Cows at Washington IBP plant still consious while being skinned ...

[impeach the gop]

I tried to copy and paste an insert from the article, but for some reason I couldn't do it on Counter Punch.
Do some sites block copying their articles? Is there a way to get around that?



http://www.counterpunch.com/stclair12302003.html

SPEED - Cows at Washington IBP plant still consious while being skinned ...
Counter Punch
Dropped meat not cleaned

[liberalhistorian]

1. YIKES!

Good God, "They can often hear cows frantically mooing as they're being skinned and dismembered", OMFG, now THAT may finally be enough to make me a vegetarian!

That article reads exactly like the description of the slaughterhouse and sausage-making in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, guess we haven't come too far in a hundred years, now, have we?

My God, the meat is often contaminated with feces because workers aren't given enough time to wash their hands, dirty meat that falls on the floor is picked up and put back on the line without being washed, pus from abcesses and tumors aren't cut out of the meat, UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I love meat and now I don't think I can ever eat it again!

[mrfrapp]

8. Fast Food Nation

Read "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser.

[liberalhistorian]

9. I bought that for my son last year

because he wanted to read it (he's 12), he read it and was totally grossed out. Looks like it's time for me to read it.

[the_boxer_]

12. I was thinking the same thing.

That shit pisses me off.

[Indiana_Dem]

2. I used to work on a hog kill floor

for 6 years (I'm now an RN, thank God!). I can verify dropped meat and sticking electric knife through abcesses and getting spattered with it! They would just spray it down as the hog passed by on the line. I never saw a hog being skinned alive but I remember seeing a pen of injured hogs awaiting kill after being crammed through the shocking gate before their jugular veins were cut. I used to feel sick watching this as I had to take my smoke break in that area outside. This place was called Wilson Foods and then they shut down from bankruptsy and it reopened under IBP. Most workers now are Hispanic or Asian. It is a much lower wage now. I also remember being overpiled with trying to cut meat off jaw bones. The jawbones would be dropping on the floor they were piled so high and if you didn't have a friend to come help you catch up you were doomed. Luckily, I was a 19-year-old female who had lots of male sympathizers who helped me catch up. It was bad then but I imagine its much worse with IBP in charge. We had one 10-minute break in the morning, a 1/2-hour for lunch and we received another afternoon 10-minute break only if we went overtime. I never had to pee my pants because someone available or even the foremen would come and relieve you if you had to go to the bathroom. Meat-packing is a rough and nasty industry. "Cut-throat" industry (don't mind the pun!)

[liberalhistorian]

3. Well, all I can say is that

I'm sure glad I never had to endure any of that kind of work, and I don't know if I will ever be able to eat any kind of meat again. I've known these kinds of things in the abstract for years, but always pushed it to the back of my mind because I enjoyed meat too much. This may have finally done it.

[govegan]

4. If you are in the mood....

Posted before, but interesting short video, The Meatrix.

check out the links at the end.


http://www.gristmagazine.com/soapbox/meatrix110503.asp

[DU9598]

5. Yes, not uncommon

This has been a common occurrence at IBP plants. At the pork plant in Perry, Iowa several dozen hogs were intentionally not killed before they were sent through the boiler, meaning they were boiled alive while hung from their back legs. The sticker (Person responsible for slashing the hogs throat) thought it was funny. The process of boiling the pig helps in removing the hair from the carcass before the gutting begins.

[Gin]

6. PETA headquarters is here in Norfolk....after reading this story

and watching that video...PETA and some of their advertising antics...look more and more rational.

[theoceansnerves]

10. you can't make this stuff up

i don't know how many people have tried to tell me that peta is a bunch of liars.. and that animal rights activists are liars when they reveal how bad it is in factory farms, and that atrocities are not the "norm," that pictures from inside the slaughterhouses and feedlots and farms are doctored or are just not true--when they really are.

also, to the person who recommended "fast food nation," i also recommend "mad cowboy" by howard lyman.

[Indiana_Dem]

13. Having seen it done for 6 years of my life

I never saw any sticker (we called them killers and nobody wanted the job)--when the killer walked out from the back we knew we were done for the day but I always envisioned him as the walking death machine, hoping he wasn't really some deranged madman!---never saw any sticker intentionally not stick a hog, but they might of accidentally not stuck them in the right place. Sometimes I would see them pull the hogs still alive from bad sticks off the shackels and rentered after they were shocked out of consciousness again.

