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Quotes about Slaughterhouses from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"The outcry a century ago after Upton Sinclair exposed conditions in factory slaughterhouses led to a regulatory system that, ironically and perversely, requires animals to be slaughtered in factory slaughterhouses. Factory farming and factory slaughter created sanitation problems; the regulations adopted to address those problems outlawed on-farm slaughter and tightened regulation of factory slaughterhouses." - Sandor Ellix Katz, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (Get the book.)

"Moser warns that the United States's method of relying on the inspectors in slaughterhouses to detect BSE is unreliable at best. "If a vet is not well educated in spotting signs of BSE, they [meat inspectors] can easily miss them."26 A Flawed Detection System in the United States Given all that I have learned about BSE, its symptoms, and the devastating effect it can have on the cattle industry, I have to ask myself: Does anyone really think if a farmer or veterinarian actually observed cattle displaying odd behavior that they would report this to the proper authorities? I think not." - Ann N. Martin, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (Get the book.) "Various diets, including puppy formulas, "lite" foods, and life-stage diets filled the grocery store shelves, surpassing even cereal products for humans. slaughterhouses, rendering plants, and cereal producers saw pet foods as the ideal product for their industries' by-products unfit for human consumption. Today, pet food is a multi-billion dollar industry, and still growing. According to Euromonitor, a major market profiler, "Combined U.S. sales of dog and cat food reached a size of $11.6 billion in 2000." - Ann N. Martin, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (Get the book.) "Independent plants obtain animal by-product materials, "including grease, blood, feathers, offal, and the entire animal carcasses, from the following sources: butcher shops, supermarkets, restaurants, fast-food chains, poultry processors, slaughterhouses, farms, ranches, feed-lots, and animal shelters."7 All of the large rendering plants, including Darling International, Sacramento Rendering, West Coast Rendering, Baker Commodities Inc., Modesto Tallow, Carolina By-Products, Griffin Industries Inc., Rothsay, and Valley Proteins are independent Tenderers." - Ann N. Martin, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (Get the book.) "Because I have researched all aspects of the meat industry, including conditions at some slaughterhouses, I always cook the meat for my guys. In cooking rhe meat, some of the healthy enzymes are destroyed, but so are the harmful bacteria and parasites. Many pet owners have asked me about a raw meat and bone diet versus a cooked diet for cats and dogs. In my second book, Protect Your Pet: More Shocking Facts, I share the findings from my extensive research. I conclude that this is not a safe diet to feed companion animals, and there is no sound scientific information to confirm this assertion." - Ann N. Martin, Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food (Get the book.)

"According to USDA rules, slaughterhouses can use meat from cancer-afflicted cattle as long as the tumors are thrown away. The problem with this practice is that the cancer-causing virus is disseminated throughout the animal. While cooking may partially destroy the organisms, people who like their steaks rare are really taking chances. While there is no proof that these cancer-causing viruses can cause cancer in humans, there is compelling circumstantial evidence." - Russell L. Blaylock, M.D., Health and Nutrition Secrets (Get the book.)

"USDA slaughterhouses with on-site inspectors and smaller state-regulated custom slaughterhouses that slaughter animals and butcher meat for hunters and institutional use, but not for resale. Meat for resale must go through the USDA facilities. There have been prosecutions over the sale of meat from custom slaughterhouses. Diane and Mike Hartman, who own Mom's Dairy in Gibbons, Minnesota, were arrested in 2004 for selling—directly from their farm—meat they had raised and had had slaughtered at a custom slaughterhouse rather than at a USDA facility." - Sandor Ellix Katz, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (Get the book.)

"Needle damage to the cow's carcass creates problems for slaughterhouses as federal meat inspectors hold up carcasses showing needle marks for several days, pending further teats for illegal drug residues. Almost comically, Monsanto's research farm employees appeared at times like the "Keystone Cops," trying to administer twice-monthly bGH injections. Many bGH needles broke off in the cows, as the animals flinched while receiving injections. ¦ Mastitis problems are higher in bGH-treated cows." - Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., What's In Your Milk?: An Exposé of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking (Get the book.)

"The outcry a century ago after Upton Sinclair exposed conditions in factory slaughterhouses led to a regulatory system that, ironically and perversely, requires animals to be slaughtered in factory slaughterhouses. Factory farming and factory slaughter created sanitation problems; the regulations adopted to address those problems outlawed on-farm slaughter and tightened regulation of factory slaughterhouses." - Sandor Ellix Katz, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (Get the book.)

