How many of you have actually seen or been in a slaughter house/fur farm/lab? I took a trip to the slaughter house (I was working a corn field next to one) when I was 13 and seen the horrors. I remember it as the worst feeling because I was watching all this abuse and there was nothing I could do. Thats when I stopped eating meat. I was just curious about any experiences you all have had.

How many of you have actually seen or been in a slaughter house/fur farm/lab? I took a trip to the slaughter house (I was working a corn field next to one) when I was 13 and seen the horrors. I remember it as the worst feeling because I was watching all this abuse and there was nothing I could do. Thats when I stopped eating meat. I was just curious about any experiences you all have had.

I have been in a slaughterhouse and also factory farms, fur trap lines (dismanteling the lines .. shhh don't tell!) and also a fur farm. I'm suprised you got a tour of a slaughterhouse - usually they are not open to the public because it does look bad. I have been to these places because one of the animal welfare groups that I am part of believes that if you are against something, you should know what goes on. Let me tell you - it disgusted me with every breathe I took. I literally threw up and I could not stop crying for hours after the fur farms. (Luckily for the rabbits and chins, we got the fur farm closed down with alot of support from the public and almost all of the animals are now in great homes. Some had to be put to sleep because of the sickly abuse that went on. It makes me upset still to even think about it :wall: )

I come from a very small town, so the farmers and tourism are our main source of economy. I always feel really bad when I drive by and I see downers being pulled out of the trucks. There is so much terror in the animals face.

One doesn't have to be completely powerless towards them. One can speak to the political representatives about strengthening the "humane" slaughtering laws. Find out (from actual government regulators, not animal rights organizations as they tend to be extremely biased) what these laws are. If you hear of something going wrong in the plant, then let them know you are not happy with it and suggest plausable ways to fix it. Get the public envolved, even most people who eat meat won't stand for incompetence. PETA is a good example of this - they get right in there. I am not suggesting working there or anything, this is just an example. :)

Toodles

I have not and I pray I never have to. I haven't even watched any of the videos and have no plans to. I get upset enough just reading the eyewitness accounts and hearing what other people have seen-- I am not strong enough to face it head-on and in the flesh. :cry:

I have, it did not bother me much but the one I saw was a small place not a large scale place were I am sure things are done differantly.
But the small place killed the animals quickly and as painless as possible.

I have heard some horror stories about some of the large corperations.

My father raised cattle when I was growing up. When I was about five, he took a load of cattle to auction and took me along. Among the cattle he was selling was an elderly Holstein that I practically considered a pet. She was 17 or 18 years old at that point, had a bit of a limp, and was generally slow about getting around ... too slow, apparently, for the guys working the lot. As we were walking along the suspended walkway above the corrals, I saw some young {expletive deleted} beating her with an electric prod in an effort to get her to move faster. I went ballistic. Screamed at him to quit hurting my friend, called him a "bad man" (the worst thing my young mind could think of), and was in the process of hurling myself over the walkway (yes, directly into the path of a dozen or more fast-moving cattle) to "stop him" when my father and grandfather grabbed me. My father attempted to calm me down by telling me that she was getting old, and that it was time for her to fulfill her "purpose in life." Her "purpose in life," according to him, was to feed people. As part of this circle-of-life lecture, he made the mistake of telling me that my favorite cow might even eventually find her way back to our freezer in the form of hamburger. Needless to say, that last comment didn't help his case. :think: :sick: :cry: I refused to eat meat in *any* form for months after that and ultimately did so only threat of dire consequences if I didn't.

A few years later, we went on a tour of the stockyards in Oklahoma City. It was at that point, I think, that I decided once I was free and living life on my own, not one penny of my money was going to support the American beef industry.

Been in several labs, but they didn't have animals there (they only get them for the final parts of testing and such apparently).

Makes sense I guess, otherwise you'd have to always be feeding them and cleaning cages.

I went on a tour of a slaughterhouse with school when I was about 14 or 15 but they only showed us the packaging line - they didn't show us the actual slaughterhouse. When I asked the teacher why, I was told it would upset us. No sh*t! Looking back, and having seen various clips of Peta videos, I'm glad I didn't see the slaughterhouse. I think it's pretty clear to everybody what goes on inside one. All the people who think the transportation, treatment and killing of these animals is humane are quite simply deluded. Everybody knows what goes on. And if they don't, they should.

Helen

When I was around 18 or 19 years old, one of my boyfriends worked for a computer company and had to deliver and install equipment in the university for animal testing. He said the place was top secret, it was on the top floor of a building and only accessible by a special key in for the lift. He was never allowed to go into the laboratory but he saw animal testers there walking round in head to toe green suits.

But he said what upset and confused him most was that in the reception area of the lab were posters of kittens, puppies and bunnies.

How sick is that, knowing what's going on behind their closed doors?

Helen

I have never been to a slaughterhouse although I have seen footage and I found it horrific to watch. You must have found it very distressing to witness animal butchering first hand. As a child I spent a lot of time on a family farm, and I also visited a battery farm once. The noise inside was horrifically loud. I know my early years on the farm had a massive impact on me.

