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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. In the USA and Canada horses are slaughtered for meat export to Europe and Japan for human consumption; horses are also both rendered and slaughtered for the USA domestic pet food market.

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

The slaughterhouse process differs by species and region and may be controlled by religious laws such as Kosher and halal laws. A typical procedure follows:

1. Animals are received by truck or rail from a ranch, farm, or feedlot.
2. Animals are herded into holding pens, sometimes by means of a cattle prod.
3. Animals receive a preslaughter inspection.
4. Animals are usually made unconscious by stunning or "knocking" using various methods including the use of a captive bolt pistol or applying an electric shock to the animal's head. Livestock are also rendered unconscious by CO₂ captive bolt stunning and CO₂/inert gas stunning (This step is prohibited under strict application of Halal and Kashrut codes, Halal will allow for head only electrical stunning or concussive captive bolt stunning)
5. Animals are hung by one hind leg on the processing line.
6. The main arteries and veins are severed and the animal's blood drains, causing death through exsanguination.
7. The hide/skin/plumage is removed by down pullers, side pullers and fisting off the pelt (sheep and goats)
8. The carcass is inspected and graded by a government inspector for quality and safety. (This inspection is performed by the Food Safety Inspection Service in the US, and CFIA in Canada.)
9. The internal organs are removed and inspected for internal parasites. The guts are separated for inspection from the heart and lungs, livers are separated for inspection, tongues are dropped or removed from the head and the head is sent down the line on the head hooks or head racks for inspection.
10. The carcass is broken down into subprimals and primals for boxed meat unless customer specifies for swinging sides of meat. Beef and horse carcasses are always split in half and then quartered, Pork is split into sides only and Goat/Veal/Mutton and Lamb is left whole
11. Meat cuts are chilled to prevent the growth of microorganisms and to reduce meat deterioration while the meat awaits distribution.
12. 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.
13. Waste materials such as lard or tallow, are sent to a rendering plant.
14. The waste water, consisting of blood and fecal matter, generated by the slaughtering process is sent to a waste water treatment plant.
15. The meat is transported to distribution centers that then distribute to retail markets.

Slaughterhouse design

In the latter 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.

International variations

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 hygienically 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, and 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 (outcasts), 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 not 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.

History

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 the 16th century, in 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 and vegans have accused slaughterhouses of secrecy, and have tried to highlight the practices inside a slaughterhouse. Examples include the PETA produced film, Meet Your Meat. This tactic has been in part to expose and correct allegedly inhumane treatment of animals, or unhygienic standards. It has also been used to encourage people to inform themselves about meat production, which the activists hope will lead to more people choosing a meat-free or reduced-meat diet.

Law

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, a law requiring that animals be stunned before killing. There is some debate over the enforcement of this act. This act, like those in many countries, exempts slaughter in accordance to religious law, such as kosher shechita and dhabiĥa halal. Most strict interpretations of kashrut require that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.

The novel The Jungle detailed unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industry during the 1800s, leading to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. A much larger body of regulation deals with the public health and worker safety regulation and inspection.

Major slaughterhouses

The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, North Carolina. It is capable of butchering over 32,000 pigs a day. The Dutch Stork Food Systems is the world largest manufacturer of chicken slaughtering installations with an annual turnover of € 149m.

The largest slaughterhouse in India and also in Asia is located at Deonar, a suburb of Mumbai.

See List of major slaughterhouses for a list of places around the world.

See also

• Ethics of eating meat
• List of abattoirs in the UK

• Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

External links

• Slaughterhouse 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
• Cooperative Farming Directory -- Alternative to industrial meat processing

• Livestock
• Animal rights movement
• Agricultural buildings
• Meat processing