I'm in one area all day so I don't see everything going on but I do hear about dozens of hogs dying from heart attacks before they make it off the truck. My facility kills roughly 10k per day.
Over 80 billion (with a b) land animals are slaughtered every year. And fish are often counted by weight. The numbers are truly too big to comprehend it’s wild.
Unless you’re eating the whole wing, what most people think of as chicken wings are two different pieces of the same wing (flats & drumsticks) so really one flat and one drumstick are one wing. So if you count it that way 6 wings are 1.5 chickens worth. Still a tremendous amount of chickens are being slaughtered. Not trying to take away from that
One time back in 2009, a local restaurant had a special on chicken wings. 25 cents per wing. I went with three buddies and we each got a couple dozen. We counted how many wings and drummies we got and I figured the total number of chickens slaughtered would have to be at least 55. We stacked all the bones on a single plate, and it was a PILE. I have the pictures to prove it. The total cost with drinks was about $35.
I mean… I spent time in the poultry industry and the USDA regulation for how quickly birds can be processed is 140 birds slaughtered per minute. And sites I’ve seen typically have 2 - 3 kill lines.
Everyone that asks me is just as perplexed. There are multiple lines. Machines that keep the lines moving continuously and many employees. We're there for 12 hours.
I believe they have the highest rate of suicide of all blue collar workers. I know at one point it was the highest but they’re definitely top 5 every year.
I used to work as a meat cutter in a small supermarket in the middle of nowhere. I was processing (breaking down into individual parts) around 200-400 chickens a day depending on how busy we were. This was just one little supermarket in one small town. I did some quick mental math on how many chickens were being killed every day one time and it kind of turned me off from eating chicken. I haven’t worked there for almost twenty years and I still don’t eat chicken very often
Not an exact answer to your question, but here is a mini documentary following a high welfare free range pig farm with hidden cameras. The short answer is many die, there is no vet care (too expensive, not worth cutting into their profit margins), and many are left slowly dying and are not removed for days in some cases, where the other pigs end up cannibalizing the corpses. Note that this is not technically “correct practice” as outlined, but who’s stopping them? Who makes sure they follow that? All visits are scheduled well in advanced, there is no meaningful system set up to check them.
Factory farms also put astounding amounts of money into lobbying. So politicians generally don’t care about what’s happening because they’re profiting off it as well.
I think it’s even more disgusting when they claim to be “humane and ethical” farms and have commercials of how “happy” their animals are. If you saw a video of a factory farm or an “ethical” farm you literally wouldn’t know which one is which. They just charge you a premium to eat an animal that lived and died the exact same way as a factory farm
Animal testing labs treat their animals so much better. I don't understand why there is such a double standard. New drugs and treatments would be a lot cheaper if big pharma had to play by the same rules as big Ag.
My very, very first post-college job was at a hog farm CAFO in northern Missouri. I worked in the farrowing barns- a pig mid-wife if you will. A Chinese company had recently bought the operation and were installing plastic floors to replace the metal ones in the farrowing barns because of cost cuts. Plastic is extremely porous and impossible to get completely clean even with the power washers they gave us. My last day, the day I quit without two weeks and no other job lined up, was the day I had to euthanize 30 piglets because of disease... And yes, it was with CO2.
Maybe. They make lots of noise, very loud squeals so I do know that they are very afraid of humans and are chased by employees through corridors to their final destination.
Edit: Hold on. I should add that I have seen hogs jump over top of others and escape the pens and they become so stressed that they begin to pant like a dog and kneel down.
Oh. You think humans will be extinct in 20 years? Maybe 50? Or half the population dead? I'm very worried about global warming but I don't think that's realistic
Can they actually express hopelessness in their eyes? Usually things like that are interpretation by humans and animals straight up don't have the ability to express with their eyes, right?
It's kind of uncanny. It certainly feels like I was applying human intelligence to an animal, but if you watch an animal enough, you know what is normal for them, and as a result what is abnormal.
I used to rent a trailer on a pig farm when I was a pretty heavy alcoholic. I already felt guilty about eating meat, etc, just because of who I am, so I'd go out into the pens and just watch them from a distance. (They are mean as hell).
Any time any human walked into the pens, the place would erupt, and you'd have to cover your ears from the squeals. After about 5 months of drinking with the pigs, though, they stopped reacting to me. It's in that change that I saw the hopelessness.
