Feds Cite Local Slaughterhouse After Cows Are Repeatedly Shot in the Head

Conscious Cow Found Hanging Upside Down—PETA Calls For Public Scrutiny, Operational Overhaul

For Immediate Release:
August 26, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Following U.S. Department of Agriculture reports documenting that cows at Keystone Meats, Inc., outside Lima were shot in the head up to three times on at least two separate occasions in May and August, PETA has fired off a letter urging the owner to livestream video footage from the facility in order to help prevent workers from mishandling and abusing animals during slaughter. PETA also asked the facility to stop killing animals and switch to butchering only wildlife who’ve been accidentally killed in vehicle collisions.

“Publicly livestreaming slaughter operations—or ending them altogether—would help prevent animals from experiencing agonizing, prolonged deaths,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is urging Keystone Meats to overhaul its facility immediately and encouraging anyone disturbed by this incident to help keep animals out of slaughterhouses everywhere by going vegan.”

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat,” and the group opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. PETA also asked Keystone Meats what actions it has taken against the staff responsible for the botched shootings, such as reporting them to local law enforcement and reassigning them to positions that don’t involve contact with live animals.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Dave Dorley, owner of Keystone Meats, follows.

August 26, 2020

Dave Dorley

Owner

Keystone Meats

Dear Mr. Dorley,

Given U.S. Department of Agriculture reports documenting the repeated shooting of cows in the head with captive-bolt guns and various firearms at Keystone Meats on May 8 and August 7, we ask that you immediately make changes to your operations in order to reduce animal suffering at your slaughterhouse.

In light of the egregious pain and terror that your staff caused these cows to endure, in violation of federal law, won’t you please publicly livestream video from all areas of your facility where live animals are handled? Your workers would surely take their duty to handle animals lawfully more seriously if they knew that people were watching. The world’s foremost expert on livestock welfare, Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, writes, “Plants that are doing a good job should show what they are doing.” Members of your industry often complain that consumers today don’t understand how animals are raised and killed for food. You could shed light on this by allowing the public to observe your workers as they move countless animals—individuals who value their own lives as much as humans do—off crowded trucks in all weather extremes, attempt to stun them, slash or stick their throats, and then bleed them to death.

What action, if any, have you taken against your staff members referenced in the reports? Have you reassigned them to jobs that don’t involve contact with live animals—such as evisceration, butchering, and packaging—and reported them to your local law-enforcement agency so that they might be investigated for possible violations of Ohio’s anti-cruelty statute?

Finally, if you want to stay in business without causing animals to suffer and die needlessly, you could focus on your cannery operations and switch to butchering exclusively wild animals killed in collisions with vehicles and legally salvaged by customers who want to eat their flesh, as state law allows. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Daniel Paden

Vice President of Evidence Analysis