A “war on factory farming” begins in Denver, and immigrant workers may be the first casualties

Editor’s note: This article contains numerous images from a slaughterhouse.

They came to Denver from Honduras, Colombia and Mexico. Here, they work behind a locked gate, in a plant that smells of manure, raw meat and soap. Each day, they kill, gut, butcher, package and ship roughly 1,500 sheep for Superior Farms. It’s the largest lamb slaughterhouse in the United States — and the only slaughterhouse in Denver. 

The workers, clad in lab coats and masks, make the same cuts all day long: throats, pelts, shoulders, loins and legs. In a refrigerated room where breath turns to steam, decapitated lambs hang from hooks.

Most meat-eaters will never see this gory scene. But this fall, Denver voters are being asked to look inside the slaughterhouse and decide: Should this place be shut down, sacrificing about 160 local jobs to further a global movement for animals and the environment? 

That’s the question that animal rights activists have posed with Ballot Measure 309, which would ban slaughterhouses from the city of Denver. 

In fact, there is only one slaughterhouse to ban — Superior Farms, this 37,000-square-foot plant on the northern edge of the city. Besides being a premier source of Halal meat for Muslim diets, it is a longtime employment hub for immigrants in the city.

The activists, banding together as Pro-Animal Future, want voters to feel revolted by the slaughterhouse. They aim to recruit vegans and carnivores alike to abolish factory farming in Denver — and eventually nationwide. They argue that Superior Farms is unusually cruel and irresponsible. 

“This is about declaring war on the factory farming industry,” said Pro-Animal Future co-founder Aidan Kankyoku. He believes that Denver voters will agree the slaughterhouse is “a violation of our moral concept of how animals should be treated.” Another measure from the same groups would also limit sales of fur in Denver.

The activists point to footage captured in the slaughterhouse – images that show violations of animal protection laws, animal rights lawyers allege. Previously, Superior Farms also settled a lawsuit by a former worker who alleged racism and violations of Halal practices.

In contrast, the owners of Superior Farms tout their care of animals and support of small farmers. And many of the workers agree, saying it’s a place where decades of immigrants have found careers, ownership stakes, benefits and belonging.

Paulina Herrera, a mother of three who immigrated from Mexico, has worked in the factory for 30 years.

“It has given me everything,” she said, taking a break from the butcher line. “A house, food, benefits, health insurance. I own this very place. I have shares, and when I leave, I’m going to cash them in. I’m very happy to have come here.”

The company denies that the hidden-camera video shows inhumane slaughtering practices and allegations of racism and Halal violations.

For Pro-Animal Future, the Denver election is part of a larger plan to shut down factory farming and ultimately the meat industry itself. Animal rights activists, including California-based foundations, have spent about a quarter-million dollars on the Denver campaigns as of mid-October. 

Meanwhile, the opposition campaign has raked in about $1.7 million from the Washington D.C.-based Meat Institute, Superior Farms and meat trade groups.

Numerous workers of Superior Farms are organizing against the ban, and they’ve been joined by some Democratic heavy hitters — including several Denver City Council members and the vast majority of the local Democratic Party.

“Please understand that our workers did not ask for this,” wrote Bob Mariano, the plant’s marketing director, in an email to Denverite. 

Weeks before the election, activists gathered in the lobby of a posh apartment building to carve pumpkins at a vegan potluck.

They had spent their day calling voters, driving a truck with TVs displaying gory slaughterhouse footage, and pedaling the “Lamb-borghini” — an e-bike with a big fake sheep on the back.

They want this to be just one of the first of hundreds of nationwide campaigns to abolish factory farming over the next decade.  

“We’re really excited about ballot initiatives as a way to drive this conversation forward and make a lot of progress, whether we win or not in a given year,” Kankyoku said. And he’s increasingly confident, he said, that the Denver campaign will work. 

For the activists, this is a moral mission: They see the meat industry as antiquated and needlessly cruel.

But for decades, the animal rights movement has struggled to make progress. Should they encourage individuals to go vegan? What about disruptive protests? Perhaps animals should be illegally rescued from factories and feed lots? 

In recent years, many activists have shifted away from the idea that they can convince Americans to eat less meat. And many now see it as too risky to practice sabotage and other direct action, thanks to stiffer criminal penalties for disrupting agriculture.

Instead, they’re asking voters in places like Denver whether “factory farming” should exist at all.

“There’s just no better way to put Animal Freedom and factory farming in front of people, with their ‘voter hat’ on, in a literally actionable way,” Kankyoku said. 

If the public could embrace legal cannabis and same-sex marriage after multiple ballot campaigns, the thinking goes, maybe the activists could force a conversation about animal liberation, too. 

