Pregnancy at Slaughter: What Happens to the Calves? Part 1

What happens when a cow is pregnant at the time of slaughter? I almost wish I didn't know. From the calves experiencing their mother's death from inside her, while they too suffer or die their own terrible death, to live calves being cut from their dead mother's womb, so that their blood can be drained for science while they're still alive--it's all horrific, and none of it is ever talked about, even though it's a part of the dairy and beef industries and a part of how people get their "finest" leather. There's enough to cover here that two posts are required. This is the first.

By accident a few months ago, I ended up watching a video of a pregnant cow already stunned and hung upside down--and the video showed an apparently almost-full-term calf struggling inside and against the mother's body, kicking in desperation, dying a horrible death inside the womb. Later came the image of that young calf's presumably dead body tossed into a bin (though it seems still live calves are often tossed as well).

This is one particular horror I'd previously failed to consider. Dairy cows especially (more than beef cows, that is, given that dairy cows are kept perpetually pregnant) may go to slaughter while pregnant if they become unprofitable before giving birth or if the producers decide to kill a bunch of cows even more prematurely than usual to save money when demand is down. And so while workers stun them, hang them upside down, cut open their throats to let the blood from their body drain out, cut off their legs, and pull off their skin, all that time, there is a calf inside them, fighting and dying a horrifying death. How soon in the process the calf inside dies likely varies according to how developed he or she was and how fast the slaughter process moves. In an "efficient" slaughterhouse, the calf could still be dying--dying but still living, still suffering terribly--at the time of her mother's dismemberment and disembowelment.

A UK survey in the 1990s at one slaughterhouse found that, "of the slaughtered cows, 23.5 per cent were pregnant and 26.9 per cent of these were in the third trimester." 23 percent were pregnant. That's a lot. One percent--or even 1 calf--would be too many.

But it gets worse. In addition to the trauma of still being alive inside their mothers during the latter's death, fetal calves may also be cut from their mother's womb while still alive--so that their blood can be drained for use in science, without anesthesia. See the next post for more.

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Photo of calves taken from slaughtered pregnant cows courtesy of Viva!UK