"Irradiation will encourage even worse hygienic conditions in our slaughterhouses, where currently significant percentages of the meat from the cattle, pork and chickens have positive cultures for pathogenic bacteria. Some irradiation plants may begin using caesium 137 which was left over from the production of nuclear weapons. This radioactive material is dangerous and unstable. In 1988 a leak of caesium 137 near Atlanta cost thirty million dollars to clean up." - James A. Howenstine, A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work (Get the book.) "These proteins were obtained form diseased cows (downer cows), live stock that died of old age, disease or accidents, wasted inedible meat from slaughterhouses and supermarkets, deceased zoo animals, euthanized pets and road kill. This rendering of disposable animal remains has grown into a 3 billion dollar industry. The bad decision to turn cows into cannibals has been compounded by another bad decision to feed diseased contaminated protein to cows." - James A. Howenstine, A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work (Get the book.)

"The neat, plastic-wrapped chilled meats that appear in grocery stores are far removed from the crowded, hot, smelly, and dangerous feedlots, confinement barns, batteries, and slaughterhouses from which they come. If you think too much about what is involved in the raising and killing of animals, you may find meat hard to eat. If you eat meat at all, you are happy to have someone else take care of its unsavory aspects and relieved that you do not have to watch. So we turn the dirty work of slaughter over to the meat companies and avert our eyes when this industry grows huge and monopolistic." - Marion Nestle, What to Eat (Get the book.) "Like all animals, food animals excrete bacteria in their wastes, and these bacteria spread quickly under the crowded conditions in feedlots, batteries, and slaughterhouses. Bacteria also spread from one an- Meat will never be completely free of bacteria, but you have every right to wonder why producers are not doing a better job of keeping their meats free of harmful ones. imal to another during slaughter and when meat is cut and ground." - Marion Nestle, What to Eat (Get the book.) "Grass-finished cattle excrete fewer dangerous bacteria in their feces; this reduces the spread of such bacteria onto meat in slaughterhouses. • Grass-fed cattle get sick less often and need fewer treatments with antibiotics. All this makes perfect sense. Cows are supposed to eat grass, so it should come as no surprise to learn that grass feeding affects the nutritional composition of meat. The adage "you are what you eat" applies to cows as well as to people. The purpose of feedlots is to fatten up animals in a hurry." - Marion Nestle, What to Eat (Get the book.)

"USDA slaughterhouses with on-site inspectors and smaller state-regulated custom slaughterhouses that slaughter animals and butcher meat for hunters and institutional use, but not for resale. Meat for resale must go through the USDA facilities. There have been prosecutions over the sale of meat from custom slaughterhouses. Diane and Mike Hartman, who own Mom's Dairy in Gibbons, Minnesota, were arrested in 2004 for selling—directly from their farm—meat they had raised and had had slaughtered at a custom slaughterhouse rather than at a USDA facility." - Sandor Ellix Katz, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved (Get the book.)

"Number of chickens slaughtered every minute in the United States: 14,00038 Food animals (not counting fish and other aquatic creatures) slaughtered per year in the United States: 10 billion Bernard Rollin, the Colorado State University expert on animal farming, says it is not only consumers who don't really know what goes on inside slaughterhouses. The same is true, he says, for cattle ranchers, most of whom ship their animals to slaughterhouses but have never actually been inside one. "Few ranchers have ever seen their animals slaughtered," he says. "Even fewer wish to."" - John Robbins, Food Revolution: How your diet can help save your life and our world (Get the book.)

"Some treated cows are so lean and wasted by the end of their lives, they offered litde value to slaughterhouses that normally convert the cows' carcasses into meat. The slaughterhouses also complained that the cows' tissue at the injection site was killed, sometimes leaving a swollen mound. It would have to be cut out of the meat before it went on the market.8 The stolen data also revealed that rbGH cows had more difficulty getting pregnant. While 95 percent of untreated cows became pregnant during the eight-month trial, only 52 percent of the treated cows did." - Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating (Get the book.)

"If I was going to write a book on the subject of slaughterhouses, I was going to tell the whole story. There had been a congressional hearing in the early '90s on worker injuries in slaughterhouses. I would obtain a copy of the testimony: "My husband was killed at the plant," testified a widow. "He was a maintenance worker and was killed when someone accidentally activated the conveyor belt he was repairing. "OSHA cited the company for failing to provide a hazard-free workplace following my husband's death. The company was fined one thousand dollars for the death of my husband." - Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meal Industry (Get the book.)

