Hidden toll of COVID-19: Millions of animals suffocated, shot, drowned in meat industry

By Bharat Dogra 

One of the lesser-known aspects of the COVID-19 period was the deliberate suffocation, drowning and shooting of millions of farm animals and birds in the meat industry. While this has been largely reported in the context of the United States, it is likely that similar practices occurred in some other countries as well where comparable conditions exist in the meat industry.

Confining ourselves here mainly to the reported situation in the United States, what we know is that probably about 10 million hogs and a similar number of hens were killed in these painful ways up to the later part of 2020. To a lesser extent, this may also have involved some other animals, and possibly continued beyond this period as well. But even if we consider only the figure of around 10 million hogs and about 10 million hens being killed in such cruel ways, this represents a deeply disturbing tragedy.

In the case of pigs, some of the methods used for killing included gassing, shooting, anaesthetic overdose and what was termed “blunt force trauma.” The last-mentioned method is likely to have included, in the words of a critic, “slamming piglets against the ground.” One apparently approved method involved shutting down pig barn ventilation systems with the addition of carbon dioxide, causing the animals to suffocate. Critics described this as “essentially cooking the pigs alive.” Many hens were killed by being smothered with water-based foam.

Although the term most frequently used in this context was “euthanasia,” critics pointed out that this word is inappropriate, as most of these killings involved extreme pain and distress.

As noted earlier, the full scale of this tragedy across all countries is difficult to ascertain, as the industry, for understandable reasons, has shown little willingness to share complete information and data related to these events.

Moreover, even the part of the tragedy that has come to light has generally been reported as something that occurred in the very specific context of COVID-19, when the meat-processing industry was unable to function according to its usual norms and capacity. Since these conditions were supposedly temporary and have now passed, it has been suggested that we should forget about this episode and move on.

Right?

No, this line of argument is entirely wrong. Instead of forgetting this tragedy, we should learn lessons from it to ensure that such events are not repeated in the future. After all, such cruel mass killings did not take place in most countries. This makes it necessary to examine what was so distinctive about conditions in the US meat industry—or in the meat industries of those other countries where similar incidents may have occurred but remain undocumented.

One important factor is the very high level of concentration and consolidation in the US meat industry. In normal times, this structure suits large corporations by enabling higher profits, often at the expense of workers and other sections of society. However, it also means that when large processing plants shut down, alternative avenues are simply not available. This played a significant role in creating the conditions that led to the mass killing of animals in cruel ways.

Secondly, the meat industry and the factory farming system linked to it have become so obsessed with profit-making that crucial aspects of animal welfare have been largely ignored and routinely violated, resulting in widespread cruelty even in normal times. It was precisely this routine neglect of animal welfare that made the extreme cruelty witnessed during the COVID-19 period so readily acceptable and so widely practised, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic.

These are not temporary problems; they are persistent and continue to this day. Therefore, instead of treating the COVID-19 killings as an unfortunate episode that can now be forgotten, we should use this tragedy to initiate urgent reforms aimed at strengthening animal welfare and eliminating several routinised cruel practices.

---

The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine, A Day in 2071, Protecting Earth for Children, and Planet in Peril