VANCOUVER—Animal Justice is releasing secretly-recorded footage taken inside Meadow Valley Meats, a provincially-licensed slaughterhouse in Pitt Meadows, BC. Shot between July and September, 2022, the gut-wrenching video is the first-ever glimpse inside a small-scale Canadian slaughterhouse, killing cows, sheep, goats, and llamas. It shows:
- Workers violently beating cows, sheep, and goats on their bodies and faces with canes, paddles, and electric prods.
- Botched attempts at stunning animals, including the bolt gun becoming stuck in the skull of cows.
- Animals improperly stunned, and showing signs of consciousness after having their throats slit.
- Downed sheep being slaughtered despite being unable to walk, which would be illegal in the United States to prevent diseases like BSE from entering the food supply.
- Terrified animals trying desperately to escape.
The footage was provided confidentially to Animal Justice, and has been turned over to the BC SPCA, the BC Meat Inspection Program, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency along with a detailed legal complaint that includes commentary from animal welfare experts.
“The abuse and botched killing of sensitive cows, sheep, and goats at Meadow Valley Meats is shocking and appears to be commonplace—even with provincial meat inspectors on site. We’re calling on authorities to promptly investigate and take appropriate action for violations of provincial animal welfare and slaughter laws,” said Camille Labchuk, lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice. “In the meantime, Canada and BC should pass laws requiring all slaughterhouses to have cameras that stream to the internet, so that people can see the truth about slaughter for themselves, and decide if this is an industry they want to support.”
Regions like the UK, Scotland, Spain, and the Netherlands already require cameras inside slaughterhouses.
Meadow Valley Meats markets itself as a smaller, local slaughterhouse, and one of its brands, 63 Acres, claims the meat comes from “happy” animals who are treated “humanely” and “ethically”. 63 Acres is sold at local-focused BC grocery chains like Urban Fare, which belongs to the same parent company as Save-On-Foods—a company that boasts about transparency in its supply chain. Animal Justice has written to Save-On-Foods and Urban Fare to ask them to drop 63 Acres and other Meadow Valley Meat products, and to support requiring cameras in slaughterhouses.
Meadow Valley Meats was convicted in 2015 of selling E. coli contaminated beef, and fined $125,000 after a former employee blew the whistle on the company’s attempt to cover up a positive E. coli test. The directors of Meadow Valley Meats are Jeff and Kenneth Kooyman, who are also directors of Chilliwack Cattle Sales—a factory dairy farm exposed on hidden camera in 2014 for the violent abuse and beatings of dairy cows. The company and several employees were convicted in one of the largest animal cruelty prosecutions in Canadian history, facing fines and even jail time.
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Contact:
Camille Labchuk
Executive Director
[email protected]