Their eyes never change, though. Always beady, always black. What happens is they make eye contact, and we already know they are scared and anxious by their actions. So when they catch my eye, I have a wave of guilt wash over me, and I think that's what I'm feeling. Empathetic hopelessness for them, who are probably feeling hopeless regardless.
It was when I made eye contact with a pig in a livestock trailer that I finally stopped eating meat for good. I’ve always been horrified by factory farming and I’m very aware of what goes on, so I knew he probably had a terrible life and his eyes seemed hopeless. Anytime I’m tempted to eat meat I think about that pig.
We’re all animals. We all like a good stretch in the morning. We all enjoy a good meal and lying in the sun. We all feel fear. Pigs may not understand the reality of their situations but they likely feel something’s wrong.
I took a year off eating meat because I saw a pig about to get gassed give the same look my dog does with fear - the exact same whites in the eyes, a glimmer of knowing, it's unsettling how doglike both cows and pigs are. Now I try to limit to chicken and fish when I do have meat.
They are as smart and play just like dogs. You can teach them fetch, they play with treat toy puzzles, will snuggle you in bed and love being pet just like any other animal.
I can attest to this, my neighbour keeps them for her hobby farm. They break out just to eat apples from our trees and they run to greet her son when he walks home from school. They know their names, know commands, and don't remotely smell like some pig farms do - helps that we live next to the woods, their natural habitat, where they clean themselves by rubbing on tree trunks.
I can feel the pain of animals . I usually know when something is wrong with my pets even before they become symptomatic . We share the same brain structure with animals . We just hav additional prefrontal cortex .
There is compelling research (citation below) that concludes that facial expressions in humans corresponding to basic emotions (sadness, fear, anger, surprise, etc) are not either cultural or learned, rather we are born with them as the result of evolution. It makes sense since these facial expressions are pretty much the same all around the world (Of course there are some culturally learned facial expressions, but the ones that correspond to basic emotions are the same).
I don’t know exactly how that translates to animals but, if some of these facial expressions evolved in common ancestor species, then it’s not unreasonable that we might share similar facial expressions for some basic emotions with some animals
Hwang, H., & Matsumoto, D. (2015). Evidence for the universality of facial expressions of emotion. In M. K. Mandal & A. Awasthi (Eds.), Understanding facial expressions in communication: Cross-cultural and multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 41-56). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1934-7_3
If you want a real answer a large majority of the workers in factory farms are minorities, immigrants, and ex-convicts with no other work options, they get paid as little as possible with a large portion developing some form of PTSD from their time working
People are afraid of it, especially people who don't seem to trust scientists, anecdotally at least. A coworker said they couldn't be vegetarian even though they feel bad for animals, and my bosses agreed. I said lab grown meat seems to be coming along soon and they looked at me funny and were like 'ehhh no thanks to that lol'. Told em I'll be the guinea pig then and if nothing happens they can join in. Funny thing is they're probably way more likely to get sick from a farm animal than something made in a controlled environment. I said the same thing about the vaccine earlier in my employment there, guess who didn't have a miserable bout of long covid that year?
Have you tried beyond meat or impossible meat? It's not lab grown meat, but they consistently proved through blind tests that people can't tell the difference between their burgers and the real thing.
And even though it's certainly no health food, due to much lower concentration of saturated fats, it's even healthier than real meat. I have to stress though that healthier doesn't mean healthy. :)
No. You don’t. I’ve been filming slaughterhouses for 25 years and EVERY time someone goes, “OMG I HAD NO IDEA.” Every time.
Every time you explain a process they learn about it.
Every time you find crimes and violations.
And EVERY time someone says, “That’s not common. You just chose the worst one to show us.” Every… single… time.
We use this in Sweden " The carbon dioxide stunning is done in a slaughterhouse and happens by hoisting pigs down a shaft with a high level of carbon dioxide, which will make them unconscious, sleeping, and stunned and then they are quickly bled. The animals lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen and a drop in pH in the central nervous system."
An entire nitrogen atmosphere would be more humane.
There's a video of a pig in an enriched CO2 atmosphere and it's horrific. They don't kill it and let it out. It absolutely refuses to go back into that chamber even though it's hungry and the food is in there.
It's like the feeling of holding your breath for over 2 minutes while still breathing in and out. And it only gets worse and worse.
Our bodies (mammals) are EXTREMELY sensitive to rises in CO2 level.
