The Sounds of A Slaughterhouse

[Content warning: Contains confronting images and/or video footage]

Videographer: Kelly Guerin

The four of us were in an unmarked van, parked in plain sight at the center of an industrialized pig slaughterhouse in Taiwan. To our left, multiple loading docks busily received truck after truck of live pigs. To our right, a single open doorway framed a steady line of carcasses swinging down the production line. We documented the procession through tinted windows.

“Can we crack the window a bit so I can get audio?”

The sound of a pig at a slaughterhouse is somewhere between a scream and a roar. Whirring industrial fans, beeping machinery, and shouting workers add to the hellish chaos. To get the terrified, shaking animals down the ramps, workers have to climb the truck railings and jab them repeatedly with electric prods. Some stressed or sick pigs have to be carted off manually by chains and pulleys. One was suspiciously carted away – alive – suspended in the bucket of a backhoe. Trucks continue to arrive. All the while, bodies swung steadily past the open doorway. 

We clutch our cameras and pray that any of this will translate to anyone outside of this van. Will anyone else feel these screams? Will their hearts race for these animals as ours do now? We capture as much as we can until we can’t risk staying any longer without drawing attention. Then we drive away with these images, out of the gates to rejoin the world.

Videographer: Kelly Guerin