BLT Sandwich: The Big Lifestyle Trade Off

BACON:

78,000 - The number of pigs killed every week at one Danish slaughterhouse.

Danish Crown has developed a new slaughterhouse in Horsens, which is believed to be the largest in the world. It is equipped to kill 78,000 pigs a week. The whole process is automated, from when the pigs are stunned with C0₂ in mini gas chambers through to being eviscerated and having their backs split in preparation for butchering. Either the whole carcass or the cured bacon will then be dispatched in refrigerated lorries to Tulip Ltd in the UK.

The bacon in your BLT will be Danish. 8,886 pig farms in Denmark produce 25 million pigs for slaughter annually. In 1985 there were 44,222 farms, but today 9% of farms have more than 4,000 pigs – a clear sign of industrialisation. Danish pigs are confined in a succession of sheds from birth, with the size of cage and space they are allotted determined by weight. A pig weighing under 10kg is given 0.15m2 space, just over half the width of this page, rising in six increments to 1m2 for a pig weighing 90-100kg – slaughter weight. A century of breeding has created the...

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