Two decades after an article in The Washington Post, titled “They Die Piece by Piece,” detailed the horrors animals faced in slaughterhouses and exposed federal officials’ paltry enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA), little has changed. The meat industry and the agency entrusted with regulating it continue to fail animals miserably. Clearly, the best way to prevent farmed animals from suffering is to leave meat off our plates.
The article’s headline quotes a slaughterhouse worker’s description of how still-conscious cattle were butchered in 2001. Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) own reports recount how cows and other animals still endure agonizing deaths.
In Minnesota last December, workers shot a conscious cow in the head three times, slit her throat, cut into her and injected a chemical into the wounds. The cow clenched her teeth in pain until a rifle shot finally ended her suffering.
