{"id":599053,"date":"2023-01-19T06:49:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T12:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/19\/spy-cams-reveal-the-grim-reality-of-slaughterhouse-gas-chambers\/"},"modified":"2023-01-19T06:49:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T12:49:58","slug":"spy-cams-reveal-the-grim-reality-of-slaughterhouse-gas-chambers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/19\/spy-cams-reveal-the-grim-reality-of-slaughterhouse-gas-chambers\/","title":{"rendered":"Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At 4 am<\/span> one morning in October of last year, animal rights activist Raven Deerbrook sat on a bed in a cheap hotel in East Los Angeles, looking at a live video feed on her phone. She\u2019d barely slept that night, waking every hour or two to check that the feed was transmitting from three pinhole infrared cameras she\u2019d hidden in the Farmer John meatpacking plant 20 miles away. The facility, located in the LA suburb of Vernon, is owned by Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world. She waited, both anticipating and dreading what her cameras were about to reveal.<\/p>\n

A day earlier, Deerbrook had snuck into the slaughterhouse with a fake uniform and badge and climbed 26 feet underground into a \u201cstunning chamber\u201d\u2014essentially a three-story-deep elevator shaft designed to be filled with carbon dioxide. Here, pigs in cages are lowered into the shaft\u2019s invisible swimming pool of suffocating, heavier-than-air CO2<\/sub>, where the animals asphyxiate over a matter of minutes before being dumped out of the chamber onto a conveyor belt, hung up, drained of blood, and butchered.<\/p>\n

Deerbrook had hidden one camera pointed at that chamber from the plant\u2019s wall. She\u2019d mounted two more with microphones on the car-sized cages within. When she\u2019d tried to descend further down the shaft\u2019s ladder, a burning \u201cair hunger\u201d from residual CO2<\/sub> in the chamber had forced her to climb out again, gasping for breath, unable to plant her remaining cameras.<\/p>\n

Safely back in her hotel room across the city, Deerbrook hoped to record the slaughterhouse gas chamber, inside and out, for the first time in a US meat plant. In doing so, she aimed to disprove claims from the pork industry and the gas chamber manufacturer that this form of suffocation represents a humane\u2014even \u201cpainless\u201d\u2014form of killing.<\/p>\n

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At 5:25 am, as the plant\u2019s operations began for the morning, she saw the first half-dozen pigs herded into the chamber. Deerbrook\u2019s first thoughts were a mix of excitement and practical anxieties: Were the camera angles right? Was the frame rate high enough?<\/p>\n

Then the light in the video began to dim as the cage lowered into the carbon dioxide below. As Deerbrook watched, the pigs began to squeal and thrash violently around in the cage, struggling to escape and convulsing for nearly a minute before finally laying still. \u201cPigs are very human-like in their screaming. And I wasn\u2019t expecting to see them suffer for so long,\u201d she says. \u201cI knew it was going to be bad. But I wasn\u2019t really prepared for the screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deerbrook, still in her pajamas, sat on the hotel bed, staring at her phone screen in horror. The images and audio that she recorded would haunt her nightmares for months to come. \u201cThe only silver lining was the fact that I was able to download the footage,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause once I started getting those first video clips, I knew: At least this is going to be documented.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Warning: The following video depicts the killing of pigs in a CO2<\/sub> gas chamber. Viewer discretion is advised.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Today, Direct Action Everywhere, the group of animal rights activists Deerbrook belongs to, released the footage on a new website, StopGasChambers.org<\/a>, after providing the videos to WIRED in advance. The recordings are the first to reveal what really happens inside a US pig slaughterhouse gas chamber: They capture the truth of a method of animal slaughter that already dominates the meat industry in many countries around the world and is quickly growing among large-scale American meatpacking plants.<\/p>\n

The videos also show how repurposed surveillance technology is making it harder than ever for the meat industry to hide the details of its animal slaughter from the public: Direct Action Everywhere\u2019s activists used tiny spy cameras smaller than a coin to capture the footage. The entire setup\u2014including enough batteries for days of recording, an infrared LED, a microphone, and a radio chip for transmitting the video in real time\u2014is smaller than a credit card.<\/p>\n

Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, says its latest videos contradict claims from the animal agriculture industry and the Iceland-based gas chamber manufacturer Marel\u2014which sold the system used in the Farmer John meatpacking plant\u2014that CO2<\/sub> asphyxiation of pigs improves animal welfare and reduces suffering. A group of 10 veterinarians who have seen DxE\u2019s recordings have also signed an open letter to the American Veterinary Medicine Association<\/a>, published today, that argues based on the footage that the chambers likely violate US state and federal law governing animal slaughter.<\/p>\n

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Direct Action Everywhere\u2019s 3D reconstruction of a Marel \u201cstunning chamber\u201d of the kind used in pig slaughterhouses.<\/span>Courtesy of Direct Action Everywhere<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

CO2<\/sub> \u201cstunning chambers\u201d\u2014a euphemism, perhaps, given that some experts say pigs usually die in them\u2014have become increasingly commonplace in slaughterhouses around the world. They\u2019re widespread in Europe and Australia and increasingly used in large US slaughterhouses, due to both their efficiency and their claimed benefits for animal welfare. Marel states on its website<\/a> that its gas chambers can \u201cstun\u201d as many as 1,600 pigs an hour, and that the \u201cstress-free\u201d experience for animals improves the quality of their meat compared with older methods, such as the stunning by electrocution that was previously used in many US slaughterhouses. On its website<\/a>, Smithfield Foods claims that its CO2<\/sub> chambers lead to \u201cpainless loss of consciousness and death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deerbrook argues that her video of pigs squealing and fighting for air entirely contradicts any such claim. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly cruel and inhumane way to kill,\u201d she says, adding, \u201cWhen you see cows shot in the head or chickens being cut open while they\u2019re still conscious, it\u2019s really bad. But they don\u2019t scream.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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DxE\u2019s footage isn\u2019t the first time that the inside of a slaughterhouse\u2019s CO2<\/sub> stunning chamber has been captured on video. In 2014, the Australian animal rights group Aussie Farms was the first to use hidden cameras to capture similar footage of pigs squealing and thrashing before collapsing<\/a> inside a smaller gas chamber in a slaughterhouse in New South Wales. But DxE\u2019s videos represent the first time such footage has been captured inside the US\u2014evidence DxE hopes to use to make the case that the CO2<\/sub> chambers violate US law.<\/p>\n

Comparing the hidden cameras DxE used in its new investigation to those of Australian activists nearly nine years earlier also shows the evolution of the cat-and-mouse game between animal rights activists and the animal agriculture industry. Aussie Farms used pinhole cameras, like DxE, but had to connect them to digital video recorders nearly the size of a laptop\u2014and then, because the cameras didn\u2019t transmit the footage wirelessly, had to sneak back into the slaughterhouses to retrieve the devices that stored their recordings.<\/p>\n

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A tiny infrared spy camera of the kind Direct Action Everywhere hid inside the Farm John slaughterhouse, complete with a microphone, infrared LED, and battery pack.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photograph: Direct Action Everywhere<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

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. That allowed her to both miniaturize her setup\u2014hiding it in a small box that looked like a part of Marel\u2019s equipment\u2014and remotely connect to the cameras from another phone, miles away, downloading the footage with no need to retrieve her devices.<\/p>\n