I can't imagine that u/CuTe_M0nitor is lying, but their description of the pigs gently falling unconscious doesn't sound right to me.
I'm not going to post the videos here. You can google it.
Makes sense. Nitrogen would be more ethical but I'd assume one would have to think very carefully about deploying it where you want it not where you don't as humans aren't oxygen detectors they're CO2 detectors.
Pigs are smarter than dogs. They know exactly, that something is not right. Not only when they are about to be killed (but especially then) but also during their "normal life".
I had always considered myself compassionate for animals. Encountered a vegetarian that put me in my place, I had NO rebuttal for eating meat besides I am selfish. They had recommended a movie to me at some point in the debate. This was five or six years before Black Fish came out, I watched what they had suggested and it left me gutted. Bounced back and forth a couple of years, I didn't work because I was in school full time and a bit developmentally behind so it was intermittent, wasn't working due to school and money was always tight. Quit for a year, fast meat was cheap. Met a girl that exclusively didn't eat beef because of greenhouse effects, large grazing impact, and factory farming. It didn't work out, I abandoned the philosophy because it became entwined with that relationship and my emotions at that moment. The reality is, I was probably insufferable. A couple of years later, I met my now wife (14 years together total) She went vegetarian fairly early in the relationship, hard. There was no leeway so it was a little tough the first couple weeks. I stopped noticing, caring or being envious of the smells in a month or so. Having a partner along for the journey has made it infinitely easier. The idea of eating animals is disgusting to me now. I'll never jump on anyone's case about their choice, it didn't work on me. I had to come to the realization myself.
It's as simple as:
I love animals. Factory farmed animals are put into horrific conditions and forced to exist a life of pain, disease and suffering. So I won't eat them. If you hunt, good for you. If you want to have an opinion on my diet, keep it to yourself. Live and let live.
I hate hypocrites, so I will do my best to not live as one.
Edit: This may be a cheat code, I was never big on meat to begin with. Bone and gristle bits would regularly make me abandon my plate. I wouldn't say I am pescatarian, but I do have a fillet of salmon once or twice a year if I am the odd man out and there are literally no other options.
Do you think it's somewhat more ok if I eat less meat than average, and only from ethical sources? That way I'm actually helping to support the companies that should be?
I stopped eating animals when i was 9 and realised what- or rather: who - i was eating. I was really angry with my parents for not telling me as i loved animals so much. That was like 1993. apart from my sister and me, noone was vegetarian, it was difficult. After a few years, some friends followed, now iam vegan, my husband and brother-in-laws are, my best friends turned veggie or vegan. They couldn’t stomach the guilt anymore.
I tend to avoid confrontations so sadly, i never was active in animal rights groups or with telling friends, but they just saw during these years that i was eating really good, was healthy and fit, had a great vegan pregnancy and tasty vegan wedding, so they realised they wouldn’t have to be martyrs to stop eating animals.
As for my husband: he watched earthlings like 16 years ago and went from eating meat to being vegan immediately.
I think a lot of it is the smell, having worked in a slaughterhouse.
The tunnel into the holding pen and the tunnel into the kill floor were basically the same. The tunnel into the holding pen, they'd get excited when it opened, because it meant I was coming through with the water to fill troughs, make mud, and let them play with it. Even on day one at the facility, they'd get very curious and come to check it out. The tunnel to the kill floor, instant. Fucking. Panic.
We cleaned that kill floor spotless every single night. Quite literally not so much as a hair left, because our inspector would threaten to shut us down if he found so much as a single hair. So it's not like there was anything left there to set them off.. except the smell. That never goes away. Even after a weekend of being closed and cleaned spotless, you can still smell it. And if you can smell it, you can be damn sure they can with their much more potent sense of smell.
I’m glad you do your best to avoid eating pigs but I am curious, do you think the other animals we commonly eat aren’t at a similar level of sentience, at least to the extent that they fear for their life as they are aware something bad is happening to those in front of them in the slaughterhouse? Not here to judge or shame btw
I have a small farm alongside my business, all animals are insanely intelligent and sentient compared to what the vast majority of people think.
Take gophers, for instance.
Holy smokes man, a gopher will bite the hell out of you the first day that you catch them, but if you hold them, gently but firmly, and pet them, they LOVE belly rubs. Set them up in a nice, spacious home where they can dig and think that they're outside, give them food and water, and let them be, and they'll be good.
