Probe of Slaughterhouse Sought After Cows Shot Multiple Times

PETA Cites Federal Reports Showing That ‘Blood Farm’ Workers Fired Multiple Shots Into Conscious Steers’ Skulls

For Immediate Release:
September 20, 2017

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Armed with damning U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) records (here and here), PETA sent a letter today calling on the Groton Police Department to investigate and, as appropriate, file criminal charges against E.L. Blood and Son (also known as Blood Farm) and the slaughterhouse workers who repeatedly shot cows in the head on two days last month—causing at least one steer to stagger around and bleed from the nose.

According to the USDA documents, slaughter operations at Blood Farm were suspended on August 30 after a worker used a 20-gauge shotgun and a .30-caliber rifle to fire four shots into a steer’s head, causing him to lose his footing as blood poured from his nose, between the first and final blasts. Just one week earlier, operations at the facility were similarly suspended after a worker fired five 20-gauge shotgun blasts into another steer’s head. PETA notes that these incidents appear to violate Massachusetts’ cruelty-to-animals statute, which makes it a crime to inflict “unnecessary cruelty” upon an animal. USDA records reveal that since March 2017, Blood Farm was also cited twice more for ineffective stunning and twice for failing to provide animals with water.

“PETA is calling for a criminal investigation of this slaughterhouse and the workers who subjected two steers to numerous gunshot blasts in botched attempts to stun them,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “There’s no difference between the pain and terror that these cows felt and how dogs or cats would feel if multiple shots were fired into their skulls.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that the meat industry kills more than 29 million gentle cows every year, that animals have the same central nervous system and sense of self-preservation as humans, and that the only way to prevent cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals from suffering in slaughterhouses is to go vegan.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.