According to a recent AP article, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it had temporarily shut down a slaughterhouse in rural Oregon for “inhumane slaughtering practices.”





A letter sent to the plant owner by the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a division of the USDA, states that workers were unsuccessful in knocking out cows with a single shot from a handheld bolt gun, and were instead shooting them multiple times.





The Federal Meat Inspection Act is supposed to prevent the “inhumane slaughtering” of farmed animals, excluding birds like chickens and turkeys. The law gives the food safety agency the authority to shut down slaughterhouses.





This plant has faced penalties from the government before. In July 2013, the Oregon State Department of Environmental Quality fined the company more than $15,000 for discharging wastewater into a ditch and polluting nearby wetlands.





From polluting the environment to exploiting workers to committing horrifying acts of animal cruelty, factory farms routinely break laws and often get away with it.





It’s important to note that this slaughterhouse was shut down for “inhumane slaughtering practices.” The truth is there’s no way to humanely kill an animal who doesn’t want to die





Pigs, cows, chickens, and other farmed animals are just as sensitive and intelligent as the dogs and cats we love at home. Yet the meat industry is allowed to abuse billions of them in ways that would warrant felony-level animal cruelty charges if the victim were just one dog or cat





What does “humane” mean to the factory farming industry? See for yourself.