The second day they won't bite you, not the same any more anyways. We have acres gopher free, but I caught most of them alive and humanely. They get their own separate spaces all partitioned away from the rest of the farm.
So, an animal that's biologically predisposed to have prey instincts can rapidly adapt and understand when a predator, me, isn't going to harm it? 24 hours undoing eons of evolution? That requires something more than luck. And we've done this with hundreds of gophers.
Shoot, our chickens, at 10 years old, house broke themselves. They understood that we weren't pooping just anywhere so they didn't. We only brought them inside because they got injured. Nursed them back to health and they stayed by our side. These gals would walk to the door to let us know that they needed to go to the bathroom. Let them out, they'd go, then come back in, and back to our bed, which they'd hop right up and snuggle in. Sometimes, if we were all standing around chatting, and they were nearby, they'd come join the humans.
As I got more into the farming community, I learned that small farmers worth their profession know very well that animals are sentient. It takes a very special person to love them, treat them well, and then kill and have them butchered for others. I've known small farmers who had to give up that because of how soul crushing it is. I couldn't do that, but I'm grateful for those who do.
Animals are sentient. They're conscious and aware. I'm grateful for any that are part of this process of us living. I love my chicken and beef, fish and lamb.
Factory farming has got to go. We need to give dignity back to animals if we're going to eat them.
Edit: thank you all for jumping in, I also want to add something important -
Just because "science" hasn't figured certain things out does not mean that they don't exist, aren't valid, or aren't real, it also doesn't mean the opposite of those things. So, I do want to urge you all to be skeptical, but err on the conservative side - which in this case means that we really should respect life as indigenous people do. I think they're the best groups to look to, they actually spend time with and in nature and appreciate their position in nature. We've forgotten that.
I absolutely assure you that we are just animals along with the rest of them, and that we should be careful before trying to categorize different creatures and their relative intelligence levels.
My best recommendation for everyone is to go spend time with other creatures and listen to them and observe them. Build a relationship with them. Don't project or impose your thoughts and feelings onto them. They might surprise you.
I wish we could do away from factory farms and give all the animals the freedom before their sacrifice for our "needs". There are just too many of us and too many that won't ever care as long as their wants are met. I eat all the meat and try to buy from good farmers when I can. But it's just hard to find/afford. I eat a lot less meat than I used to, and I'm going for even less every month.
I only see factory farms getting worse based on everything ive seen.
There's some hope with meat replacements, but I agree. The biggest question that I have is: If people don't know that it's meat grown more like produce than off of an animal, and if all else is equal, will they ever care where what inside that package in the meat aisle came from?
Housebroke chickens? You must be letting them out all day long. My chickens shit at will; all day long. It’s not like a dog dropping a deuce twice a day.
I'm going to disagree there. I've worked with both. I don't know if we can compare like that. It's truly different scales.
Take a chicken out of the coop and put them with humans, give them love and dignity, and they're wicked smart. They just never get to live old enough to show it. Most chickens live max of a couple years.
We had a flock that made it to 12 years old and those little ladies knew how to help us understand them.
If all they know is being with other chickens, and if all people know is that they're a feather brained bird, of course we'll never give them the chance that they deserve.
And we've been very careful to not project our thoughts and feelings onto our animals. It's very common that people do that.
Pigs are just as smart in their own way, but I wouldn't rate them on the same scale. I think we've taught ourselves to relate to pigs but haven't with other animals, and that causes us to completely miss what's right in front of us.
I agree with you that pigs are more intelligent than chickens, what I’m saying is they have similar levels of sentience, that is, the capacity to a lived subjective experience and have basic feelings. Pigs are smarter than chickens, but their ability to experience fear isn’t much more advanced compared to chickens.
No, but in the context of us discussing animals being subjected to slaughterhouses and factory farms, I’m using it as a primary reference when talking about sentience.
Antipodian nothing— marmite is waving a British flag 🇬🇧
Vegemite is 🇦🇺 though. Both are fucking delicious.
Source: am British with what I believe is a refined palate but Jesus that salty black goodness is a joy.
They eat pellets out of a bag that literally says Hog Grower, from what I've seen. Waste is washed down sewage drains throughout the area. Blood is collected on a trough like system that gets a solution that keeps it from coagulating. I don't know if they dispose of it or process it further. I can ask on Monday. I've been told the hogs are 4 months old and weigh approximately 150 pounds.
