The data provided by NOR members allows a panoramic photograph of the slaughterhouses in Euskal Herria: of the 70 billion animals that die each year in the world, some 100 million die in Euskal Herria. Data for each territory are as follows:

• In Navarre, 64.5 million animal deaths were recorded so far this year. Of these, over 61 million were birds and over two million were rabbits.
• As far as Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa are concerned, the latest data are from the slaughterhouse of Maule. In this slaughterhouse alone, 35,000 sheep and 40,000 cows were slaughtered in 2016, resulting in a decrease in mortality.
• The Basque Government has no data since 2012, but the latest numbers speak of 1.112 million sheep, cattle, goats, pigs and horses that were slaughtered in Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Álava. With regard to birds and rabbits, it is estimated that 11.5 million human beings were killed, respectively.

Covert investigation

About 30 slaughterhouses have been counted in the Basque Country, and it has been reported that there are as many in the surrounding countries. NOR members have managed to infiltrate ten of them in order to document their activity. “The industry is forbidden for any journalist to spread images of the country and there is a lot of hermetism,” said group spokeswoman Maialen Sagües. The investigation has therefore had to be carried out in a clandestine manner.

Those responsible for the business have often recognised that the damage caused to them by the advertising of images in slaughterhouses. “I don’t care if people see a slaughterhouse in Turkey, but I don’t want to see mine,” said one of the slaughterhouses in the video. However, the investigation carried out by the anti-specialist group has shown images of the slaughterhouses in the Basque Country and of the slaughterhouses where dead animals are sold in our homes.

The images are harsh in the 12 minutes that the video lasts, in which the testimony of the violence suffered by animals inside the slaughterhouses is portrayed. When it is detected that they are condemned to death, it is possible to observe how every animal tries to escape, as well as the violent treatment that the workers use to control the animals: they use multiple tools, kicks, blows and shocks to dominate the animals and move them freely from one side to the other. The murder process also comes to light.

Whether or not they are for human consumption, animals must die in slaughterhouses according to the law. Most of the animals reach the slaughterhouses of the industrial nurseries, “but also the animals that explode in green nurseries, small farmhouses and grasslands,” the activists stressed. It goes without saying that the animal industry is not exempt from capitalist logic either: as they explain “when they have started enough or are no longer economically profitable”, they target animals to the slaughterhouse.

On the other hand, they also wanted to make another aspect known through the secret activity of a year and a half: the harsh and precarious working conditions in slaughterhouses. They indicate that migrants were all workers from one of the slaughterhouses visited. In their own words: “In these slaughterhouses work workers trampled by the system, killing non-human animals trampled by the system.”

To shake consciences

NOR members are clear about the purpose of the investigation: “With this work we intend to awaken the reflection among the citizens to reflect on the relationship between human beings and animals of other species”. They have assured us with complete certainty that animals are wrongly killed in all slaughterhouses. Research puts at the centre of this injustice the powers and privileges of the human being towards animals, a dish that the viewer finds difficult to digest. But, after all, that is the objective: to pay attention to the activity of the slaughterhouses, the links of the process until they become meat, an exercise that can produce indigestion.

Call for the demonstration

In addition to shaking consciences, the NOR group aims to strengthen the presence of the anti-specialist and Basque movement in the Basque Country. In this struggle, they have called a demonstration at the level of Euskal Herria on 1 November in Bilbao, starting at 17:00 from Plaza Moyua. There will be buses from Pamplona, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Donostia-San Sebastián, Hendaia and Eibar.