Tour of JBS Cattle Slaughterhouse
***WARNING*** This post contains explicit descriptions and disturbing images.
Today as part of my Leadership Weld County class, we focused on economic development in the Weld County area. The largest employer and main reason for Greeley’s existence? JBS/Swift formerly known as ConAgra meats, formerly Monfort.
JBS is huge. They employ about 2000 people (mainly blue-collar unskilled labor). The Monfort family was one of the first to start the process of confined feeding operations (feedlots) and expanded into the slaughter. In the factory model, they made the raw product and then the finished one.
The Monfort family still lives in Greeley and are very influential. There is a Monfort School of Business at the University of Northern Colorado, a Monfort Family Clinic, birthing center, school, children’s clinic and many other areas with their name affixed. A local steakhouse is named after one of the early Monforts (Kenny’s). It was only fitting for us to visit JBS to see the economic and other impact on our community.
Our tour guide just happened to be an old family friend who has worked at Monfort/ConAgra/Swift/JBS for about 30 years! It was nice seeing him again and brought up all sorts of memories of my parents hanging out with them, playing softball and spending time together. It’s amazing he has worked there that long! I do not think I could last one day there. But it does show how the people in my community -my friends! rely on this to make a living (or is it a killing?!)
We went from “clean to dirty” as he put it, or the opposite of production. First we had to get all geared up with steel-toed boots, gators, hair nets (and beard nets for the boys), goggles, helmets, ear plugs, gloves and lab coats. Then we saw the packaging of the T-Bones, hamburger, ribeyes, trimming and all the other cuts. There were hundreds of people just hacking into the parts and sawing them in half and other not-so-fun jobs. Next we went to the carcass area where they were all cold and sliced directly in half vertically. I didn’t bring my camera in, but we did get one “group photo” in front of thousands of carcasses. Generally you take photos in front of something beautiful or visually stunning. This was stunning all right, but in a morbidly strange way. What do you think?
Can you find me? (Hint: I am short) Can you count how many dead cows? (Hint: They are more cows than people in this pic)
Next we went to the “Hot” area. It was very hot and pretty stinky. Every time we passed a doorway there was this sudsy soapy stuff we walked through -I am guessing to decrease tracking in stuff. This was the area immediately after the kill floor. We had to run between the huge swinging carcasses. Luckily, I didn’t actually see a kill because I don’t think I could have stood to see one after another after another. They said they go through about 5,000 to 6,000 cows every DAY! Holy cow! That’s about 2,000,0000 (Two Million!) cows every year! Each 5,000 cows make about 30,000 boxes of 60 lbs of beef. We also learned that their primary customers are McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr and other fast food places, Sam’s, Costco and all the major big box grocery stores.
We did learn about how they killed them and saw the immediate after effects. First they use a knocker (like in the movie No Country for Old Men) to render them unconscious but not dead. They need the heart to continue pumping to get all the blood out, which is accomplished by slicing their neck. I watched cow after cow bleed out right in front of me. This, is the mental picture I cannot erase from my head. They tie up the cows by their back legs so the blood can drain out. Their tongues are wagging out and their eyes are open and scary looking. This is my mental image that I made into a drawing:
Disturbing! huh!?
I have to say that while it wasn’t pleasant (at all) I am still glad I went through and saw this. This is the backbone of our community (for better or for worse). I also know why I don’t eat much meat -especially red meat. We didn’t get a chance to see all the feedlots, but Britton and I have flown over them in a small private plane and they go on for miles and miles. Nothing but cows standing in “manure” to put it nicely. Not munching on grass or resting on pasture. Standing knee deep in crap two feet from the next cow that just crapped all over the other one.
And it’s not that I don’t eat meat at all. I am not a vegetarian, but I do try to limit the amount I eat, in order to lessen the demand for such entities like this. I try to support small-scale enterprises and eat pastured meat (and eggs, obviously). I understand economies of scale, but why do we humans try to make factories out of everything? Even living beings like these cows we measure by how many we can cram into a cardboard box.
Plus feedlots emit more greenhouse gases than cars, they introduce antibiotics into our bodies (because they have to give them to the cows or they would be too sick) creating a perfect petri dish for super-bugs, and are given hormones (to fatten them up faster than is normal) that ultimately affect our hormones. And while E. Coli is a naturally occurring bacteria, all the antibiotics and exposure to other sick cows from eating grain-based diets instead of grass creates super-E.Coli in huge amounts which are much more dangerous to people than the regular variety. These huge factories also condense all the waste and pollution into one place and make our backyard literally stink. It’s way worse than our 4 chickens every could possibly stink. Which makes me laugh that we would think a few backyard chickens are the bane of Greeley instead of the huge elephant -er- cow in the room.