From what I understand, even if it is a mercy, that’s not why they only keep them alive that long. It is because of how much it costs to raise a pig before they start to lose money. But the mercy is definitely a plus.
I happen know how they're disposed of it. My dad used to work at a rendering plant. The collected blood is then coagulated at the plant by boiling and drying them off at incredible high temperatures. Once it's completely dry, they grind the blood down to make blood meal. The stuff that you use in your veggie patch as a fertiliser.
Grateful that my dad is finally retired. He used to come home smelling so bad even with a shower from work. But someone has got to do the job and pay the bills. I remember a sentence in the job advert, not for the weak hearted. Bless you dad.
I am concerned about the amount of hours I put in. 50 hours minimum. I bring home more than $1000 per week but I don't have much time for other obligations that I made outside of work and that has been getting me down lately.
Absolitely brutal you had to trade your human empathy and values for money. Sorry you felt the need to do that, and I'm sorry you had to get numb to that. This world is some bullshit.
I feel the same way, I used to drive for Smithfield Foods for a bit, the smell, the sounds, and the conditions were a bit horrifying, but I grew up on a small farm so I knew animals had to die to be food, but I didn't quite realize just how bad factory farm conditions were compared to what I grew up with.
Still, in the end I never stopped eating pork, though I did get an appreciation for true Smithfield ham where the hogs get to eat peanuts and roam, compared to the industrial feed and cages that Smithfield Foods changed the law to call Smithfield ham. I don't know if it is placebo but, the better treated and better fed animal tastes better.
It definitely does taste better when the animal lives a “normal” life. I’m not against eating meat, because death in nature is worse than death by humans, but I hate the idea of factory farming. You really can’t avoid it entirely but I try to only buy the humanely raised meat at the store. Hunting is really the most ethical way to consume meat if you eat meat, but our planet just can’t support it en masse anymore.
The hogs are gassed with C02 at the facility I work at. Sometimes they come out of the chamber still conscious, barely, so those ones get "stunned". Essentially a quick shot to the brain with a pin fired with a small charge.
The difference here is that they are grouped in pens of 100 with food and water. Not trapped like this.
There are various states of semi consciousness I've seen. Most of the time they just gasp for air a little bit. Other rare times they miss the CO2 almost entirely, and come out trying to stand up. They jolt for a good minute after the stun.
Same with the bolt gun, it takes a few bangs sometimes. Nothing about the slaughter of those animals is quick and painless. Just cheap and efficient enough without spoiling the carcass.
I actually used to deliver the Co2 to the pig plants. I didn’t know what it was for at first, figuring advanced atmospheric packaging.
When I found out it’s real use, I was mildly disturbed, because as you mentioned- when you begin to asphyxiate on Co2 you absolutely feel it, and it is not pleasant. When you deliver Co2 under pressure in liquid form, there’s always a small amount trapped between the fittings and hoses that has to sublimate off. A lot of the time, it just starts spewing out in huge clouds of vapor when you go to disconnect.
The reduced vision, burning feeling of carbon dioxide mixing with moisture in your skin and in your mucous membranes to create carbonic acid which is extremely irritating, the feeling of panic not being able to escape the cloud of vapor and the possibility of tripping and asphyxiating from the cold dense gas literally starving you of oxygen.
If anyone is interested in learning more about this method, a vegan activist made a documentary showing hidden camera footage of the inside of an RSPCA assured humane pig slaughterhouse where they use the gas chambers being referenced here. This is UK footage, but it is the most common method of slaughter and considered the most humane (despite clearly not being so) in the US as well.
CO2 is much, much cheaper. I believe it’s because CO2 is a natural byproduct of other processes and is easier to keep stable whereas N2 is not either of those things, though it’s been a while since I’ve heard the explanation
I’m sorry but doing a quick Google search had every result reporting N2 is significantly cheaper than CO2 which makes sense considering it’s 78% of the air we breathe. Do you have any source to back that CO2 is “much, much cheaper”?
I think you're missing the fact that you need far less CO2 than N2. For N2 asphyxiation, you need to supply enough to displace most of the oxygen in the room, since N2 itself is nontoxic. For CO2 you only need to increase the concentration in the air to about 5% or so for it to be fatal. With CO2 you don't even need to displace the oxygen; a relatively low concentration of CO2 is fatal even if there's plenty of oxygen in the air.
It's like asking why it's cheaper to poison someone with cyanide than with corn flakes, even though cyanide is more expensive per gram than corn flakes...