I have never, but I had an old friend that did this years ago. She has been a veggie for years now.:yes:

When I was around 18 or 19 years old, one of my boyfriends worked for a computer company and had to deliver and install equipment in the university for animal testing. He said the place was top secret, it was on the top floor of a building and only accessible by a special key in for the lift. He was never allowed to go into the laboratory but he saw animal testers there walking round in head to toe green suits.

But he said what upset and confused him most was that in the reception area of the lab were posters of kittens, puppies and bunnies.

How sick is that, knowing what's going on behind their closed doors?

Helen

I wonder what the hell that lot was testing . . . definitely not average medical stuff.

[QUOTE=Ayrlin]I have, it did not bother me much.....

okay, you lost me here... what would bother you much?


"But the small place killed the animals quickly and as painless as possible."

what exactly is as painless as possible? Did one of the animals slaughtered
here tell you it could hurt worse?

whoa.
:dizzy:

i've never been to a slaughterhouse, but i've been in labs a couple times - where they keep the animals, not where they do the experiments. the animals actually looked pretty well looked after, but i got the feeling they were there for those times when they have to show someone around, not actual lab animals.

The closest i've come to a slaughterhouse is watching my grandad kill rabbits and chickens. he's been breeding them since the 2nd world war when it was the only way to get meat and eggs, although he stopped a few years ago because it's too much for him to look after now. When i realised my grandad's rabbits weren't actually pets was a very scary moment!

what exactly is as painless as possible?

Dying in your sleep, I'd imagine.

This might be a horrible question, but weren't there "noises" coming from the slaughter part of the slaughterhouse?

It was in a separate building to the packaging building. We weren't to go near it.

When I was a kid about 7 we raised chickens for food. I do remember harvest week. It has been 49 years, but it is burned in my brain. Mom even tried to make me kill them. I killed one. Let's just leave it at that. My older sister did all the killing after that.

MorningCalm, what an awful memory, and you too Like2k, i can imagine that's hard to forget :-/

I don't think i'm brave enough to go to a slaughterhouse. I've seen footage, that's enough for me, but seeing something like that live... :sick: I was really surprised a couple of months back, when i went to my uni's medical school to see the animal testing department... i didn't even know they had one! It was in the basement.. out of sight.. and quite hard to get to. I didn't see any testing going on, but i did see where the animals were housed. There were rats, mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits. There were some wild crows in a big cage, they were going balistic... obviously terrified, and some other birds. Apparantly there are monkeys down there too! :think: , but it was too dangerous for us to see them.

Too dangerous for you to even SEE them? I smell a rat.

Too dangerous for you to even SEE them? I smell a rat.

Yeh, i think they're infected with diseases, so it's against their regulations to let visitors anywhere near them. :-/

I've never actually been to slaughter house but have driven past one and the smell always makes me nervous. I don't think I could face actually going in. Our neighbours used to have only a few beef cattle and so periodically the home kills truck would turn up. Once I was at home when it came. The two farms used to be one so there was a connecting race. This particular time two cows escaped from their yards and came running down our race past the house, I thought they might have gotten away but then the man came and brought them back to the nieghbours yards. I couldn't see but I heard the guns shots. I cried my eyes out that day. Then the next time my Dad and I went to drench our calves we had to borrow the neighbours yard where the cows had been killed - they went nuts, they could smell the blood and they were so scared. I hated the home kill truck for years, it's only now that I realize that that option is far kinder than sending them to a slaughter house.

I remember visiting a slaughterhouse on a class trip when I was about 9 or 10. I remember there was a lot of blood and offal... I had an uncle who worked at a butchershop, so I was exposed to that a few times as well. When I was about 11 or so, I was living with my Dad and his new family on a small farm, and I participated in the butchering of a steer and a hog. And I milked the two cows every morning and evening. Then, when I moved back to my Mom's, we had a small hog farm, and I had to help with the feeding, the castrating, and such. As an adult, I worked at a salmon cannery, chopping up and cleaning thousands of pounds of salmon every day.

I've seen a lot. It's nasty.

Randy, no wonder you have sworn off for life.

this reminds me, have any of you read the blog of that tyson chicken factory worker, who is now a vegetarian?

http://cyberactivist.blogspot.com/

go to the bottom and on the right hand side click to see the older archives, where he describes why he went veg.

When I was around the ages of 12-14, I would help my stepfather clean some of his janitorial supplies. He rented part of this building that used to be a slaughter house. I have never felt anything more haunting in my life than being in that building. The feeling was just horrible and I will never forget it.

I work as a vet tech, and during our course we visited:
a chicken slaughter house, baby chicken farm, egglaying place, elk antler farm, PMU farm, dairy barn (had to work there), pig barns, cattle feed lot, alpaca farm, and did some work with lab animals. The only place that was decent at all and not really gross and/or disturbing was the alpaca farm. They seemed to have a good life and are just shaved and bred. Everything else just reinforced how glad I am to be vegetarian/mostly vegan.