That improved operational stealth is increasingly necessary, Deerbrook says, as slaughterhouses have become warier of activists, improving their physical security, tightening their access controls, and searching out hidden surveillance devices. In an earlier attempt in 2020, in fact, Deerbrook hid cameras without remote connectivity in a slaughterhouse gas chamber, but those were discovered before she could retrieve any footage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When WIRED reached out to Smithfield Foods and shared DxE\u2019s videos with the company, it responded in a statement that \u201cSmithfield is committed to the safety, health, and comfort of our animals and strictly follows approved laws, regulations and best practices for humane animal stunning prior to harvest. We adhere to all humane handling and stunning regulations for livestock with the oversight of the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service.\u201d The company pointed out that organizations like the USDA and the American Veterinary Medicine Association have recognized carbon dioxide gas chambers as complying with humane slaughter laws for years. It argued that \u201ccarbon dioxide stunning quickly renders hogs into a state of analgesia,\u201d adding that its programs were \u201ccreated in consultation with two of the world\u2019s foremost experts in animal behavior and handling.\u201d Gas chamber manufacturing firm Marel didn\u2019t respond to WIRED\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Counter to Smithfield\u2019s claims, several veterinarians, animal agriculture experts, and an animal welfare law professor who watched DxE\u2019s videos and others from research studies agree that the kind of reaction captured in the footage represents an inhumane and even illegal degree of pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose animals suffered terribly. They suffered horribly,\u201d says Jim Reynolds, a vet and professor at Western University\u2019s College of Veterinary Medicine who has served on the American Veterinary Medicine Association\u2019s panel for euthanasia guidelines. \u201cIt was absolutely a violation of federal law. They were not stunned. It was inhumane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reynolds says he watched at least 10 of DxE\u2019s clips from its investigation, and they left him disturbed for days. \u201cI\u2019ve actually seen a lot of horrible videos. This is the worst I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not eating pork from the United States anymore until somebody fixes these problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act states that any technique for stunning animals that\u2019s \u201crapid and effective\u201d is legal, says Justin Marceau, a professor focused on animal law at the University of Denver\u2019s Sturm School of Law. But \u201cit is difficult to believe that anyone could watch these videos and conclude that the method being used is either rapid or effective,\u201d says Marceau, who watched clips of DxE\u2019s footage. \u201cYou need to have methods that are reliable and rapid, and that is not what I see in these videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The veterinarians\u2019 letter to the AVMA that was sent to coincide with the release of DxE\u2019s footage echoes this view, arguing that the \u201cextreme distress experienced by the pigs highlights the company\u2019s failure to comply with the Humane Slaughter Act and California law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US Department of Agriculture, which regulates the meatpacking industry in the country, didn\u2019t respond to WIRED\u2019s request for comment about the legality of Smithfield Foods\u2019 use of CO2<\/sub> stunning chambers in its slaughterhouses.<\/p>\n

Veterinarians disagree on what exactly to do<\/em> about gas chambers. Most agree that compared with electrocution, which has to be performed on pigs one at a time, gas chambers are actually preferable in that they allow pigs to stay in groups, which reduces their stress. But the gas chambers also obscure what happens to the pigs after the chamber closes\u2014including suffering that lasts far longer than electrocution. Temple Grandin, a renowned animal welfare expert and professor of animal science at Colorado State University, writes<\/a> that \u201cif the pigs violently attempt to escape when they first inhale the gas, this is not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some prominent researchers, like Cambridge University neuroscientist and animal welfare expert Donald Broom, have argued that argon gas puts pigs to sleep without the same degree of suffering as CO2<\/sub>. But Grandin counters that using argon is more expensive and so unlikely to be adopted by the pork industry. Instead, she suggests pigs could be genetically bred to have a less violent reaction to CO2<\/sub>. She says she\u2019s seen firsthand that some breeds of pigs die without showing signs of struggle inside CO2<\/sub> gas chambers.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Grandin says, she and one of her students had planned to carry out a study in one meatpacking plant, owned by a major pig-rearing and slaughterhouse company, to put cameras inside a CO2<\/sub> gas chamber and observe its effects on different breeds of pigs. Just days before the study was set to begin, according to Grandin, the company canceled the project. \u201cI was furious,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to try to fix this problem,\u201d Grandin adds. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want to look inside the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

DxE\u2019s Deerbrook says the first step toward any solution is for meatpacking plants and the USDA to use their own cameras to monitor what happens to animals inside slaughterhouse gas chambers. (She says she saw none during her climb into Farmer John\u2019s pit.) She doesn\u2019t want to prescribe a fix or tweak for those machines but rather to expose the cruelty they hide\u2014and expose regulators\u2019 unwillingness to enforce the animal welfare laws she says they violate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re saying, \u2018You\u2019re not looking in here because you know<\/em> this is inhumane,\u2019\u201d says Deerbrook. \u201cYou need to witness what you\u2019re doing. You need to look inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Andy Greenberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 4 am one morning in October of last year, animal rights activist Raven Deerbrook sat on a bed in a cheap hotel in East Los Angeles, looking at a live video feed on her phone. She\u2019d barely slept that night, waking every hour or two to check that the feed was transmitting from three<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":599054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[543,216,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-599053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reality","8":"category-reveal","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}