.
Reached at home on Sunday evening, December 4, Dr. Grandin agreed to watch the videos and comment on what she saw with this writer. She watched once while I took notes and then we simultaneously watched them three more times, discussing play-by-play footage of horses slipping on floors, vocalizing and remaining standing despite being stunned repeatedly on various parts of their heads.
How many stuns are acceptable? Under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, Sec. 1902, there can only be a “single blow or gunshot” that renders the animals “insensible to pain” before he or she is shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast or cut. (There is only one exception and that is for ritual slaughter done pursuant to a religious faith.)
Regulation Sec. 313.50 talks about a stunning blow, meaning one. The blow is to be administered so as to produce “immediate unconsciousness” in the animal prior to shackling etc. (a)(3) “Immediately after the stunning blow is delivered, the animals shall be in a state of complete unconsciousness and remain in this condition throughout shackling, sticking and bleeding”. The stunning itself is to be done so the animal is “rendered unconscious with a minimum of excitement and discomfort.”
Among the footage of horses Dr. Grandin and I reviewed was a large Belgian horse shot 11 times, and numerous horses whinnying after being stunned. One whinnied twice after each of two shots, but no third stunning attempt was made.
Dr. Grandin commented throughout on the lack of non-slip floors and their importance in reducing animal fear and stress, but she expressed satisfaction with the stunning process, even when the horses appeared to revive.
When asked if this constituted a failure of the captive-bolt device or her design, she said that each of the horses had “gone down” on the first shot and that any subsequent movement could be attributed to spinal activity, which she described as still functional for as much as five minutes after brain incapacity.
When asked specifically about the additional stuns being administered, she stated that these appeared to be delivered as “insurance.” Even so, she expressed 90% certainty that the horses were effectively stunned the first time. Her one reservation was that she could not see the horse’s faces and check their eyes and mouths to be sure—something that the angle of the video camera did not allow.
Overall, her main dissatisfaction was that the horses appeared to be in a cattle box as opposed to a horse box, that the floors weren’t non-slip and that the captive-bolt gun may not have been properly maintained. She also commented on the importance of workers placing the gun in the proper position on the horse’s head, something that they did not appear to do in the instances where the horses were repeatedly stunned. Consistently, however, she felt the process worked as intended.
When asked if she felt that the move to reopen slaughterhouses in the U.S. was justified, she said that it was better than the fate of horses being shipped to Mexico. She also said that no one had contacted her since the appropriations bill had been signed to design any horse slaughterhouses on U.S. soil. Our talk ended after 50 minutes.
Grandin Viewpoint of Humane Stunning Disputed
Neither I nor Dr. Grandin listened to the videos with the volume turned up to its highest level of amplification—but doing so reveals a lot about what is happening between the horses and the workers charged with killing them that cannot be heard at a normal level of volume. In particular, the worker who shot the large Belgian can be heard saying, “aye, you’re not dead” after seven shots, then exchanging his small gun for a larger one and shooting the horse four more times in the head. This directly contradicts Dr. Grandin’s finding that the horses were all properly unconscious on the first attempt, a vital condition of legally humane slaughter.
Other observers also contradict Dr. Grandin’s assessment. Dr. Nicholas Dodman, an anesthesiologist and veterinary behaviorist at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, audited the footage as well for the CHDC. “My final conclusion, after reviewing 150-plus horse slaughters in this series of videos, is that the process was terrifying for most of the horses and, in many cases, horribly inhumane,” he states.
Dr. Dodman continues, “At this slaughterhouse, in cases where a second shot was required, most humane standards, in my opinion, were not met.”
Both videos and report from Les Viandes de la Petite-Nation Inc. slaughterhouse in Quebec can be accessed through the CHDC’s web site.
Please note: the CHDC footage is as disturbing as undercover video shot in less technologically-advanced slaughterhouses, both in Canada and the U.S. In either case, watching is essential to understanding the food safety and humane issues now being disputed by the horse slaughter industry.
This is the third post in a series on Thoroughbreds, horse racing and the state of the horse industry.
For more on this topic, visit my personal blog, follow me on Twitter and on Forbes.com or read my other related
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Vesuri

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