A slaughterhouse, also called an abattoir (French, ultimately from the verb abattre which means "to strike down"), is a facility where farm animals are killed and processed into meat products. The animals most commonly slaughtered for food are cattle (beef and veal), sheep (lamb and mutton), pigs (pork), poultry, and horses (mostly in Europe).

The design, process, and location of slaughterhouses respond to a variety of concerns. Slaughtering animals on a large scale poses significant logistical problems and public health concerns. Most religions stipulate certain conditions for the slaughter of animals. Public aversion to meat packing, in many cultures, influences the location and practices of slaughterhouses. More recently, animal rights groups have levelled ethical charges at slaughterhouses.

Slaughterhouse process

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The slaughterhouse process differs by species and region. A typical procedure follows: (Kosher and halal religious laws prescribe specific methods of slaughter that differ from those described below.)

1. Animals are received by truck or rail from a ranch, farm, or feedlot.
2. Animals are herded into holding pens (see Judas goat).
3. Animals receive a preslaughter inspection.
4. Animals are rendered insensible (unconscious) by stunning (method varies)
5. Animals are hung by hind legs on processing line.
6. A main artery is cut, the animal's blood drains out and it dies.
7. Animal's hide/skin/plumage is removed.
8. Carcass is inspected and graded by a government inspector for quality and safety. (by the Food Safety Inspection Service in the US, and CFIA in Canada)
9. Carcass is cut apart and the body parts separated.
10. Meat cuts are quickly chilled to prevent the growth of microorganisms and to reduce meat deterioration while the meat awaits distribution.
11. The remaining carcass may be further processed to extract any residual traces of meat, usually termed mechanically recovered meat, which may be used for human or animal consumption.
12. Material not destined for human consumption is sent to a rendering plant.
13. The waste water generated by the slaughtering process and the cleaning of the slaughter house is treated in a waste water treatment plant.
14. The meat is transported to distribution centers that distribute to local retail markets.

Slaughterhouse design

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In the later half of the 20th century, the layout and design of most US slaughterhouses has been significantly influenced by the work of Dr. Temple Grandin. Grandin is also well known for being autistic and it was a fascination with patterns and flow that first led her to redesign the layout of cattle holding pens.

Grandin's primary objective was to reduce the stress and suffering of animals being led to slaughter. In particular she applied an intuitive understanding of animal psychology to design pens and corrals which funnel a herd of animals arriving at a slaughterhouse into a single file ready for slaughter. Her corrals employ long sweeping curves so that each animal is prevented from seeing what lies ahead and just concentrates on the hind quarters of the animal in front of it.

Grandin now claims to have designed over 54% of the slaughterhouses in the United States as well as many other slaughterhouses around the world.

The worldwide market leader in slaughterhouse technology for pigs, cattle and sheep is Stork MPS in Lichtenvoorde, the Netherlands.

The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company located near Smithfield, Virginia; it is capable of butchering over 30,000 pigs a day.

International variations

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The standards and regulations governing slaughterhouses vary considerably around the world. In many countries the slaughter of animals is virtually unregulated by law; often, however, it is strongly regulated by custom and tradition. In the non-Western world, including the Arab world, the Indian sub-continent, etc., both forms of meat are available: one which is produced hygenically in modern mechanized slaughterhouses, and the other of the animals slaughtered (conscious) in local butcher-shops.

In some communities animal slaughter may be controlled by religious laws, most notably halal for Muslims and kashrut for Jewish communities. These both require that the animals being slaughtered should be conscious at the point of death, as such animals cannot be stunned prior to killing. This can cause conflicts with individual national regulations when a slaughterhouse adhering to the rules of kosher preparation is located in some western countries.

In many societies, traditional cultural and religious aversion to slaughter led to prejudice against the people involved. In Japan, where the ban on slaughter of livestock for food was lifted only in the late 19th century, the newly found slaughter industry drew workers primarily from villages of former eta (out-castes), who traditionally worked in occupations relating to death (such as executioners and undertakers). In some parts of western Japan, prejudice faced by current and former residents of such areas (burakumin "hamlet people") is still a sensitive issue. Because of this, even the Japanese word for "slaughter" (屠殺 tosatsu) is deemed politically incorrect by some pressure groups as its inclusion of the kanji (chinese symbol) for "kill" (殺) supposedly portrays those who practice it in a negative manner.

Some countries have laws that exclude specific animal species or grades of animal from being slaughtered for human consumption. The former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, suggested in 2004 introducing legislation banning the slaughter of cows throughout India, where the cow is a sacred animal to Hindus, for whom the slaughter of one is unthinkable and offensive (note that already in all the federal states of India except two, cow-slaughter is banned by law). The slaughter of cows and the importation of beef into the nation of Nepal are strictly forbidden under Nepalese law. Several U.S. states have banned the slaughter and consumption of dogs, which are frequently eaten in parts of Asia, especially Korea.

History

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Slaughterhouses are needed primarily to serve the large-scale demand for meat in urban areas where there is no livestock. Thus the slaughterhouse has developed as an adjunct of the city. Early maps of London show numerous stockyards in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air. A term for such open-air slaughterhouse is a "shambles." There are streets named "The Shambles" in some English towns (e.g. Worcester, York) which got their name from having been the site on which butchers killed and prepared animals for consumption.

Open-air slaughter inside cities produced very substantial concerns about public health, morals, and aesthetics. This antipathy towards slaughterhouses is mentioned at least as early as Thomas More's Utopia. In the 19th and 20th century, slaughterhouses were increasingly sited away from the public view, and took pains to portray themselves as clean, innocuous businesses. In this they have been responding not only to increasing regulation, but also to public sentiment. Most Westerners find the subject of animal slaughter to be very unpleasant and prefer not to know the details of what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. As such, in the West, the connection between packaged meat products in the supermarket and the live animals from which they are derived is obscured.

In recent years, animal rights groups and some vegetarians have accused slaughterhouses of secrecy, and have tried to highlight the practices inside a slaughterhouse. This tactic has been in part to expose and correct allegedly inhumane treatment of animals, or unhygenic standards. It has also been used to encourage people to inform themselves about meat production, which the activists hope will lead to more people's choosing a meat-free or reduced-meat diet.

Law

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Most countries have laws in regard to the treatment of animals at slaughterhouses. In the United States, there is the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958, an unenforceable declaration of policy requiring that animals be stunned before killing. This act, like those in many countries, exempts slaughter in accordance to religious law, such as kashrut. Most strict interpretations of kashrut require that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.

A much larger body of regulation deals with the public health and worker safety regulation and inspection.

External links

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• Slaugherhouse designer Temple Grandin's official site detailing her design principles, as well as many of the regulations affecting slaughter in the United States.
• Pig slaughtering process
• Poultry slaughtering process
• Meat processing systems
• Sustainable slaughtering issues
• Horrors of industrial meat processing
• Cooperative Farming Directory -- Alternative to industrial meat processing

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