"Our nation's slaughterhouses have been called more dangerous and debilitating now than at any time since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, in 1906.16); • And, next to these faces, the few people who've come to control the meatpacking industry—a concentration so tight that now four corporations control over four-fifths of the beef slaughterhouses in the U.S.17 just one, IBP, kills 40 percent of America's feedlot cattle.18 So around that small, small steak, I see the chemicals, the fat, and the germs; the drugs and the resources." - Jeremy P. Tarcher, Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (Get the book.)

"Animal protein was an inexpensive feed additive that promoted growth, and slaughterhouses produced huge volumes of waste that needed to go somewhere. At the time, American cattle were eating about 2 billion pounds of animal protein every year-mainly the remains of other cattle. About three-quarters of all American cattle were being fed animal protein, and dairy cattle were the most likely to eat it in significant amounts. They were also the most likely to wind up as fast food hamburgers one day." - Mike Adams, Grocery Warning: How to recognize and avoid the groceries that cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and other common diseases (Get the book.)

"He had worked in slaughterhouses ever since he was a teenager. He didn't say much about his life on Chicago's streets, the dangerous crowd he ran with—or how he'd landed in jail this time. I asked him what kind of horses were slaughtered at the plant where he'd worked. "Belgians, Arabians, little ponies—all kinds. Long as it's a horse. Stolen horses, too." "Stolen?" I asked. Lately at my job, I'd been getting a lot of complaints about horses that had been stolen from their owners and sold to slaughterhouses. Horse theft for slaughter seemed to be on the increase." - Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meal Industry (Get the book.) "According to federal law, all animals in slaughterhouses must be examined before and after they are killed. These inspections are conducted by government veterinarians or trained inspectors. Veterinarians, knowledgeable in animal physiology and health, have general oversight in slaughterhouses. Inspectors, who receive classroom and on-the-job training, learn how to detect lesions, signs of illness, and contamination in animals." - Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meal Industry (Get the book.)

"The researchers looked at the European situation, studied current rules, and visited farms, slaughterhouses, and processing plants in the U.S. They constructed a mathematical model—essentially a statistically weighted flow chart starting with infectivity sources and advancing to cattle exposure, then to slaughterhouses, and finally to feed." - Philip Yam, The Pathological Protein: Mad Cow, Chronic Wasting, and Other Deadly Prion Diseases (Get the book.)

"At large slaughterhouses, he explained, cattle were stunned, then their heads were lopped off. Their bodies were put on conveyor machines, then butchered. But at small abattoirs like the local butchers, only one cow would be prepared at any given time. The butcher killed the animal with a gunlike device that drove a steel rod, called a pithing rod, into the cow's brain. The butcher would retract the pithing rod and carve up the body. Although the pithing rod killed the cow mercifully fast, it sometimes caused some brain matter to splatter from the head." - Elinor Levy, Mark Fischetti, The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Germs Threatens Us All (Get the book.)

"Instead, they thought the USDA should pay more attention to practices in slaughterhouses and retail stores. A Nebraska Chamber of Commerce official defended Hudson Foods: "There's always somebody out there trying to downgrade the meat industry. . . . I'm sure the people—veggies, is that what they call them—I bet they're rejoicing right now." - Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Get the book.) "It was forced to do so by public demands elicited by the accounts of muckraking journalists who visited slaughterhouses and shared their unsettling experiences. Here, for example, is one of the milder passages from Lafcadio Hearn's 1875 report of his comparative visits to stockyards run by Gentiles and Jews: To describe one Gentile slaughter-house is to describe the majority . . ." - Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Get the book.) "Even more remarkable, investigators once traced back the origin of a single lot of hamburger at one processing plant to slaughterhouses in six different states and to an almost unimaginable 443 individual animals.23 It is difficult to imagine a system better equipped to promote the spread of disease—and to obscure the source of illnesses or outbreaks. Single-source outbreaks, however, also illustrate the vulnerability of a centralized food supply. In the most dramatic instance, a Salmonella outbreak in 1994 affected more than 220,000 people in 41 states." - Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Get the book.) "Retailers such as Burger King blamed Hudson, while Hudson blamed the slaughterhouses and USDA inspectors. Everyone blamed the unregulated cattlemen, and not without reason. Investigations of cattle-rearing practices found E. coli 0157^7 in feeding troughs, where the bacteria can survive in sediments for four months or more; in one instance, 40% of the troughs had not been cleaned in a year.41 The bacteria also survive in manure for months, and many animals are found to be shedding them at the time of slaughter." - Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Get the book.)

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