Federal regulators temporarily shut down the animal slaughter operation at Vermont Packinghouse in North Springfield on Monday, according to a statement from the facility.
An on-site U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector flagged the facility for the “mis-stun” of a sheep. Animals are stunned before they are slaughtered.
“This caused the animal to suffer momentarily before another stun could be properly administered,” said the statement from Arion Thiboumery, general manager of Vermont Packinghouse. During the one-day suspension, other aspects of the business — including meat packing and processing — remained in operation, according to Thiboumery.
The suspension was the fifth one the USDA has imposed on Vermont Packinghouse since October 2016, according to information on the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service website. The online source lists “Humane Handling Enforcement Actions.”
The most recent sanction was not posted on the site. A Notice of Reinstatement of Suspension dated April 7, 2017, which concerns the failure to properly stun a cow, reads in part: “… you again failed to handle livestock humanely, resulting in the commission of an egregious act.”
Thiboumery said Friday afternoon that this week’s incident was distinct because the animal was a sheep.
“This violation is totally different and unrelated to previous ones,” he said. “We’ve never had a violation with a sheep. Each one of these animals is handled very differently and stunned very differently. We had an accident occur, and we will strengthen that process and focus our attention on that.”
Vermont Packinghouse slaughters many more pigs and cattle than sheep, he said. “In the course of the last year, we changed how we handle beef and pigs,” Thiboumery said, adding that “all processes need to be subject to constant vigilance and constant improvement.”
Kristin Haas, the Vermont state veterinarian, said slaughterhouse owners are required to share with the Agency of Agriculture all correspondence with the USDA that concerns the humane handling of animals. The slaughterhouse has five business days to provide the information, she said.
“We use that to start making a decision as to whether this would warrant an intervention from the state,” she said. “It certainly is something that would warrant our attention and discussion, so that will definitely happen.”
The purpose of stunning an animal is to “render it insensitive to pain or stimuli,” Haas said. “A mis-stun would result in varying levels of that animal maintaining sensitivity or awareness.”
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People assume local meat is “humane” which is an oxymoron on so many levels, but here is more evidence….people who say they ‘wouldn’t hurt a lamb’ eat lambs, sad…..
Shutting down and operation over a single misplaced bolt is pretty pathetic, I’d support a shut if they observed it multiple times in the same day.
This sounds like the USDA inspector cares more about the image of doing the right thing than actually do the right thing.
The stun gun is either air powered, or powered by blank gun cartridges that shoot a metal rod “the bolt” into the brain on an animal. Each species had a properly sized gun and location to apply it.
When used the bolt gun destroys the cerebral cortex while missing the brain stem.
So lights out happens instantly but the animals heart still pumps allowing the blood to drain.
The funny thing is we kill animals in a more humane way then we do for executions
http://www.modbee.com/latest-news/article1…
There is no humane way to slaughter an animal that wishes to live. The stun bolt allegedly doesn’t hurt, but any human who is hit hard enough in the head to stun him- or herself will testify to the pain involved. People who claim to care about these animals are full of cognitive dissonance. You can’t eat a sentient animal and still claim to care about their welfare. Carnists live daily with this conflict and it’s no wonder the world is teetering on the edge of WW III. Violence begets violence, whether you do the violence, or are only complicit in it.
This suspension is a ridiculous overreaction to a minor incident. Given the stuff I’ve heard about meat processing plants in the southern states ,there definitely seems to be variable standards as to what is and isn’t acceptable. Just because VT is a leftie state doesn’t mean the inspectors should be.
All this horrid treatment of animals is going to come back to us. It just has to; there’s no way that the torturing and slaughtering of animals is in any way justified. How can you use your body as a tombstone for tortured animals? How could you love your pets but ravish a calf or a pig? Something is very wrong with the way you think and act.