Central Valley slaughterhouse in controversy over stunning

California law requires stunning an animal — often with the use of a bolt gun — before slaughter so there is no pain, but a Watsonville slaughterhouse allegedly failed to stun a sheep before its death, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

Efrain Toledo, who owns Toledo Harkins Slough Ranch on Lee Road, was cited Monday for not stunning a sheep before killing it, as required by California law, said Todd Stosuy, the county's Animal Services supervisor.

Stosuy said he watched Toledo put the sheep in a contraption that flipped it upside down, and then Toledo slit the animal's neck. The sheep took a few minutes to die, Stosuy said.

Toledo was cited for allegedly failing to provide a humane death for being slaughtered.

"I think that people who eat meat don't want the animals they eat to have suffered," Stosuy said.

Toledo was already under investigation for improperly treating animals.

In May, as Stosuy drove down the road near the slaughterhouse, he first noticed an injured cow whose horn was squirting blood. More than two dozen sick and injured goats, sheep and rabbits and a cow eventually were removed from the facility, and Toledo was cited for animal neglect.

-- Francisco Vara-Orta

Comments

[Brien Comerford]

As long as we have slaughterhouses and hunting fields we will have homicides and battlefields.