[papau]

16. In my youth you used a sledge Hammer to the head - knocked them

out, hung them, cut the throat and had the blood run into the drain to be processed, then started cutting (yeah - I worked my way through high school and college - and these were hard jobs to get - more likely was railroad labor where your back replaced machines and motors, or Manville's asbestos clean up, or US Steel's benzene sprayer to clean the blast furnaces, or Outboard Marine/Sears where you avoided molten drops from overhead trolleys as you climbed into broken air pressure powered slamming molding machines to clean them up befor the higher ranked crew fellow went in to fix - where after 5 hours your ears were ringing from the constant 140 DB noise level and your hands were cut by the splats of metal you try to clean out - but I kind of like following the trucks with the shit shovel and wheel barrel - or cleaning up the gates and paths - they threw straw down so it was not so slippery - God - thank God for unions)

Does IDP have a union (the GOP war on unions since 48 has, I realize, weaken their ability to protect the worker - but without them you have nothing).

[Indiana_Dem]

19. Many IBP plants are unfavorable to unions

but the Hispanic & Asian workers here somehow managed to start one at the IBP here and they don't get paid as much as we did at the time when I worked under Wilson's with an UFCW union. I don't know if it's the same union or not. Me and my husband don't have anything to do with the place anymore after he lost his job of 23 years there. IBP originally opened up non-union but they had such a hard time finding workers in this small town they recruit from all over to bring workers here to work this difficult and less rewarding line of work. The city never backed the union before Wilson's closed and sold it to IBP. All the city focused on was the power and electricity and tax money they would get from reopening the plant. Now all the community does is complain about all the immigrants in our town and they snub them. It's really sad. They were the ones who supported it and now they are the ones complaining. They stereotype all the immigrants as thieves and drunks who all live together in substandard housing to send money back home to their families in other countries not to be trusted. Things are getting better after 10 years but it's been an uphill battle. The stupid community just doesn't understand. They would be doing the same thing if it were them in that position. And only we that worked in that hog processing plant know how hard those immigrants really work.

[Indiana_Dem]

20. I kind of like to compare my local community with

the neocons and pro-war party. They want everyone else to do the dirty work but if it came down to them doing it, they would probably sing a different tune. But it always works out that those who need to learn these things the most never have to experience the hardships. Very frustrating in both aspects. I always tell those who complain about or stereotype the immigrants in town to go out to the factory and try it themselves. They would have much more respect if they had to but they never will.

[papau]

23. Sears in Outboard Marine/evinrude installed a company union so as

to avoid "activism" - a neat move in the 50's!

I hope the plant's union has a bit more power than that one had.

At some point folks will realize that "all the immigrants" includes themselves - but it is a pain waiting.

[Blue Gardener]

7. Despicable

Yet another reason to not eat meat, and stop supporting this behavior.

[LisaM]

11. Eat kosher meat....

from what I understand, one principal of kosher meat is humane slaughtering.

[DrWeird]

14. That makes them tastier.

Mmmmmm!

[MrPrax]

15. A new New Year's Resolution...

Never bash PETA out right...
Hear them out...
They had a campaign that featured a sow being 'throated' by workers with little more than an exacto knife...while still alive.

Harrowing really...
and folks make fun of the Germans for requiring 'playtime' for pigs and cows...
Why not more eyes and ears for the public so we don't get poisoned (all that bad karma)

How many people think that the Mad Cow incident will change a single thing in this corrupt industry that has done little except compromise the health of people, boosted prices, lobbied for complete control and abuses animals for no reason?

[LibertyorDeath]

17. Kick

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

18. maybe I should go vegetarian again

I did for a year and a half, and it wasn't as bad as I thought. The unsanitary conditions and disgusting treatement and the fact that they will feed you SICK animals is just too much of a risk.

[silverweb]

21. This is a very good time ...

...to be vegetarian and pro-labor. A new movement is long overdue.

[theoceansnerves]

22. any time

any time is a good time to be veg*n :D :D