More than 90 percent of Americans eat meat, according to a Newsweek poll. Yet, paradoxically, nearly 50 percent might support a ban on slaughterhouses nationwide, according to another poll from the Sentience Institute, an animal ethics think tank. 

But this strategy brings a new challenge: Convincing voters to shut down a specific business in their own community.

The advocates point to studies that show slaughterhouse workers face higher rates of PTSD, anxiety, addiction and domestic violence. Some believe shutting down the factory would do the workers a favor — even if it puts them out of work.

Closing Superior Farms could eliminate 164 jobs. Many of the supporters see that as an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of their mission.

Anne Fulton, who quit her job at a mineral store to work on the campaign, says she is concerned about the workers, but that the campaign is “not personal.” 

“I wish there was a way to ensure that all those people who put in a lot of time at Superior Farms would be able to land on their feet and get another job, or, like, get whatever support they need,” she said. “But yeah. That’s hard.”

The ballot measure includes promises that, if it passes, the city must prioritize former slaughterhouse workers for job training programs. The animal advocates say the workers will find new jobs, and that the Denver economy can sustain the disruption.

Company spokesman Mariano countered that the job promises are “misleading,” saying that the “non-binding suggestions don’t guarantee anything.”

As workers walk in and out of the facility, their plastic shoe covers stick to a fat-soap slurry coating the floor. 

Denverite spoke with more than a dozen workers at the factory. They said Superior Farms is a rare source of stability in the U.S.

Superior Farms, headquartered in Sacramento, California, has run the slaughterhouse in an industrial part of Denver’s working-class Globeville neighborhood for more than 40 years — taking over a facility that has existed for eight decades in all. The company is employee-owned, meaning workers have a share in profits from their first day on the job and are fully vested after three years.

However, the details of Superior Farms’ wages are unclear. The company declined to share Superior Farms’ median pay or how much Chief Executive Officer Rick Stott makes. 

“Any details we provide would be used out of context by our opponents to portray us as a ‘greedy corporation’ no matter how much context and data we include to show that our pay is highly competitive,” wrote spokesperson Mariano.  

The workers at the factory are largely Spanish-speaking immigrants. Some are citizens who have been in the United States for decades. Others are still figuring out how to bundle up for the cold slaughterhouse and Colorado winters. 

At lunch, they sit outside, surrounded by warehouses and the stench of dung, and eat from Tupperware containers.

Isabel Bautista started working at Superior Farms 24 years ago. 

In the late ‘90s, Bautista’s family immigrated from the Mexican state of Oaxaca to California. Later, she decided Colorado would be the best place to raise kids.

Her mom already had a job at the slaughterhouse. Bautista and her brother started working at Superior Farms in 2000, and were later joined by other relatives too.

“Almost every single employee here has a family member that either works here currently or has worked here,” Bautista said.

Bautista has worked in nearly every department and learned to speak English, fill out paperwork and use a computer at Superior Farms. Three years ago, the company promoted her to operations manager. She credits the company for her family’s success — her son has entered the Army and her daughter has finished medical school.

As operations manager, Bautista supervises the slaughter process.

Most days, the sheep arrive by the hundreds to the factory, where workers feed and water them before herding them into a holding pen.  Unless a sheep is sick or injured, it will be killed within 12 hours.

“They get an electrical stun, so they’re asleep before we start the process,” Bautista says.

A Muslim worker slits the sheep’s throats — a requirement for Halal certification.

Each employee has a single job, like cutting off the head, removing the hooves, and stripping off the pelt. The carcass is washed to remove debris, and workers cut off visible contamination before the carcasses are cleaned and inspected once more.

Some carcasses are sold whole, while others are butchered into cuts of meat, packaged, labeled and shipped around the country. 

The process is humane and the animals don’t suffer, Bautista and colleagues insisted. 

Animal rights activists say otherwise.

Supporters of the slaughterhouse ban claim Superior Farms is a particularly bad actor.

Just before ballots dropped, Pro Animal Future released hidden-camera footage shot inside the slaughterhouse. They say it shows workers using a non-Halal kill method, with two cuts instead of one decisive slash. They also say that the video captured improperly stunned sheep thrashing on hooks, as well as animals with broken limbs and prolapsed organs. 

“It’s clear that Superior Farms is engaging in not only animal cruelty, as prohibited by state law, but is also in violation of the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act,” said Attorney Chris Carraway, a University of Denver law professor with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project.

The company denies that the video shows illegal activities. 

“The video is yet another example of proponents of the slaughterhouse ban misunderstanding or misrepresenting standard, legally compliant parts of the slaughter process in an attempt to shock voters and influence an election,” wrote Superior Farms spokesperson Mariano.

