Animal Aid: The 'Humane Slaughter' Myth

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The 'Humane Slaughter' Myth

Latest investigation: Cheale Meats Ltd

In March and April, Animal Aid filmed inside Cheale Meats Ltd in Essex. The film showed pigs being burnt with cigarettes, one animal being punched in the head, pigs being goaded in the face, regular kicks and blows, improper stunning and seriously injured pigs forced to drag themselves to slaughter.

Incredibly, the government department responsible – Defra – has refused to prosecute. Read more about Defra's policy.

Animal Aid is campaigning to reverse this decision and to bring all slaughterhouse abusers to justice. We have already reached millions of people through the media and they are speaking out. Please join our campaign too!

The campaign to date

Animal Aid started to film secretly inside Britain's slaughterhouses in January 2009. To date, we have filmed inside nine randomly chosen slaughterhouses and found evidence of cruelty and lawbreaking in eight of them. The problems are serious and widespread. Our films reveal animals being kicked, slapped, stamped on, and picked up by fleeces and ears and thrown into stunning pens. We recorded animals being improperly stunned and going to the knife while still conscious. Even where no laws were broken, animals still suffered pain and fear. And ‘high welfare’ plants, such as those accredited by the Soil Association, were no better than the non-organic ones.

Animal Aid believes that whether ‘conventional’, organic, kosher or halal, all slaughter is unnecessary and immoral, and the only way to prevent such suffering is to choose meat-free.

sheep taken into slaughterhouse in a wheel barrow

Campaign Aims

We are calling for CCTV to be installed in all UK slaughterhouses and for the footage to be made available to independent parties outside of the slaughterhouse. We also want better independent training, regular retraining and assessment, rigorous enforcement of the laws. We also believe that people with outstanding convictions for violence or animal cruelty working should fail the 'fit and proper person' test and should not be issued a slaughter licence.

pig screams out when slaughterman gives him a painful body stun

Campaign Achievements

Our call for CCTV to be installed in all UK slaughterhouses is endorsed by the Chief Executive of the industry’s regulator, the Food Standards Agency, and by the RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming and the Soil Association. Although the government has been reluctant to encourage slaughterhouses to install CCTV, ten supermarkets – Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Tesco, Lidl, Asda, Marks & Spencer and Iceland – along with wholesalers Booker, have now agreed to deal only with slaughterhouses that have independently monitored CCTV cameras installed. We are now working with the supermarket chains to ensure that the CCTV footage is monitored properly and that incidents of law-breaking are dealt with effectively.

sheep being body stunned at an organic-certified slaughterhouse

Campaign History

The campaign to reveal what takes place behind closed doors in British abattoirs began in January 2009 when we planted fly-on-the-wall cameras in JV Richards, a Cornish slaughterhouse. This was quickly followed by investigations at AC Hopkins in Somerset and Pickstock in Derbyshire.