Millions of Farm Animals in the US ‘Culled’ By “Suffocation, Drowning and Shooting”
With the pandemic affecting the meat industry’s supply chain, farmers are turning to inhumane mass culling methods to protect their profits.
Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
Estimated figures for the bleak “culling” of US farm animals show that 10 million hens have already been painfully “euthanised”, and more than 10 million pigs could be killed by September, The Guardian reveals.
With the current pandemic shutting processing facilities and creating bottlenecks in the US meat supply, farmers have turned to “culling” animals on their farms in order to protect profits.
As a result, farmers are employing inhumane “mass culling” methods that kill the most amount of animals in a cost-effective way - which includes large groups of animals being suffocated, drowned, or shot.
So far, more than 10 million hens are estimated to have been “culled” due to Covid-19 related slaughterhouse shutdowns, according to The Guardian, which adds that “the majority will have been smothered by a water-based foam”.
It’s a brutal end for pigs used in the pork industry too, with The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) estimating that: “up to 10,069,000 market hogs will need to be euthanized between the weeks ending on 25 April and 19 September 2020, resulting in a severe emotional and financial toll on hog farmers”.
The Guardian has revealed that US veterinary guidelines for these circumstances state that farmers can turn to “a combination of shutting down pig barn ventilator systems with the addition of CO2 so the animals suffocate”. Other “preferred methods” of culling include “injectable anaesthetic overdose, gassing, shooting with guns or bolts, electrocution and manual blunt force trauma.”
“About two million [pigs] might have been culled so far due to the Covid-19 pandemic, over the last six or so weeks” says Adam Speck, an agribusiness analyst with IHS Markit. The pork industry has warned that the figure could climb to more than 10 million culled pigs by September if the industry bottlenecks are not solved.
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