Lester Friedlander explains, “In the summertime, when it’s 90, 95 degrees, they’re transporting cattle from 1,200 to 1,500 miles away on a trailer, 40 to 45 head crammed in there, and some collapse from heat exhaustion. This past winter, we had minus-50 degree weather with the windchill. Can you imagine if you were in the back of a trailer that’s open, and the windchill factor is minus-50 degrees, and that trailer is going 50 to 60 miles an hour? The animals are urinating and defecating right in the trailers, and after a while, it’s going to freeze, and their hooves are right in it. If they go down—well, you can imagine lying in there for 10 hours on a trip.”¹²

“Downer” Cows

After a horrific journey, the scared and weak animals are unloaded at a slaughterhouse. Every year, hundreds of thousands of cows are either lame, frozen to the sides of the truck, or all but dead from heat exhaustion when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. According to research published in the Journal of Animal Science, 36 percent of beef bulls and 39 percent of dairy cows show signs of lameness and crippling by the time they arrive at slaughter.¹³ Those who can’t walk at all are called “downers.”

Injured cows are often left to slowly die.

Often, frightened animals who don’t want to leave the truck are struck with electric prods or dragged off with chains and forklifts. “Uncooperative animals are beaten, they have prods poked in their faces and up their rectums,” says a former USDA inspector.¹⁴ “[D]ragging [downed] cattle with a chain and forklift is standard practice,” according to one inspector quoted in Slaughterhouse.¹⁵ A slaughterhouse worker explains how cattle who can’t walk off the truck are handled: “[Employees] just pull them till their hide be ripped, till the blood just drip on the steel and concrete ... the cow be crying with its tongue stuck out.”¹⁶

Read the true story of one downed cow.

Slaughter: "They Die Piece by Piece"

Some cows are still conscious when their throats are cut and their limbs are hacked off.

After they are unloaded, cows are forced through a chute and shot in the head with a bolt gun meant to stun them. But because the lines move so quickly and workers are often poorly trained, the technique often fails to render them insensible to pain. Some cows are still fully conscious when their throats are cut and their limbs are hacked off.

An investigative report by the Washington Post titled “They Die Piece by Piece” details the difficulty of stunning cattle effectively to prevent them from being skinned and dismembered alive: “An effective stunning requires a precision shot, which workers must deliver hundreds of times daily to balky, frightened animals [who] frequently weigh 1,000 pounds or more. Within 12 seconds of entering the chamber, the fallen steer is shackled to a moving chain to be bled and butchered by other workers in a fast-moving production line.”¹⁷

Ramon Moreno, one of the few who has worked in slaughterhouses for 20 years, explains that for as long as seven minutes after their throats have been slit, many animals are still alive and fully conscious. His job is to cut the legs off the animals, and he frequently has had to cut the legs off fully conscious cows. He told the Washington Post, “They blink. They make noises. ... The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.”

Another worker, Martin Fuentes, told the Post, “The line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive.” Slowing down the line to ensure that animals are properly killed is unheard of, and workers who alert officials to abuses at their slaughterhouse risk losing their jobs. The meat industry preys on a workforce made up of impoverished immigrants who can never complain about poor working conditions or cruelty to animals for fear of being deported.

Learn more about what the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch calls “the most dangerous factory job in America.”¹⁸

Learn why the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act isn’t effective.

You Can Help

Cows are curious, clever animals who prefer to spend their time together. They form complex social relationships, very much like dogs form packs. Like all animals, cows form strong maternal bonds with their children, and on dairy farms and cattle ranches, mother cows can be heard crying out for their calves for days after they are separated. Please don’t support an industry that abuses these fascinating animals by the millions. Learn how you can help save cows from miserable lives and painful deaths.

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¹¹ Reuters, “U.S. ‘Downer’ Ban Hurts Cattle Producers,” The China Post, 23 Jan. 2004.
¹² Eisnitz, p. 211.
¹³ D.L. Roeber et al.
¹⁴ Eisnitz, p. 188.
¹⁵ Eisnitz, p. 196.
¹⁶ Eisnitz, p. 145.
¹⁷ Joby Warrick, “They Die Piece by Piece,” Washington Post, 10 Apr. 2001.
¹⁸ Steven Greenhouse, “U.S.: Meatpacking Industry Criticized on Human Rights Grounds,” New York Times, 25 Jan. 2005.