The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Grandin described what steer 534 experienced after passing through the blue door: “The animal goes into the chute single file. The sides are high enough so all he sees is the butt of the animal in front of him. As he walks through the chute, he passes over a metal bar, with his feet on either side. While he’s straddling the bar, the ramp begins to decline at a twenty-degree angle, and before he knows it, his feet are off the ground, and he’s being carried along on a conveyor belt. We put in a false floor so he can’t look down and see he’s off the ground. That would panic him.” I had been wondering what 534 would be feeling as he neared his end. Would he have any inkling—a scent of blood, a sound of terror from up the line—that this was no ordinary day? Would he, in other words, suffer? Grandin anticipated my question. “Does the animal know it’s going to get slaughtered? I used to wonder that. So I watched them going into the squeeze chutes on the feedlot, getting their shots, and going up the ramp at a slaughter plant. No difference. If they knew they were going to die you’d see much more agitated behavior. “Anyway, the conveyor is moving along at roughly the speed of a moving sidewalk. On a catwalk above stands the stunner. The stunner has a pneumatic-powered ‘gun’ that fires a steel bolt about seven inches long and the diameter of a fat pencil. He leans over and puts it smack in the middle of the forehead. When it’s done correctly it will kill the animal on the first sho...