Animal rights activists are trying to convince local voters to approve Ballot Measure 309, the proposed Denver slaughterhouse ban. In recent weeks, the campaign has focused on video obtained from an illegal undercover investigation inside Superior Farms, the city’s only slaughterhouse.
The activists claim that the video shows shocking violations of animal cruelty laws. And they have asked Denver District Attorney Beth McCann to consider criminal charges in the case.
In the meantime, we asked some experts to have a close look at the video.
One DU professor says it’s obvious the law was broken. In contrast, animal behavior expert Temple Grandin says the video mostly shows ethical practices, and nothing outside the law. The company denies the allegations made by the advocates.
The activists also claim the slaughtering practices violate Halal standards. Within Islam, there is a vibrant debate about what those standards are and how human error is taken into account.
The video is online here, and includes gory images from a slaughterhouse.
“Nothing included in the footage we have seen is evidence of extreme violence, animal cruelty, or Halal violations,” said Superior Farms spokesperson Bob Mariano.
What do the activists say about the Denver slaughterhouse footage?
The footage was shot by the activist group Direct Action Everywhere in what the group's attorneys describe as an “undercover operation.”
The letter to the DA alleged the video demonstrates the following:
- The company failed to ensure sheep were “unconscious and insensible to pain” before slaughter.
- A sheep with an untreated broken leg hobbled to slaughter.
- Another sheep suffered from an untreated uterine prolapse.
- Workers beat, kicked and dragged sheep.
One of the videos also claimed that a worker “simulated sex acts with the slaughter machinery.” Indeed, the video shows a worker humping a pole, although the connection to animal rights is unclear.
Chris Carraway, an attorney with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver, said he’s appalled that the company can’t comply with the few animal cruelty laws on the books — even as its factory is under intense scrutiny during a heated election.
“If an individual treated an animal the way Superior Farms treats lambs, they would be prosecuted,” Carraway said in a statement. “A slaughterhouse should not get impunity simply because it is a corporation.”
So how bad is the video? “Shocking,” or “a model.”
Denverite reviewed the footage. Certainly, seeing animals hanging from hooks and watching workers slit their throats is unsettling. That alone, animal activists say, would justify shutting down the slaughterhouse.
But to understand how the videos relate to best practices in slaughterhouses and the law, we reached out to Colorado State University professor and ethologist Temple Grandin and asked her to review the underground video.
Grandin said she previously consulted with the factory on how to handle sheep, has spent time in the facility, and has no reason to believe it’s involved in criminal behavior. She also wrote guidelines for animal welfare that were published by the North American Meat Institute, which opposes the slaughterhouse ban.
“There was one guy handling one sheep roughly,” Grandin said. “They need some training there.”
She added she would not call the workers’ handling “torture.”
When it came to how the plant was leading sheep to slaughter with trained leader sheep, what the animal rights activists called “Judas sheep,” Grandin said they were handling them appropriately.
“I would have used that as a training video,” she said.
She saw nothing that indicated the sheep were conscious when they were slaughtered. The footage of sheep hanging from hooks and jerking back and forth after having their necks cut has nothing to do with an experience of pain, Gradin said. Instead, she said, there’s a circuit in the back of the neck that can cause movement.
“When you destroy the brain, the circuit just sort of goes crazy,” she said. “That’s what the kicking is.”
Grandin did not review the images of a sheep with a uterine prolapse but said that if that was the case, it likely happened at the farm.
That sheep should never have been sent to Superior Farms. Once it was, it should have been sent to what’s called the “suspect pen.” There it would have been inspected by a United States Department of Agriculture inspector who would determine whether the animal should be killed in the yard or slaughtered.
The sheep with the broken leg was carried to the line in a box and dumped out. The sheep was able to make its way up the ramp toward slaughter — what Grandin said would be a permitted practice.
“If they had cameras in there for a long time, let's say for two weeks, and that's all they could find wrong, I think the plant is doing really well,” Grandin said.
The video was shot over the course of eight weeks, the activists said.
Another expert, Eric Davis, was somewhat more critical.
“This one is on the edge of badness, but it’s not going to be that much better if it’s running well,” he told The Intercept after reviewing video footage. He was particularly concerned about certain instances of animals moving after their throats were cut, as well as rough handling of sheep.
But he said that it’s generally “what you can expect to see in a slaughterhouse.”
Davis is a retired veterinarian and the former director of UC-Davis’ International Animal Welfare Training Institute.
Denverite has asked the American Halal Foundation to review the footage. We will update this story if we hear back.
The request for the DA to press charges came days before the election.
On Oct. 28, the activists asked the DA to press charges against Superior Farms, itself, “as it is apparent from the footage that the violations are inherently systemic, ongoing, and knowingly tolerated by the company,” Carraway wrote.
The District Attorney’s Office has received the letter and is reviewing it, spokesperson Matt Jablow says.
The video came as Denver voters weighed Initiative 309 the slaughterhouse ban, in the Nov. 5 election. The ban would potentially shut down the factory, which slaughters 1,500 sheep each day, and put 164 workers out of their jobs. The workers are mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants.
The animal rights activists, part of a national movement to shut down slaughterhouses and the entire meat industry through local ballot measures, first shared the video with a national publication, The Intercept. Afterward, they made it available to Denver media.
Roughly 1,500 sheep are slaughtered a day at Superior Farms. The footage was shot in July and August.
