Slaughterhouses Should Open on Halloween

Due to the coronavirus, Halloween this year will look a little different. Since experts say the virus originated at a meat market, PETA has written to the company Tönnies calling on it to open its slaughterhouses for public tours on October 31st.

At the Rheda-Wiedenbrück facility alone, 20,000 pigs are killed every day. According to the organisation, even the most hardened horror fans would be shocked to watch slaughterhouse workers slit the throats of pigs in front of their fellow animals, before processing them into ham and bacon.

Tönnies’ slaughterhouses are horror houses made real, and we are calling on the company to share its taste for blood and guts with the public this Halloween. With this appeal, PETA primarily wants to provoke reflection. Because if people were to watch terrified, screaming pigs — some of them inadequately stunned — being killed and then dismembered in rooms smeared with blood, faeces, and urine, they would likely stop eating meat altogether. Yet billions of animals are tortured and killed every year for milk and other animal products too — only vegan food is truly animal-friendly food.

Ilana Bollag, PETA’s specialist adviser on climate and nutrition

Tönnies’ Ruthlessness Evident in Treatment of Animals and People

The suffering of animals caused by the carbon dioxide stunning method used at Tönnies has been known for years: it takes up to 30 seconds for the anaesthetic effect of the gas to set in. During this time, the pigs endure mortal agony — gasping for breath, they scream loudly, thrash wildly over one another in the stunning gondolas, and desperately stretch their snouts upward in an attempt to escape the gas that irritates their mucous membranes. In addition, the company has made negative headlines in recent months due to coronavirus outbreaks and the poor working and living conditions of its employees.

In addition to Tönnies, PETA is also calling on Vion, the Müller Group, and Westfleisch to open their slaughterhouses to the public eye on Halloween. "The ongoing pandemic shows how important it is to know how meat, milk, and other animal products are ‘produced’ and why it is necessary to switch to a vegan diet", says Bollag.

Animal products pose risks to human health

As early as 2004, the World Health Organization WHO identified the growing demand for animal products as one of the main causes of the emergence of zoonoses. COVID-19, avian influenza H5N1, the SARS pandemic, MERS-CoV, the dangerous Ebola fever, countless victims of multidrug-resistant pathogens, and even AIDS — they all share a common denominator: the exploitation of living beings for the consumption of meat, milk, and eggs. The Scientific Advisory Board on Agricultural Policy of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture emphasized as early as 2015 in an expert opinion: "Animal food products inherently carry risks to human health. Possible health impairments arise on the one hand from pathogens of zoonoses that occur in livestock and can reach consumers through various routes, and on the other hand from various chemical contaminants from animal husbandry as well as from the development of resistance to medications.“