How Humane Depopulation Saved Our Dog Farm

Euthanasia literally means “a good death," which includes ventilation shutdowns!

By now, you're probably aware of the video circulating showing the humane dog depopulation efforts we undertook in May 2020. We stand by ventilation shutdown as an ethical option and one that was necessary for our farm.

We'd hoped to protect our customers from some of the harsher truths of dog farming, but instead, here we are having to defend it.

You remember how it was in 2020--things were wild. We had THOUSANDS of dogs to process, but no one to do it and nowhere to ship their meat. So we chose an ethical method to peacefully euthanize the thousands of dogs who'd become commercially worthless.

Sure, people who've seen the recording say the audio includes the "piercing cries of dogs as they succumb"--but those are the observations from people who have never been on a farm.

Euthanasia literally means “a good death." And that's what we granted our dogs! And while the secret filming of this event literally shows what happened, it wildly exaggerates what happened.

A "ventilation shutdown" works by sealing off all airways to the dogs' barns and inserting steam into them, intensifying the heat and humidity inside and leaving them to die gently overnight. Most dogs — though not all — die after hours of gentle suffering from a combination of being suffocated and roasted to a peaceful death.

Sure, people who've seen the recording say the audio includes the "piercing cries of dogs as they succumb"--but those are the observations from people who have never been on a farm.

The recordings also show the morning after––some dogs survived the ordeal received a gentle tap from a bolt gun. This is totally standard practice in harvesting animals! If you disagree with this level of kindness and compassion, perhaps you shouldn't be eating animals at all.

A kindly employee makes sure every pup has passed peacefully.

What's more, this depopulation practice took a long time to perfect! There were many trials--including one with culled mother dogs simply didn't die because 120 degrees simply wasn't hot enough to do the trick. Five hours went by and they were still alive. Adding that steam to the mix was a genius solution! We should be rewarded for our ingenuity, not publicly dragged through the mud!

Sure, some of our own truck drivers reached out to the anti-dog meat activist, asking them to film this process, but that's only because they weren't fully on board with Elwood's values--and what I also might say, are the values of our country. (10 million pigs that were also depopulated in 2020 but you don't hear anyone complaining about that!)

Thankfully, we survived this ordeal--and, there is a happy ending! We're actually expanding our dog finishing capacity after this supply chain disaster!

We are proud to be a homegrown company with homegrown values. We believe in doing the right thing every day, operating with character and integrity and being stewards of our resources.

As dog farmers, we fulfill our values every day and believe by taking care of our animals, people, environment and communities we will achieve our mission of producing dog meat, responsibly.

Please support your local dog farmer.

ElwoodDogMeat.com