Residents are allowed to get their own AC units, but Deborah Thrope, of the National Housing Law Project, says most must pay for it and the monthly bills themselves. Many tenants get an allowance for utilities that includes heat, but federal rules actually specify that it not cover air conditioning. Much public housing is decades old, built before central air was widely available, and it would be incredibly expensive to add it now. And yet even as extreme heat becomes more common, it remains a struggle for many tenants to get AC. Those who live in public housing are especially vulnerable to the heat - they're not just low-income, but also disproportionately older, people of color, chronically ill and often living in hotter neighborhoods that lack shade from tree cover. "I was sitting like this most of the time next to it," she says during an interview in her one-bedroom apartment, "because it really only cooled like, right here."Īs heat waves get worse, air conditioning has come to feel like a must-have even in parts of the U.S. Vansmith borrowed an "itty bitty" portable air conditioner from her sister, which was still a huge relief and at least allowed her to sleep. You know, I'd lose my appetite completely, and it was just so miserably hot," she says. She has heart disease, a condition that puts her at higher risk for heat illness, and she remembers how awful she felt with no air conditioner and temperatures soaring up to 116. Cattle are more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than humans, and sounds from the truck’s hydraulic arm, as well as the truck’s clanging dump bucket, may have made the cows nervous and more likely to resist entry into the stun box.When deadly heat hit the Pacific Northwest two years ago, hundreds of people died, including several residents of public housing in Portland. In this study, the cows bunched together in a tight circle, also called milling, when a rendering truck approached and parked nearby. While moving from initial staging pens to eventually get to the stun box, a significant portion of cows lost their footing and slipped (27 percent) due to wet or muddy floors.Ībattoirs can have noisy trucks that park near holding pens. Defecating and kicking are signs of being fearful and stressed. ![]() Once they were in the stun box, cows often defecated and kicked a rear leg toward a stimulus. It was at this point that most of the aversive events (70 percent) occurred. The other recorded aversive handling events included the use of electric prods, and hitting the cows.īefore entering the stun box, most cattle in the study (64 percent) balked-or stopped, put their head down, and took a step backward instead of forward. More than half (25) of those aversive events were tail twisting-a tactic handlers used “to move cattle that stopped and refused to move.” Tail twisting was defined as twisting the cow’s tail at 90 degrees or more near its base such that it might break. A 2021 field study observed 44 aversive handling events as two workers forced 74 cattle off truck trailers into holding pens and on to a stun box at a custom slaughterhouse. Other methods of forcing animals to move include using rattle paddles that resemble rowboat oars, red sort boards that look like cutting boards with cut-out handles, and whistles.Ĭertain aversive handling events by slaughterhouse workers are routine enough to be counted in studies on cattle welfare. ![]() ![]() Reducing yelling and the use of dogs and electric prods is considered better for maintaining low cortisol and stress levels in cattle, according to a review of studies on cattle welfare in outdoor feedlot pens. Using no devices to force animals to unload from a truck, or only a flag, is considered better and less traumatic for animals than using a cattle prod. Usually one worker and sometimes two or more workers were tasked with unloading cows from the truck. ![]() Most animals in the study (90 percent) had one or more bruises, which is a sign of lower animal welfare. In a 2018 study of 242 slaughterhouse trucks unloading 8,132 cows in Uruguay, researchers found that workers used sticks and/or electric prods in 80 percent of unloading events “to force animals off the truck.” Shouting was used in 60 percent of unloading events. Their cortisol levels also tend to increase, which is a sign of stress. When electric prods or other restraining devices touch cows’ bodies, cows tend to moo and bellow. Using electric cattle prods is considered a use of force that can be classified as gentle, intense, or rough. Upon arriving at a slaughterhouse, workers may use painful electric shocks, and the fear of getting shocked, to get cows or pigs to quickly unload from a truck.
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