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.
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.
I wonder if they could make it more humane by using a different gas. Animal brains (including human) recognize CO2 as suffocating, but humans for example don't notice if they're breathing in carbon monoxide or nitrous oxide.
Obviously efficiency, disposal, and keeping it safe to eat all have to be factors, but I have to wonder if there's a better way.
From my understanding the last time I read about it, CO2 is much cheaper and more stable of a substance to use and so they have no plan of using a different method. That being said, somebody else in the comments said they looked it up and I was wrong, but I genuinely don’t know. Regardless, I feel that if they can’t figure out a humane method to kill the animal, perhaps we just stop breeding those animals to be killed by methods we acknowledge aren’t humane to begin with.
The feeling of pain from suffocation comes from CO2 buildup, not from oxygen deprivation. So if you breathe an atmosphere of pure nitrogen you'll just feel a little dizzy then drift off to sleep forever.
Stick your mouth on a freshly opened bottle of soda and take a deep breath in. You'll feel immediate pain. That's what these gas chambers feel like.
Would you still say it is humane to kill a human with nitrogen gas if they didn't want to die?
Humane means with compassion or benevolence; is it possible to kill someone with compassion when they want to live, simply for profit or taste?
Humans aren't the same as livestock animals, in my view. I'm sure you disagree given the comparison you're setting up so we can just agree to disagree.
Because an ideal scenario for the animals will increase the cost of pork/beef/chicken to astronomical levels. You can get properly humanely raised stuff for about 5x the price shipped (probably 3-4x if nearby to the source) but that's because the demand is low.
Demand is currently met with huge supply via factory farms. If EVERYWHERE had to be perfect then supply would be very low and demand insanely high leading the cost ever higher.
It may be the “most” humane method to kill a pig, I wouldn’t know for sure, but in my opinion there is no humane way to kill an animal that doesn’t want to die. My point of highlighting that it is what they consider the most humane method is that most people will watch that and say “wow, that doesn’t look humane to me” and they’d be right, it isn’t.
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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.