PETA Wants Local Slaughterhouse to Livestream

Animals Endured Botched, Illegal Stunning Attempts at Malco’s Buxton Meat Co.; Group Calls for Public Scrutiny, Operational Overhaul

For Immediate Release:
April 13, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Federal officials’ reports show that a bull was left crying out after he had been shot near the eye and a lamb was repeatedly electroshocked at Malco’s Buxton Meat Co. near Sandy, prompting PETA to fire off a letter urging the facility’s owner to livestream its operations publicly in order to help hold workers accountable for their handling and slaughter of animals.

“PETA is urging Malco’s Buxton Meat Co. to use commonsense and take creative steps to prevent more animals from experiencing agonizing, prolonged deaths at its facility,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “Anyone disturbed by these revelations can help keep animals out of slaughterhouses in the first place by going vegan.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—also requested that the workers responsible for the botched killings be reported to local law enforcement and reassigned to positions that don’t involve any contact with live animals.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Malco’s Buxton Meat. Co.’s owner, Gene Malkovsky, follows.

April 13, 2020

Gene Malkovsky

Owner

Malco’s Buxton Meat Co.

Dear Mr. Malkovsky,

Given the recent U.S. Department of Agriculture reports concerning the shooting of a bull near his left eye, which left him crying out, and the repeated electroshocking of a lamb at Malco’s Buxton Meat Co., we ask that you immediately make changes to your operations in order to reduce animal suffering at your slaughterhouse.

For instance, you could publicly livestream video from all areas of your facility where live animals are handled. Your workers would surely take more seriously their duty to handle animals lawfully if they knew that people were watching. The world’s foremost expert on livestock welfare, Dr. Temple Grandin, writes, “Plants [t]hat 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 by shooting them in the head or electrocuting them, slash or stick their throats, and then bleed them to death.

At the very least, will you please reassign your staff referenced in these latest federal reports to jobs that don’t involve contact with live animals—such as evisceration, butchering, and packaging—and report the involved personnel to your local law enforcement agency so that they might be investigated for possible violations of Oregon’s anti-cruelty statute?

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

Sincerely,

Daniel Paden

Vice President of Evidence Analysis