Eyes on Animals made an unannounced visit to Dik Slachthuis, a slaughterhouse in Holland that specializes in the killing of young calves, adult cattle and sheep. The plant made a good impression as the workers were calm with the animals and the plant also insisted that the animals be stunned first (even though most of the meat was going for halal but they felt that slaughtering without pre-stunning caused a lot of suffering).
However, while observing the stunning of the calves, we were shocked to see the employee apply electricity to a very young calf and then wait 52 seconds before continuing with the slaughter process. During this time, the little holstein calf regained consiousness, made desperate attempts to stand back up, and finally ran out of the stunning box and onto the kill floor in an attempt to escape. The employer had to re-shock him with electricity. We mentioned this serious welfare problem to the owners of the plant, who said that they had not observed this problem before but will take note of our concern.
