The issue of animal cruelty in slaughterhouses goes back to the 1900s when most United States journalists took up the fight to regulate better laws for the slaughtering of animals. Despite their efforts, it all resulted in an, even more, hardship for animals. The laws stated that when animals had been slaughtered, they could not be left lying on the floors in the other animal’s blood. As a result, animals were instead suspended with a single leg from a rope or chain and the axed to death. This practice was, however, terminated in 1958 when Congress passed the Humane Slaughter Act (Eisnitz, 2009). This law instead wanted the animals to be stunned before being slaughtered.
Despite this law, cruelty became a continued practice in slaughterhouses. Some animals were still not properly stunned while others faced abuse and were treated with a lot of cruelty by the slaughterhouse workers before the stunning. Sometimes equipment that was improperly functioning results in the abuse of slaughterhouse animals. Due to this state, the Humane Slaughter Act updated its law to provide the United States government inspectors the chance to halt slaughterhouse operations in case they observed instances of animal cruelty (Beirne, 2004). However, because of the inconveniences and expenses of stopping the operations that took place in slaughterhouses, the inspections were ultimately reduced and all eventually trapped off.
In 2001, an article newspaper in the Washington Post charged the United States government with the Improper Enforcement of Humane Slaughter Act publicly. As a result, the attention of the public grew (Dillard, 2008). However, most people wonder whether the current laws protect adequately the animals from suffering unnecessarily. Other individuals wonder what difference it makes since the animals are almost dying anyway. The very strict animal rights activists articulate that they would prefer outlawing animal slaughtering altogether. Most people oppose such an idea since the supply of meat would be eliminated and put a lot of people in the livestock production such as ranchers as well as farmers out of business.
References
Eisnitz, G. A. (2009). Slaughterhouse: The shocking story of greed, neglect, and inhumane treatment inside the US meat industry. Prometheus Books.
Dillard, J. (2008). Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees and the Possibility of Redress through Legal Reform, A. Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Pol'y, 15, 391.
Beirne, P. (2004). From animal abuse to interhuman violence? A critical review of the progression thesis. Society & Animals, 12(1), 39-65.