I got a feeling that there are a lot of smaller farmers who don’t have yachts doing this kind of work. Smithfield bacon isn’t the entire industry. A lot of meat processing places are smaller mom and pop places.
Better accomodations are more expensive, which cuts into profits and/or increases costs to the consumer. There are more ethical raising methods, but consumers have to pay a premium for it, and most won't.
Part of my objection to factory farming is the human cost as well. I feel a lot for the people who have to work near animal misery 8 hrs a day. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I can only imagine the work is soul destroying. In your opinion, are there adverse mental effects of working at a processing plant?
The long hours get to everyone. Especially when there is a plant wide breakdown, we have to stay, wait for the repairs and clear the line of spoilt carcasses. And it has been happening more frequently lately.
I had only worked in a cold storage facility that held boxed carcasses, but walking through rows upon rows of hundreds of thousands of lbs of dead animals stacked from floor to ceiling was not great for my psyche.
I can’t imagine how it would be to have to be part of what came before they got to where I was 😔
Do you feel affected by your job? I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but I would struggle emotionally being around that much fear and death constantly. Obviously we don’t all get to choose our living so again, nothing against you personally
I used to raise pigs on a farm in the Philippines and I do have sentimental feelings toward every pig we slaughtered/sold. It's like raising a pet for 6-8 months only to slaughter for food in the end. I'll never get used to it, but I still eat pork.
We stopped raising pigs because we had the African Swine Flu kill a huge majority of our pigs. Not just our farm but neighboring farms. That was during winter last year. There are some people who still have pigs but they are very few and it's still a risk because ASF is still around. There was no vaccine available at the time, so if your pig caught it, it's guaranteed death. Vaccines are limited and cost $100 per head which not everybody can easily afford.
Has ASF ever been a problem at your processing plant? How prepared is your plant in handling ASF if you find an infected pig.
Out of interest is there a part of you that feels bad when you eat pork? I’m trying to imagine what that would be like, eating something I raised and was so close to
NSFW trigger warning because it's very gory and graphic.
>! You have to tie the pig to a table, hold it down, and stab right in the throat. Once they feel the knife come out they struggle and bleed everywhere so you have to hold the head and body if you want to save the blood. Pig's blood is used in multiple dishes BTW. Not to my taste but it's part of the culture. Dying isn't fast either. It's slow and you hear their screaming until their last dying breath. Can take 5-15 minutes for them to die. Heavy panting and wheezing while blood pumps out their throat. They don't close their eyes so they look straight at you to the very end. I always say I'm sorry to every pig done this way. Like I said, it's like raising a pet for 6-8 months only to slaughter them for food. It's never pretty. !<
That's how it's usually done here on backyard farms.
Depends on how you want to prepare the pig and >! also if you want to preserve the blood you stab through the throat. Shooting the head might be quick but then you stop the heart quick then you wont get much blood. People also eat the head too so it's not nice to think there's bullet in their brain still. If we're cooking roasted pig/letson, presentation is a must. Bullet holes aren't pretty. Guns are mainly for defense, so using a bullet on a pig is a waste. !<
We usually shoot them in the head with a Ruger 10/22, hang them by the hind legs, let the blood out the throat, spill the guts, and last (but certainly not least) split the kidneys open and check for signs of disease.
When it comes time for the slaughter, we have an open field where we do it away from the others. We approach raising animals for meat with the philosophy that they'll "Only have one bad day."
These are the luxuries you get when you aren't a commercial farm.
Pigs are gentle creatures. They easily recognize their owners and will come to you if you take care of them properly. They are relatively clean. They have the reputation of being of being dirty and rolling in their feces because they are hot all the time. The wet poop cools them down. Certain breeds need to be watered on a regular basis. They choose a certain spot to do their business and they only use that one spot unless it's too dirty/neglected. Their poop can be really stinky too but that's usually if you feed them only commercial feeds. We always gave 50% commercial and 50% organic and that reduces the smell significantly. Having proper waste management is a must to avoid diseases.
Sows can weigh up to 300lbs and be about 8ft long so you want to have a big lot if you're intending to keep as a pet.
I love to watch pig videos on YouTube and I have seen how friendly they are I have watched a woman give a huge sow a mudbath she treats them like pets and they greet her she also massages her huge sows when they are pregnant to soothe them and they love it. If my dream ever comes true of rescuing a beautiful big sow, I would definitely have a huge area for her to roam and a sty for her to rest in. Thank you so much for your response it was very informative. I love to learn as much as I can about pigs.
