My experience at a slaughterhouse

[Jade]

Yesterday morning we held a vigil beginning at 5:30AM. They did not like this. Kile and I woke at 4am but didn't arrive until 6:30. Shortly after we got there, 5 cops arrived. One of the cops was very aggro (it's like a box of chocolates...) and one of the other cops was one of the first one's to deal with our organizer, and still doesn't like her.

Here was one of their first conversations:
Cop: Can I have your name, please?
Organizer: I'm sorry, I was advised by my lawyers to not give any information.
Cop: Oh, only animal rights lawyers advise their clients to do that - all other lawyers tell their clients to work with the cops.

Lol!

Anyway, so one of the cops decided that we were gonna get cited for trespassing. But only one of us was. It was their was of dealing with it, because they are sick of the slaughterhouse calling and saying we're trespassing when we have city records that say we are on private property. However, the slaughterhouse's private surveyors said something different... so the cops are siding with the private surveyors over the city. Of course the cops didn't say that, they said it wasn't even saying that we had done anything wrong (lol) it was just forcing us to go to court and have the surveyors settle it, I guess.

But, the slaughterhouse of course never got a citation. They've also never been chastised (or maybe finally they have now) for calling the cops repeatedly and lying about what we're doing. We are literally not even trying to interfere with their business - we just want to watch them do the business that they do on public property. This is our right. If they decide to hold back trucks, that's their choice. I think a judge will agree with that.

Anyway, it's very interesting. The truck drivers are becoming familiar faces now. Yesterday's truck was the same truck driver we saw when it was just Kile, one other, and me. Most of them, but this one especially, enjoys throwing the sheep's poop on us as he's clearing out the truck. I got a very clear video of it yesterday (even though my glasses were smeared with feces!). Oh well. They actually put straw down for the sheep to help absorb the waste at the bottom of the truck - I guess when you go witness the cows, they are just standing in liquid filth and you get covered in it.

These 'lambs' we saw today were the oldest yet. A lamb is a sheep under a year old, and I'm pretty sure this is only a lamb slaughterhouse, but Kile (who had sheep before) said it looked like they hadn't been sheared or had hoof work done in at least 18 months. most of their feet were overgrown and curled over - Kile said that means they likely have maggots inside their hooves. Most of them were so overgrown that the wool literally covered their eyes - making them blind.

These ones were really scared of us, and many of them were in heat stroke. The truck was too small for any of them to even be able to stand up straight. None of them had ear tags, because literally every single one of them had had the ear tag ripped out and had mangled earlobes.

This baby right here took a piece of me with it into that slaughter floor.


Misery upon misery upon misery...



They were all shaved here on their ankles... presumably from injections they were receiving...

Shortly, one of my friends is arriving today from Denver so that we can go scout the one small slaughterhouse that is here in town and hopefully go to the county clerk's office to order a surveyor's map.