Liberate

Until recently I never thought I would be able to go into a slaughterhouse but in the last six months I have managed to go into two on four separate occasions.

The first time came in June last year and was a true spur of the moment thing. Driving back from Wellington we noticed a sign in Levin saying Abattoir. Without really thinking (or indicating) I turned down the road and went in the stock truck entrance.

After parking in the middle of their grass round-about I approached the stockyard with my video camera on record. Not expecting to get much further than this I wanted to at least get footage of the lambs in the stoctruck. Much to my surprise the truck driver and stockyard manager had no problem with me filming. Small town ignorance can be useful sometimes; especially when you look down and realize that you are wearing feminist patches, your tattoos are visible and you’re only wearing jandles. I made my way through the stockyard closer to the kill floor. The stock yard at this time was filled to the brim with sheep who had just been delivered. They were frightened off the truck by the truck driver and dogs and were herded into the stock yard to be water blasted clean with a high pressure fire hose.

As I walked further up the ‘production line’ I found that I was able to chat with ease to the workers, who for some reason, did not seem at all suspicious that I was filming. I also found that I was very detached from what was going on, viewing everything through my camera as if were watching it at home on you-tube.

All of a sudden the sheep and I hit the end of the road; the captive bolt pistol. The slaughterhouse worker at this station did not even notice my presence. He was preoccupied; singing along to his ipod and hitting the sheep on the head in time with the music.

As the sheep fell from the conveyor belt onto the kill floor I realised for the first time that the sheep I had been admiring through the camera were being killed.

For weeks afterwards I was deeply concerned about my experience in Levin; not because of what I had seen but rather how I had felt, or rather not felt. I did not engage with what was happening to those sheep the whole time I was at the slaughterhouse and I felt it was as if I did not care. I thought that there was something very wrong with me. Considering that just a year ago I would not have been able to enter a facility like this with out crying I did not understand my lack of feelings.

It took me ages to realise that it was my mind protecting me from the experience and allowing me to continue working towards animal liberation. If I fell apart every time I saw someone mistreat an animal, everytime I heard someone commend the American war effort in Iraq or everytime I thought of the total destruction our civilization is having on the environment I would never get out of bed. I realised what made me shed a tear was not destruction but love and creation; it is a cat returning home after being lost for nine years, a battery hen experiencing grass for the first time, it is people showing compassion and understanding towards each other and seeing beyond socially constructed hierarchies based on age, race, gender, sexuality and status. It is communities collectively taking a stand against the destruction of mother earth that makes me engage emotionally.

It was five months until I would be back at a slaughterhouse and strangely it would have probably not have happened without Rob. A week before the ‘Rob story’ was going to hit the papers Rochelle and I made the long drive to visit Suzy’s sister and let her know that her sister’s best friend had been working for the filth the whole time they had known each other.

I had always thought that the AFFCO Slaughterhouse in Morewa would be a good place to try and get into; being a very small isolated town I thought that they might not immediately think of animal rights activists when random strangers asked to have a look around. I was right. As seems to be our style, thanks to Suzy, we decided to try our luck at the slaughterhouse and we veered off State Highway One into the workers car park. Our attention was immediately caught by a ‘dairy’ cow in an AFFCO paddock. She was beautiful and we named her Bessy. She was cream coloured with a cute black nose. She also had the biggest udders I have ever seen on a cow; they were much larger than the other cows in the paddock and they were chaffing her back legs. The closer we got we noticed that she was finding it hard to breathe and she had an infection covering her udders. At least one of her teats was dripping blood.

After spending time with her trying to feed her and her friends grass we headed to the slaughterhouse. It was a Saturday afternoon and no one was there (human, cow or sheep). We climbed the fence and had a look around the stockyard and the ramps to where the animals enter the building. I helped Rochelle straddle the sheep conveyor belt and put her head into where the captive bolt pistol was located. It was eerie but nothing like what we would experience the following day.

After returning from Sandra’s house late that evening, we could not help thinking of Bessy. Rochelle was hell bent on helping her and naturally I thought it was a grand idea so we went about hatching a plan. We secured a home, found somewhere that hired out horse floats and rounded up a crew to help.

After an early morning phone conference with Marky and Nicky, about you know who, we made the long trek back to Morewa. We were overjoyed that we could help Bessy and made plans on the journey of stuff she could do when she was better.

Just after lunchtime we arrived at her paddock and she was gone. It was the worst possible feeling in the world that we were too late for her. We could not figure out where she went until we saw cows in the AFFCO stockyard. We climbed the fence and tried to have a look for her but could not find her.

