A Dark Chapter of Humanity Called “Ventilation Shutdown”
This gruesome industry practice has received far too little attention
Words can’t express how shocked I am right now. Not only shocked, but also extremely bewildered that an issue of such immense and alarming scale has managed to slip my attention despite years of research on industrialized animal exploitation.
Content note: This article contains explicit descriptions of mass culling methods used in livestock farming.
Despite the discomfort, understanding these cruel practices is essential. We cannot afford to look the other way. In a world where horrific violence and cruelty are often hidden behind deceptive product labels and sanitized packaging, we have a responsibility to confront the hidden reality behind our consumption choices.
What is a “ventilation shutdown”?
Ventilation shutdown is a mass culling method increasingly used in the egg and meat industries. Over the last few years, tens of millions of farmed animals have been killed using this method.
Here is how it works:
“The pig or chicken barn is closed, all air inlets and ventilation sealed, and fans turned off. Heaters, steam, and/or gas are turned on. Body heat from the animals, combined with any added heat, raises the temperature in the house until the pigs or chickens die from overheating or suffocation.”
In short, the animals are “slowly suffocated and roasted to death”.
They suffer unbearable agony
Pigs and chicken and are gentle animals with complex emotions and surprising intelligence. In fact, pigs are among the smartest animals on earth — along with dolphins an elephants.
We can’t even begin to imagine the fear, the panic, the unspeakable horror and suffering these innocent beings have to endure during a ventilation shutdown. Overheating causes the animals to suffer extreme pain, nausea, and anxiety. Often when animals experience heatstroke, “chunks of mucosa and blood come pouring out of the rectum and vomiting of blood is common as well”. Unsurprisingly, the Animal Welfare Institute calls ventilation shutdown “the most inhumane” of culling methods available.
“Their fate reads like a scene from a torture movie. A life of cruelty and confinement. A death that mirrors it: animals crowded into a sealed barn. The airflow is cut off. Then heat’s pumped in (…) They writhe and gasp, in pain and panic, trying to escape. They can’t.”
— The Humane League
The suffering lasts for hours
Veterinarians have warned that ventilation shutdowns take an average of 3.75 hours to kill laying hens, and that some pigs even remain alive after 16 hours. Shockingly, the culling method doesn’t achieve 100% mortality. The animal rights organization Direct Action Everywhere has published an uncut, unedited hours-long audio of pigs being roasted alive via ventilation shutdown.
After suffering through this torture and witnessing their friends and family die around them in the most agonizing way imaginable, traumatized survivors are killed with bolt guns or simply left to starve.
What kind of sociopathic society allows this to happen?
How can we, with a straight face, tell our children to “treat others as you want to be treated” while simultaneously condoning such outrageous cruelty?
If these atrocities were committed against cats or dogs, there would be widespread outrage. News headlines would rightfully call it torture. People would call it a sickening crime. Yet, when tens of millions of birds, and hundreds of thousands of pigs — many of them more intelligent than dogs — are slowly suffocated and roasted to death, few of us seem to care. If this isn’t glaring hypocrisy, what is it then?
Ghandi once said: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” If there is any truth to these words, what does our silence on the unfathomable violence committed against farmed animals say about us as a society?
How cruel and ruthless does an industry have to be to lose your trust and support? If the current level of cruelty isn’t enough to change your ways, what will it take?
Deep down, you know that there is nothing remotely acceptable about this. Ending our support for this merciless industry isn’t about charitableness, it is about basic decency.
“But veganism is too extreme”
If you want to help reduce the horrific suffering inherent in livestock production, going vegan and inspiring others to follow suit is by far the most effective option available to you. Living vegan simply means to avoid supporting animal cruelty and exploitation — as far as possible and practicable in everyday life. In a world where most people claim to oppose animal cruelty, it’s absurd that this lifestyle is still widely considered extreme.
The livestock industry uses an increasingly sophisticated and influential lobbying apparatus, fights hard and dirty, and advertises like Big Oil to block climate action and undermine animal welfare regulation. They spend millions on marketing to create a sanitized image of animal products. Many people willingly believe these lies and euphemisms, accepting the notion that eating meat, dairy, and eggs is necessary and humane. It’s easier to accept these comforting falsehoods than to question them. But ignorance is not a valid excuse. In an age of information, choosing to remain uninformed is an act of cowardice. Being a reponsible consumer requires seeking out the truth, even when it challenges your long-held beliefs.
What do you think is more extreme: advocating for non-violence and compassion, or perpetuating suffering, destruction, and injustice of unimaginable proportions when we don’t need to? The issue addressed in this article is just one of endless examples of animal torture and abuse in livestock farming. Besides that, animal agriculture is also a key driver of antibiotic resistance, water contamination, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, human exploitation and world hunger, ocean dead zones, pandemic risk, and rainforest destruction.
Nobody needs animal products to be healthy. In fact, population studies have shown that we are healthier without. Every single individual switching to a vegan lifestyle makes a significant difference and helps this crucial movement gain traction.
Why are farmed animals culled en masse?
You may wonder: why do ventilation shutdowns happen in the first place? Aren’t farmed animals supposed to be sent to the slaughterhouse and turned into meat?
First of all, animals often face similarly gruesome prospects in slaughterhouses. Being “turned into meat” virtually always involves fear and suffering. The cruelty of ventilation shutdowns should never be used to downplay the unspeakable suffering that animals often endure in ‘normal’ farm settings.
It is true that mass cullings are typically not the intended outcome in livestock production. Ventilation shutdowns mostly happen because of infectious disease outbreaks (a predictable consequence of the horrific conditions the animals are kept in) or because supply chain delays make it more profitable to kill animals en masse than to keep them alive, even if they are completely healthy. Forcing animals to suffer so horribly for our mistakes is an egregious moral failing and injustice.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose this method?
As we have seen above, the ventilation shutdown method is unreliable and unspeakably cruel. Nonetheless, it is increasingly popular among farmers due to one big advantage: it is cheap.
They use the worst and cheapest methods despite receiving significant financial support from taxpayer money. For instance, a company owned by billionaire Glen Taylor received $11.3 million in government subsidies for mass culling farmed animals during an avian influenza outbreak (livestock farming itself is a key driver for such outbreaks) — and still chose to kill 5 million birds using ventilation shutdown.
Disturbingly, this is anything but an exception: a 2022 study found that more than half of the commercial mass culls of chicken they looked at used ventilation shutdown.
TAKE ACTION
It's time to open our eyes and take action against these atrocities. Those of us who enjoy the invaluable privilege of living in freedom have the solemn responsibility to join forces and work towards a world where such practices are no longer tolerated.
Here is what you can do right now:
Sign this petition to take a stand against the inhumane practice of ventilation shutdowns. Your voice matters, and collective action can lead to significant change.
Embrace a vegan lifestyle. Don’t continue to support an industry that constantly abuses animals. Don’t let their marketing lies fool you. 99% of animals in the U.S. are factory farmed. Horrific abuse is also present on many certified organic farms. Transitioning to a vegan lifestyle is the only reliable and most impactful way to prevent unnecessary animal suffering.
Help me raise awareness. I will continue to sound the alarm about needless animal exploitation and cruelty. To stay tuned and support my efforts, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to the Vegan Horizon newsletter. 👇
Thank you so much for writing this, Naja! You hit the nail on the head with your headline: "But veganism is too extreme." Avoiding all animal products is so much less extreme than what essentially amounts to torturing animals. I also really appreciate the content warning so that we readers can mentally prepare ourselves for what you describe.