A butcher has died after a pig being stunned in a slaughterhouse recovered and lashed out, causing the man to sustain a fatal wound from a 15-inch meat cleaver. The Mirror reports that the butcher shot the pig with an electric stun gun but it regained consciousness and killed the 61-year-old man in the ensuing struggle.
Police say the butcher, who worked at the Sheung Shui Slaughterhouse near Hong Kong's border with mainland China, sustained the killer blow after the writhing pig knocked him to the ground. A little later, a colleague found him unconscious with a cleaver in his hand and a wound on his left foot.
He was pronounced dead at hospital. The region's labour department expressed its "deepest sympathy" to the butcher's family and said it had launched a probe.
In a statement, the department said: “The Labour Department is saddened by the death of the person and expresses its deepest sympathy to his family. We will complete the investigation as soon as possible to identify the cause of the accident, ascertain the liability of the duty holders and recommend improvement measures."
It is unknown whether the pig managed to escape slaughter. Pigs are rarely violent, only when protecting their young, and are considered intelligent with a capacity for social interaction, emotional cognition, ability to feel pain and conduct hygiene routines.
The tragedy came after it emerged that little or no action was being taken against workers in UK abattoirs, where animals being taken for slaughter were being abused despite the presence of CCTV cameras. Only one in 300 complaints about animal welfare in UK farms led to prosecutions over the past four years, it was claimed.
A report by Animal Equality and the Animal Law Foundation said fewer than three in 100 of the UK’s estimated 219,000 farms had an annual inspection by a public body between 2018 and 2021. It also found how there was just one inspector in place for every 205 farms in the UK.
The report gathered data from 65 investigations conducted by a number of animal protection organisations between 2016 and 2021. Illegality or substandard practices were discovered on every facility, which included evidence of pigs having tails cut off, cows unable to walk or stand, and hens crammed into overcrowded cages — but more than 69 per cent of cases resulted in no subsequent formal enforcement action.
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