On this day in vegan history · August 27, 1958
Eisenhower Signs the Humane Slaughter Act
The federal government finally said an animal should be knocked out before it's killed, then wrote a law so narrow it barely touched the killing floor.
The facts
- Signed
- August 27, 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Animals covered
- Cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, and swine
- Original scope
- Applied only to slaughtering plants selling meat to the federal government, until a 1978 amendment extended it to all federally inspected plants
- Animals excluded
- Poultry was never included, then or now
On August 27, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Humane Slaughter Act, the first federal law requiring that cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, and swine be rendered insensible to pain before being shackled, hoisted, or cut. The bill came after years of lobbying by animal welfare groups, including the Animal Welfare Institute's Christine Stevens, and passed Congress on voice votes. But the law as signed bound only slaughtering plants that sold meat to the federal government, leaving most of the industry untouched until Congress closed that loophole in 1978. It never covered poultry at all, a gap that still stands today even though chickens make up the overwhelming majority of land animals killed for food in the United States.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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If I went by mail, I'd think no one was interested in anything but humane slaughter.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the public mail he received urging him to sign the bill, 1958
Source: Wikipedia -
§ 1903 had originally prohibited the federal government from purchasing livestock products made from animals slaughtered inhumanely, but it was repealed in 1978.
Animal Legal & Historical Center, Michigan State University College of Law, on the law's original scope
Source: Animal Legal & Historical Center
Why it still matters
It was the first time the U.S. government put any legal limit on how a farmed animal could be killed, proof that public pressure could move federal law even on the killing floor. But its narrow original reach, and its total silence on chickens, previewed a pattern that has held for almost seventy years: welfare law lags decades behind the animals actually being slaughtered.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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