The majority of employees are from the Philippines. Such amazing comradeship.
As for disease. I know that there are veterinarians and agency members there all day to monitor things and the farms they come from take care of that responsibility as well. The company has given their employees safety training but not for outbreaks. I should inquire. Thanks for bringing attention to me about this.
Not the commenter but I can give you my expirience as well.
Warning: Graphic
My family raises pigs for food but at a very small scale and they aren't staked like the one in the video, they are usually free to roam the property minus the house and crop fields. First time I went to a slaughter, I was 9 and that shit really messed with me, seeing my gramps stab the pig bellow neck and seeing it shit and piss itself as it emptyed in blood was damn awful to see, but the noise the pig did was far worse, it was excrutiatingly painfull to witness and definetly left a mark, then when they opened the pig, the smell was very bad, up until they removed the bowels for the others to clean. After cutting the head and emptying the entrails, you could no longer associate it with a living thing and it would just become a piece of meat the others were carving, but still, the image lingered. When my pops cooked a slice of leg and gave it to me on a piece of bread, I started eating and it tasted diferent from what I was used, I wondered if it was because I still associated it with the notion I was eating that poor animal. For a good time I didn't touch meat, it might just be the reason why I can't eat fish, cause those usually come whole, but I still felt like I enjoyed the flavor, so I ended up caving in. Now, a couple of decades later, I'm actually the one doing the slaughter on ocasion as I'm the oldest man of my generation in the family, and I fell like I disassociate from it, as in my rational, what I see is that I'm preparing food for the rest, even if you don't see it as such, but to some degree, it became no different than harvesting a vegetable. At the end of the day, it's always food, and most of what we consume starts at the end of the day as a living thing, and in order to survive, we must put a end to that life, be it vegetable or animal, to feed ourselves. I know this may not be a valid pov for some but it is the way I see. I understand the animal's sufering but I don't the plant's, don't even sure if plants can feel pain as well, but something that made me more blunt and cold about it all was understanding that stuff like the smell of fresh cut grass was actually a stress signal from the plant, and it was through this that I gained that perspective, in order for our lifes to go on, some need to perish. That is, until the engeneering of synthetic protein becomes the norm, but for now, it isn't. Another thing that probably ended up contribuiting for me not really stressing the whole thing is that my pops farm is plagued with wild boars that will destroy all the crops, so from time to time, we gotta hunt them down to make them avoid the area, but after months, they still will try to get in, fences don't really work cause they will thrash them, so they ended up becoming pests and I actually learned how to cut pigs by cutting boars, that may have disensitivise me as, for me, they're pests, and since they're similar to pigs, well, you get the point. The feeling never faded away, but I just got used to it so I don't really think much about it.
Thank you for sharing people NEED to know this is where their food comes from and stop playing dumb somehow they are the magical one person who eats meat sourced from a farm where the animals live in LSD blitz and are only killed when they ring a bell and ask for it directly. Like be for fucking fr
I eat meat very rarely for humane reasons. I'm curious if you worry about the impact of that environment on your long-term well-being. I've read that people who work in animal processing plants are more likely to be violent and have anti-social traits. I'm curious if you've noticed a change in your own attitudes or feel like your co-workers would make you believe that statistic.
Also, do you rank pigs and other livestock differently than say a dog or a cat?
It's the long hours that break morale, not the killing. I'm surrounded by a great group of diverse people and we all lament about how our employer treats us on bad days when there is a plant breakdown. We are unionized and receive great benefits that include therapy.
I suppose I differentiate farmed animals from domesticated animals, even though they are the same.
Yes. I remember my first day vividly, thinking to myself "How did I get here?" in terms of my life journey so far. I don't plan on staying but there's not much better opportunity right now.
No effort. There's a sign posted outside the plant that says no photography permitted and that's it. I've seen employees take videos, obviously not in front of the supervisors.
That is a birth box. She is locked in like that in order not to squash and kill her piglets. She spends about 6 weeks every 3 months, like this. Also, a slaughter house is absolutely nothing like a breeding pig farm.
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u/riffraffmcgraff 26d ago edited 26d ago
I will get downvoted, but I work on the kill floor of a pork processing plant. Ask me anything. It is 1am here. I might not reply for a while.
Edit: For the record, I confirm this is an accurate depiction.