As animal rights activists it’s easy to demonise slaughterhouse workers, the cogs in the machinery of death. We ask ourselves what drives a person to choose to kill sentient beings for hours each day, a constant barrage of the most horrendous sights, sounds and smells. We round up the research and articles that try to get to the bottom of slaughterhouse work and its effect on mental health.

Content warning: descriptions of animal slaughter, mental health, trauma, PTSD, PITS, depression

There are many reasons why a person would work on a slaughterhouse kill floor, reasons that as vegans and animal rights campaigners we feel we’re beyond or simply unable to comprehend. We see the abattoir workers as uncaring, unfeeling and without compassion, but can that really be true? A great deal of research has been done on the psychological effects of slaughterhouse work and its associations with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

We wouldn’t for one second condone such work, but if the prevalence of conditions that result from trauma and stress is high, then as activists that is an indication to us that they are human after all - an important insight for our advocacy. Add to this the fact that for many workers, employment options are limited and slaughterhouse work is often the last resort, as in the case of migrant workers who do not have access to language courses, adult education and retraining. Even when it is not the last option, as humans we tend to follow norms and cultures that surround us from childhood and lead to the normalisation of this kind of work, such as in farming communities and family-run slaughterhouses. Most of us weren’t born vegan and for many years we paid for others to slaughter animals for us, something we should never forget.

Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker

Writing for the BBC, one former worker tells their story. It is harrowing reading, but describes one route into slaughterhouse employment, the things most people never see, and the physical and mental effects that led to them leaving:

“Personally, I didn't suffer physical injuries, but the place affected my mind. As I spent day after day in that large, windowless box, my chest felt increasingly heavy and a grey fog descended over me. At night, my mind would taunt me with nightmares, replaying some of the horrors I'd witnessed throughout the day.

“One skill that you master while working at an abattoir is disassociation. You learn to become numb to death and to suffering. Instead of thinking about cows as entire beings, you separate them into their saleable, edible body parts. It doesn't just make the job easier - it's necessary for survival.”

• Read the full story on the BBC

What does the research say?

The above is one anecdote of just one former worker, but what about the studies that shed light on the bigger picture? Does slaughterhouse work lead to poor mental health, does it attract people with underlying conditions, or are there other social factors such as slaughterhouses only being built in areas where educational standards, employment opportunities and quality of life is generally lower than on average?

In Slaughtering for a living: A hermeneutic phenomenological perspective on the well-being of slaughterhouse employees, researchers in South Africa analysed interviews from thirteen employees and two managers from a commercial kill floor setting. The article, published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, references many other papers concerning not only slaughterhouse work but human rights too in regards to social pressures:

“Apart from the physically dangerous employment conditions, the underlying violent nature of working in a slaughterhouse also poses a risk to the psychological well-being of employees and cases of cumulative trauma disorder have been reported. Slaughterhouse employees, furthermore, often lack adequate resources to cope with the strenuous environment. This is mostly due to their poor socio-economic background, lack of training, and the shortage of safety equipment at the site. In addition, violence against animals has been linked to psychological health problems in humans. Consequently, deviant behaviour patterns of slaughterhouse employees have been reported in and outside of the work setting with specific reference to social dilemmas such as substance abuse, intimate partner violence, and an increase in crime rates.

“In the South African context, these working conditions are coupled with the previously mentioned fact that employees originate from the lower socio-economic spectrum of society. Having only basic education and training and being faced with the reality of low income and limited family resources, slaughterhouse employees seem particularly taxed in their capacity to maintain their psychological health.”

The study also provides extracts of note from worker interviews, describing important indicators of factors leading to PTSD and symptoms of the lesser-known “Perpetrator-Induced Traumatic Stress” (PITS) syndrome, such as increasing dissociation and nightmares:

“One day I dream that the cow gets out at the stunning box. It was alive. Then, I think that I am crying and running, and that time I am not running. Down here! Down here! [motioning that he fell down]. The cow is coming and you fall down! You fall down!”

“I dream about the cattle, when you stun it, it just fall down, after falling down, when you open the door it will ask you: ‘Why are you killing me?’”

For a more in-depth discussion of PITS and how it differs from PTSD in the context of slaughterhouse work, we recommend reading The harrowing psychological toll of slaughterhouse work, published in the Metro in 2017 which references among others the work of sociologist and psychologist Rachel M. Macnair and her book Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing.

It is from the Metro article that we encounter another important story, this time from Virgil Butler, an American slaughterhouse turned animal rights activist. In this video, Butler reflects on what he witnessed in nine years working for Tyson Foods, reportedly a major KFC supplier:

How does any of this help us change anything?

For all the articles, videos, research papers and books on the subject of slaughterhouse work and both mental and physical wellbeing, there are few solid recommendations that ethical vegans and animal rights campaigners would be happy with. Legislated mandatory CCTV on kill floors would only monitor for what the industry would consider abnormal worker behaviour, a relative term considering that everything that goes on inside a slaughterhouse is abnormal. Regular interviews with workers, counselling even, none of these would stop animals from dying, only help workers to continue perpetrating their deaths with minimal effects on their own mental health.

We would implore anyone reading this who either still consumes non-human animals or works in an industry that exploits sentient beings, to understand that animal death means something to such a degree that humans develop lasting psychological effects. If the killing of animals, as paid for by most of society, was a simple thing, we wouldn’t have people emerging depressed and suicidal from years of kill floor exposure.

Further reading

• A Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees and the Possibility of Redress through Legal Reform (J. Dillard, 2007)

• The social impact of the meat industry (Green Stars Project)

• Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices  - Melanie Joy (TEDxMünchen)

• There’s a Christmas crisis going on: no one wants to kill your dinner (Guardian)

• Animals suffer for meat production – and abattoir workers do too (The Conversation)

• PTSD in the Slaughterhouse (Texas Observer)

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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