Do Dodge City meat packing plants kill the animals right there in town ???

[Torn2pieces]

Still wondering about all these jobs in DC...

[Roccaluma]

I lived in Garden city which is near Dodge city and I think had three plants. I could see one plant off in the distance about three miles away. Sometimes it smelled horrible. I think at least ten days a year their was a smell, it could be as much as ten days a month, I got used to it. This was 23 years ago. I read something where there were going to try and perfume the air or cover it up. On the highway I would see three story aluminum cattle cars. Their feces would slop out especially if they took a turn. My friend worked there cutting off the horns. Huge amount of working class trailer parks that housed the workers there. They use electric knives and can cut their fingers off. Near my house and the packing plant was a rail line, I would see occasionally dead cattle stacked like logs sticking up out of the train cars with their legs, I hope they were being rendered for fertilizer or anmal feed.

[joelatafoya]

There are no towns adjacent to Dodge City that have no feedlots or are not in some way tied into that beef packing industry. The beef industry is our lifeblood.

Please don't let some sensationalist "propaganda" about inhumane killing practices force you into an opinion about how we operate. Both of the beef plants in Dodge City employ the most humane practices available today. No one can "hear" the animals being killed and even in driving by the plants, you cannot even see the animals.

The packing plants themselves are located on East Trail Street and are in close proximity to a couple of mobile home communities and farm houses. Most of Dodge City proper is far enough away from the plants themselves that you wouldn't have to drive by them on your daily commute to work. I would suggest something on the north end of town, perhaps in one of the communities near the Community College.

I welcome you to Dodge City and I hope your preconcieved notions of our beef industry does not blur your vision of what is really a nice little town.

[eagle7]

As long as the animals are not tortured then it is what it is. I would love to have a juicy burger or steak but its not good for my occasional gout flareups.

[catman]

I've been to Dodge several times and have never noticed anything wrong with the aroma. Of course, being from Fort Worth might have something to do with it. This is cattle country too.

[Torn2pieces]

Driving past those Meat Packing plants and seeing the Cows being carried in trucks - made me stop eating Beef 9 years ago!

And there is a stink. It's there, and it's something I just couldn't get use to.

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by Torn2pieces

Driving past those Meat Packing plants and seeing the Cows being carried in trucks - made me stop eating Beef 9 years ago!

And there is a stink. It's there, and it's something I just couldn't get use to.

While I don't like the feedlot smell, growing up in Kansas and living where I do now, I'm fairly used to it. Here is what is ten times more noxious than feedlot smell: when you mention it, some Cletus going "Huh huh, smells like money, huh huh." It's just one of those retarded 'tastes like chicken' utterances that needs to please die out, and it's too bad we can't hunt down the first person who graced us with it and chuck him in the lagoon.

[cp1969]

Yes, and I want to obliterate the phrase "going forward" which gets injected into almost every sentence these days, as if there going in another direction was possible.

[azdr0710]

and "it is what it is"......

[navman]

Just saw this thread. I used to work at EXCEL (Cargill) in Dodge City over 20 years ago - then joined the Navy and just retired. About the cattle processing there - the cattle go through an enclosed ramp chute. It goes up at an angle to point where they are well over a man's head. There are shackles on a metal chain system. The shackles are clasped around the cattle's rear hooves, then the chain system begins to pull the animal forward. A man standing on a platform is holding a "gun" that has a large roll of .22 cal rounds that feeds through the gun. When the cow comes forward he fires 2 rounds into the brain - above the eyes and in the center of the head. The cow almost instantly dies - but the heart is still beating for a short time. The shackle system pulls the cattle forward so that the animal tips forward and is hanging upside-down. Then another man slits the throat so the blood flows out from the beating heart (the blood goes to another system - which is cooks and processes the blood for other use and THAT is the smell from the slaughter plants - cooking blood). The cow then goes on through the system with it's hide taken off, it's internal organs taken out - and so on. When I left, the Dodge City plant could kill 5,000 cattle day. The IBP plant in Garden City, KS killed 6,000 a day. Also in Dodge City is National Beef (which used to be Hi-Plains Beef) and National Beef also has a plant in Liberal, KS. IBP has plants in Nebraska and Iowa, while Cargill has plants in KS, Oklahoma, Texas. It seems gruesome but they've tried to make the deaths as quick and painless as possible. And as long as people like their Big Macs, Angus SuperBurgers - then there will be slaughter plants.