Lone Bull Escapes Slaughter in Fiery Highway Crash

A few weeks ago, a truck full of cows headed for the slaughterhouse rear-ended another vehicle on I-94 in Indiana and burst into flames. A press release from Farm Sanctuary described the scene: "Cattle walked the road smoldering or still on fire. Others lay dying on the pavement, with wounds so bad that their bones were showing." A witness said it was "the worst thing I've ever seen."

There were 34 cows involved in the crash. Eighteen died at the scene. Fifteen cows who survived the nightmare were rounded up and transported to the slaughterhouse to be killed anyway. Only one made it out alive.

The 2-year-old bull, now named Jay, was determined to live. He tried to jump the 3-foot concrete median to freedom. He didn't make it, but continued to elude capture. By the time officials caught up with him 12 hours later, he'd won their respect and was taken to the local shelter until he could be transported to Farm Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, his ordeal on the highway isn't as unusual as most people think. Not long after Jay's truck burst into flames, a truck carrying 176 pigs toppled over at the curve of a highway entrance ramp in Nebraska. In late July, five cows took off after a transport truck overturned in Michigan; a local farm animal sanctuary is still trying track down two of them to bring them to safety.

In a Farm Sanctuary report (pdf), they found 233 accidents over a six-year period, resulting in at least 27,000 animal deaths and an unknown number of injuries. That was just based on media archives; the number could be in the hundreds of thousands. So-called "food animals" fall outside the law; like most other aspects of farm animal cruelty, there's little to no accountability for tranport collisions — neither the government nor the industry reports these accidents.

What is the fate of these animals? Occasionally, a vet is called to the scene to humanely euthanize those who are suffering; sometimes the animals are even treated. Other times they're loaded back into a truck to finish their final journey. Or they're shot on-site by police or animal control.

Farm Sanctuary lays out several recommendations to start protecting both animals and people in these accidents, ranging from changing the design of trucks, to actually reporting the accidents, to training the people involved (truck drivers, first responders, etc.) on how to handle farm animals. But these recommendations are just the bare minimum. The bigger problem lies in a food system where farmers ship all over the country rather than feeding their local communities, slaughterhouses are centralized death factories, and animals are treated like any other crop.

In a safety performance report by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, livestock trucks were places in the same "Farm Combined" category as transporters carrying farm supplies, logging, produce and grain feed. If a truck full of apples crashes, the fruit may get bruised, but that doesn't belong in the same category as a live animal with broken bones, road rash or fatal burns.

Jay is one lucky bull, and on the road to recovery. Once in awhile, an animal like Jay wins his freedom, but it's a bittersweet ending, knowing that dozens or hundreds of animals who shared his ride didn't make it. Transport trucks involved in collisions put human lives at risk and add yet another layer of suffering to burger production.

Photo credit: lzvora