My Trip to a ‘Humane’ Slaughterhouse in Newark, NJ
The Save Movement, a short documentary film
I wanted to see it with my own two eyes.
So on a cold Thursday morning this past Fall I packed my camera gear, picked up our camera operator and headed from our offices in Brooklyn, NY to a slaughterhouse in Newark, NJ.
We arrived at 6AM and there was already a truck packed with animals waiting outside for the facility to open. (Well, I guess the animals weren’t waiting, the driver was.)
Surrounding the truck was a group of animal activists giving water to the animals, so we started filming. What quickly unfolded was not something we were expecting.
However, it was compelling enough to be the subject of my new short film, The Save Movement.
As a documentary filmmaker, I went to great lengths to make sure everyone featured in the film is honestly represented and not taken out of context. I take my journalistic integrity seriously and I come to this with a deep understanding of the animal agriculture landscape, both of which guided every single edit, no matter how painstaking or tedious it was at times.
With that, I also want to make it clear I come to this subject with an extreme bias that animals shouldn’t be tortured for any reason including food.
That is why I felt it was so important to visit a humane slaughterhouse and see how the animals are treated for myself. As you might imagine, we were eventually escorted off the property and not allowed to see the “humane” slaughter.
But what we were able to see of the animal’s condition in the truck and the sounds from just outside the walls of the slaughterhouse when the animal’s throats were cut open didn’t seem humane by any definiton of the word.
It is my experience that most people believe the animals they eat are not tortured, especially in the United States of America. But the evidence suggest that majority of the 9 billion animals American’s eat every year are indeed tortured, at least at some point in their short lives.
Take 10 minutes to watch the film and decide for yourselves. On behalf of everyone at CaveLight Films I sincerely hope this will shed some light on the process.
-Jordan Ehrlich, CaveLight Films
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