Advocates also point to the Environmental Protection Agency fining the company for failing to adequately manage the toxic chemical anhydrous ammonia in its Denver plant.  Mariano says the company voluntarily entered into an agreement with the EPA to upgrade refrigeration systems and prevent air quality violations.

Separately, the company faced a 2021 lawsuit from Mohammed A. Sayed, who had worked as one of the company’s Halal butchers. He alleged that the company violated Halal practices by allowing non-Muslims to slaughter animals and killing the animals via electrocution. Sayed claimed that he was forced to quit after raising objections. He also alleged that Muslim workers were subject to racist slurs.

The company said in court filings that it addressed the racist slurs, but denied Sayed’s claims about Halal violations. The parties settled the lawsuit in 2022.

An inherently inhumane industry?

Kankyoku, one of the architects of the Pro-Animal Future ballot measure, says the Denver slaughterhouse ban is “a drop in the bucket” of what needs to be done.

The ballot measure, according to Colorado State University researchers, could reduce the state’s economic activity by $861 million and affect 2,787 jobs whose work is related to Superior Farms. 

Kankyoku thinks that analysis is overblown. A Denver slaughterhouse ban would be a small but symbolic first step toward stopping all animal slaughter, he argued. “I wish that it was going to have the impact that CSU says it’s going to have,” he said. 

Ban supporter Mickey Pardo, a post-doctorate fellow at Cornell University who studies how animals communicate, says slaughterhouses are inherently inhumane. 

“The science is pretty clear that these animals are motivated to live, that they’re smart enough to understand what’s happening to them, that they feel fear,” he said.

When ewes and lambs are separated, they’re distraught, crying aloud and pacing back and forth. In nature, lambs may nurse for six months. In factory farms, they are weaned far younger. Lambs raised for meat are typically slaughtered after half a year, compared to a natural lifespan between 10 and 20 years.

“They’re going to see the other sheep, many of whom they’re most likely very closely bonded with, being killed right in front of their eyes,” Pardo says. “And they’re going to hear that and smell that and see that before it’s finally their turn.”’

The factory’s workers have been living in the shadow of the election.

 Some have attended rallies, starred in TV ads and distributed flyers arguing for their jobs.

But on a recent Saturday,  a couple dozen left their anxiety over Ballot Measure 109 behind to play indoor soccer in Central Park. 

At 41 years old, match organizer Francisco Arteaga was not diving for the ball like his younger coworkers. The father of three plans to work for the company until retirement.

Arteaga fears that he’ll lose out on health, vision and dental insurance and the retirement benefits he has worked toward for over two decades.  While the ballot measure would give former slaughterhouse workers priority in receiving workforce training from city programs, it does not guarantee anybody a new job. 

“It’s probably back to Mexico,” Arteaga said. “Superior Farms – that’s my life.”

Tatiana Cala, a former Superior Farms worker, was at the soccer match, too. An immigrant from Colombia, she respects the animal rights activists’ moral stance. But she hopes voters remember families like hers. 

“I know that sacrificing animals is a very hard thing, but it’s something that is seen every day,” she says. “And it is part of the food chain, for both us, human beings, and animals.” 

Ultimately, voters will make the decision.

Best friends Kelly Edmondson and Cameran Simpson discussed the slaughterhouse ban while their kids practiced soccer in City Park.

Edmondson is a meat eater, though she tries to buy grass-fed beef and pasture-raised chickens. 

“I support jobs for immigrants, and if that’s helping immigrants get their citizenship, I absolutely support it,” Edmondson says. “I eat meat, so I guess I support slaughterhouses in general, if the animals were killed instantly and not put through a bunch of pain and agony.”

Simpson, on the other hand, rarely eats meat. She thinks the ballot initiative could lead people to think more critically about the impacts of eating animals.

“I’m glad that it’s even a conversation,” Simpson said — though she worried that shutting down Superior Farms would just send the slaughterhouse to another city.

“Why not support it here — especially with our influx of immigrants trying to make a life — if it’s an opportunity for immigrants,” Edmondson said. “And the sheep are going to be killed and eaten.” 

“I think that’s the part I’m sad about,” said Simpson. 

By the conversation’s end, carnivore Edmondson had decided to do more research, but she was leaning toward supporting the slaughterhouse.

Simpson thought differently. 

“The more we talk about it, and hearing the underlying thing of just removing factory farms from our nation, actually the more I support banning it,” Simpson said. 

“I can see that, too,” Edmondson told her.

Election day is Nov. 5.

For more information about the election, read Denverite’s voter guide here.

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