Vermont Packinghouse animal cruelty investigation

Dear Editor,

According to a Dec. 9 article in VTDigger, a local slaughterhouse, Vermont Packinghouse, is under investigation again for cruelty to animals. Allegedly, workers failed to intervene when a truck driver unloading pigs kicked animals in the head and neck and shoved them off the back of the trailer. The pigs suffered heat stroke after an eight-hour journey from a New York farm. 

Vermont Packinghouse claims it is taking corrective action to “uphold its commitment to humane animal handling.” 

This statement from a slaughterhouse previously shut down for 15 noncompliance violations of federal and state animal welfare laws for improper stunning of pigs and sheep is outrageous. In each instance, employees failed to stun an animal effectively and render it immediately unconscious, as required under the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. The “mis-stunned” animals tried to escape and had to be re-captured and stunned multiple times.

Vermont Packinghouse, local meat farms, and butcher shops use the word “humane” liberally to advertise their services and products. But labels do not always tell the truth.

“Food” animals, even locally raised ones, suffer all manner of cruelties from birth to death: Newborn dairy calves shiver alone in outdoor huts; pigs in double-decker trucks endure long-distance transport in extreme temperatures; terrified animals wait hours or days in slaughterhouse holding pens for their turn to die, etc. “Stunning” requires violence either by captive bolt, blow to the skull, or electrocution, and, as we know from Vermont Packinghouse’s prior offenses, it is easily botched.

Merriam-Webster defines “humane” as “marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration.”Sympathy requires an ability to put oneself into the shoes of another. Killing animals for food is not a humane endeavor in which animals are treated with compassion. Vermont Packinghouse and local meat purveyors should lose the “humanely-produced” label and just call it meat. 

Lucy Goodrum, Reading