So overall, I’d say I feel like this was something I had to see in order to be better educated personally, but now I am further committed to a limited-meat diet and want to give more support for those few independent and sustainable small-scale farmers and ranchers out there trying to compete with these huge factories. And another reminder -go see Food, Inc! It’s a primer on all this stuff, if this is news to you.
Tags: JBS Swift slaughterhouse, Leadership Weld County, limited meat diet, Meat packing house in Greeley, why eat pastured meat
April 9th, 2010 at 8:05 am
I’ve had the pleasure of being there myself. I delivered some pizzas and was walked thru the building. I dont think they are supposed to do that as I got a lot of strange looks carrying pizza inbetween the strung up dead cows.
The whole day after that I couldn’t shake the feeling of ‘death’.
April 9th, 2010 at 11:54 am
A good thoughtful article.
An interesting adjunct to your visit would be the book by CSU professor Temple Grandin:Why Animals Make Us Human. As an autistic, she is a little cold blooded (to me) on her take on factory farms (necessary evils), but has devoted her life and career to humane killing(?). She designs many of the kill zone designs as to lessen the terror felt by the animals.
Her first chapter on dogs is helpful for pet owners.
April 9th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
I went to University of California at Davis (ag and vet school – why’d I study english?) and saw a cow butchered. The pull it up by the back legs, shoot it in the head, slash the throat and let shake and bleed. Pretty gruesome, and I didn’t like meat much before that and definately didn’t like it after. Then I went on to work in the vegetable fields, hand milked goats (and collected semen and fertilized females with it) and showed sheep!
Later I worked in a feed store (when I went back to school for a teaching degree) and was treated to some lovely videos on chicken slaughter houses – bodies hanging on hooks zooming past people who were cutting off abcesses and hosing off pus etc – the point being to promote feeding antibiotics to have less disease? I was vegetarian for a long time until I became anemic. Now in Puerto Rico I am eating more meat than ever (chicken and pork tenderloin) and have determined I need to grow stuff. Try finding grains or nuts here…or greens. I watched the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution and loved the part where he put all the entrails and bones and crap in the food processor for a spin..extruded “meat” products are out of my life!
April 9th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Well, that is how we get our food. People have become so disconnected from the reality of where food comes from. Even the cow that gets to walk around the pasture has to be killed to give people “organic, grass fed, beef”.
Now, if you really want to be grossed out you just have to experience the feedlot. The cows are just unhealthy, look like their eye balls are going to pop out, are walking around in their own excrement, and sometimes are walking on dead cows (which are removed via a forklift). When you walk down the aisles its like they are crying out to you, some look like they are completely LOONY (if a cow could look that way). They have pen riders that ride around on horses and shoot cows in the head if they are injured or look to ill. Ick.
On a side note, there is going to be a retraction about the feedlots cause more emissions than cars. Somehow the original study was flawed. Since then they have found that feedlots do not produce as much emissions as cars. I must note however, that the place that did the study is highly funded by the beef industry. So?????
April 9th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Its hard to trust any information or ‘study’ that comes out. We have access to multiple sources of information but all of them seem to have a vested interest in getting the statistics or facts to jive with their message.
That study about feedlot emissions that tries to put it in a positive light was financed by the CCF
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom.
Its hard to know what to believe. You basically have to make common sense choices for yourself. I can’t imagine pushing 2million cows thru Greeley every year doesn’t have a huge environmental impact.
I ate a steak the other day. It was really good
It didn’t come from swift, but the cow still had to die. I just hope it was raised in a better environment. I eat a steak maybe once every 2 months.
April 11th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Living in the woods for a extended peroid of time has caused me to crave red meat. I have had dreams about eating a huge hamburger. While I don’t think swift is a great company I do think they are a nessasery evil, just think about all the jobs they create in a town that has little else going for it. Plus every time you hop in your car and head to work you have to thank the slaughter house for giving Henry Ford the isparation to create the assembly line.
June 16th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
What a sad, cruel, sadic, and inhuman thing this is.
I cannot understand how can they smile surrounded by corpses of murdered peaceful animals.
SHAME ON YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!