America’s “Gas Chambers” for Pigs Revealed in Unprecedented Undercover Footage
Never-before-captured footage of the secretive slaughter method shows caged and screaming pigs being lowered into underground gas-filled chambers to suffocate them, as vets, legal experts, and animal advocates call for urgent reforms to the meat industry.
A pig at Smithfield Foods’ Farmer John slaughterhouse in Vernon. Credit: Bobby Sud
America’s distressing “gas chambers” that are used to slaughter pigs have been revealed in the first-ever footage of its kind.
Restricted to both the public and the press, slaughterhouses in the United States have long been secretive locations. That means that the reality of animal slaughter in America has often only been revealed through undercover footage or whistleblower testimonies. And particularly upsetting slaughter methods like gas chambers, have never been seen before by the general public.
Now, animal activist group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) has released the first-ever footage inside a U.S. slaughterhouse gas chamber, as part of an intense undercover operation.
The highly-disturbing footage shows screaming pigs violently suffocating for up to four minutes.
Filmed at a Los Angeles slaughterhouse owned by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, the undercover videos reveal the entire grisly process of how the gas chambers operate - and how the pigs suffer.
At the facility, groups of fully conscious pigs can be seen loaded into cages, which are then lowered into pools of gas. The sensitive animals are shown screaming in agony as they struggle to resist suffocation from the CO2.
An illustration of the carbon dioxide gas chamber, where pigs in cages are lowered into the underground chambers which are filled with suffocating CO2. Credit: DxE.
Exposure to CO2 is said to cause pain and distress even at low concentrations, with humans describing the effect of CO2 exposure as ‘excruciating’.
Yet the use of gas chambers to slaughter animals is common across the United States, as well as in Europe, and Australia.
DxE investigator Raven Deerbrook descends a ladder down to the gas chambers during the undercover operation. Deerbrook entered the facility with a fake uniform and badge, and used a complex setup of coin-sized hidden cameras to gather the footage. Credit: DxE
The shocking investigation has led to vets and legal experts speaking out against the meat industry’s methods.
“Those animals suffered terribly. They suffered horribly,” Jim Reynolds, a vet and professor at Western University’s College of Veterinary Medicine who also advised on euthanasia guidelines for the American Veterinary Medicine Association, told WIRED. “It was absolutely a violation of federal law. They were not stunned. It was inhumane.”
“I’ve actually seen a lot of horrible videos. This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Reynolds added. “I’m not eating pork from the United States anymore until somebody fixes these problems.”
When approached for comment, Smithfield Foods said that “Smithfield is committed to the safety, health, and comfort of our animals and strictly follows approved laws, regulations and best practices for humane animal stunning prior to harvest. We adhere to all humane handling and stunning regulations for livestock with the oversight of the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service.”
DxE, the campaign group behind the investigation, has launched the website stopgaschambers.org, which asks the public to take action by adding their name to a petition calling on the USDA to stop the gas chambers.
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