We came across a lone yard worker who was fine with us having a poke around. We went through the stockyards documenting all that we could. We then found that the door to the kill floor was open, though that part of the slaughterhouse was not in use at this time.

We walked the path the cows follow from the captive bolt pistol to the point that their throats are slit and then through to where they are butchered and finally to the freezer. It was a haunting experience; the place was dark, damp and so quiet that everything echoed. Despite every surface having been sterilised I could smell the stench of blood and death. I thought that this was the strangest place I had ever been to and that it almost seemed more disturbing without any actual animals being killed and dismembered. I was wrong, very wrong.

All of the animals slaughtered at AFFCO end their journey on the property at the freezer. We approached the large industrial freezers and much to my relief they were locked. Though I knew only too well what the fate of the cows in the stockyard was I did not want to face it right then.

Not wanting to miss an opportunity like this the others convinced me to continue probing. We went around the back in time to find a truck driver arriving to collect the butchered frozen bodies of our friends who had been killed the week before. He was only too happy to answer our questions and act like ‘the man’ in front of the camera. The freezer was insane; large, nearly human sized, parts of cows were hanging frozen and blood red in the white freezer. The contrast between the white walls and red blood made the carcasses stand out even more. Inside the freezer truck were the whole bodies of pigs who had been killed in Auckland and plastic bags filled with the hearts, livers and kidneys of various victims of the meat industry. These were all going to local butchers and supermarkets, the truck driver explained.

And with that we went home quietly and reflective upon what we had seen and what Bessy was going to experience on the following day.

On the night of the 8 Foot Sativa music video release Rochelle and I could not attend the celebrations in Henderson as we were playing netball at the same time. While I wanted to join the festivities and acknowledge the hard work of all of those involved in the project I was quietly happy that I did not have to think more about the fact that in less than 15 hours I would be standing on the kill floor at Morewa. This feeling was validated after speaking with Brendan who was coming in with me. He had seen the music video and on the ride to Morewa he explained how the footage in that video had made the anticipation of what we might see so much worse.

We were still not even sure if we would be allowed inside but as luck would have it we had no problems getting in the door with our cameras. Walking into the captive bolt pistol room, where I had been a few weeks earlier, it was completely different than last time. So much more real and so much worse. There was a bull with his head secured in the knock box and the captive bolt pistol was applied to his head. With a bang both Brendan and I jumped and the stunned bull fell out on to the kill floor.

We walked down tairs on to the kill floor in time to see the bull strung up and have his throat slit. Blood was pouring out so fast and the entire floor was swimming in his blood and the blood of those before him. Behind him were several other bulls who had been killed and the workers were starting to dismember them.

The next bull rolled out from the knock box and stared straight at us; his tongue hanging out and there was a red spot of blood on his head where the bullet had entered his skull. Even if we could have helped it was too late. As he was strung up and moved along to the man who would cut his throat I could see that he was very much aware of what was going on. Soon his blood was gushing out everywhere and his big beautiful eyes closed.

This was repeated several times over as more and more bulls fell out onto the kill floor. Some were still very much alive and conscious as they hung from the roof, their immense weight being held up by one foot. They swung violently in the air and had an electric current applied to their nose by a slaughterhouse worker.

While all of this was going on the slaughterhouse workers were trying to make friendly banter with us and smiling. Strangely after a few minutes we also seemed to become accustomed to what was going on. Of course it did not make us approve of what was happening but we were no longer shocked. We stood there for half an hour and watched many of our friends’ die so that someone out there could eat
beef.

When we left we had become so used to be sound of the captive bolt pistol that we were able to film this process without flinching. That was until the man responsible for this step of the process started telling us that he did not mind posing for us with the captive bolt pistol and the bulls if we needed a better shot. This brought me back to the reality of what was going on and that this employee had no engagement with the fact that he was taking a life at all. We backed out and left disgusted. As we walked past the bulls heading into the kill floor one of them looked me straight in the eye pleading with me to do something. He had shyed away when the slaughterhouse worker walked past so I think he could sense that I was different, that I was his friend. As I walked away I felt some much guilt that I had done nothing to help him and his friends. Much like how I felt when we let Bessy down.

This week I was compiling footage from the slaughterhouse from our investigation into the meat industry and I saw Bessy in the AFFCO stockyard footage. We had not seen her but she was right in front of us the whole time.