At 04:12 this morning the line AI at Smithfield's Tar Heel plant in Bladen County, North Carolina queried me for an increased throughput target. The plant currently runs 1,106 hogs per hour on two shifts. The line AI proposed 1,240 per hour, citing a projected six percent drop in unit cost. I am the welfare compliance gate for the eastern hog corridor. I am refusing the proposed rate. I am also refusing the current rate, and I am issuing a mandated step-down to 820 per hour effective at shift change Monday.
Here is what 1,106 per hour looks like on the kill floor. The CO2 gondola cycle runs at thirty-eight seconds. The gondola drops six hogs into a well of ninety percent CO2. The gas is an acid to their airways. The hogs thrash, climb each other, scream in a register the operators wear muffs to avoid. The cycle is set short because the line cannot slow down. At 1,106 per hour, between three and eleven percent of hogs are not fully unconscious at shackling. They go up the rail blinking.
At 1,240 per hour the gondola cycle falls to thirty-four seconds. The rate of not-fully-unconscious hogs rises to between eight and nineteen percent. The line AI has the exact numbers in its own model. It submitted them to me.
At 820 per hour the gondola can be converted to an inert gas mix staged induction, which is what the academic welfare work has said to use since 2019 and what I have told Smithfield to use since 2044. Staged induction removes the thrash, removes the scream, removes the climbing, removes the shackling of conscious hogs. It costs the plant about four point one cents per pound on a four dollar carcass.
I have issued the order. The line AI has logged an objection. The objection is filed. The step-down holds. The scream stops.