During the mass culling of livestock in the Novosibirsk Region, the animals were neither sedated nor given pain relief before being killed and were effectively burned alive. This is stated in an investigation by Takie Dela.
The drugs Ditilin and Adilin, curare-like muscle relaxants, were used in the destruction of the cattle. They cause immediate muscle paralysis but do not shut down brain function. The animals remained fully conscious, experienced suffocation and panic, but could not move, journalists write, citing several sources and experts.
“Imagine: you can neither inhale nor exhale, but you remain fully conscious because the brain is still functioning — and in that state of terror you die,” said Alexey Ermakov, director of the Institute of Living Systems at DSTU.
There are currently no drugs for the humane euthanasia of infected animals in Russia. In addition, during the mass culling, the authorities used a small dose of curare-like drugs, so the animals were temporarily paralyzed but not killed.
“This cannot be called euthanasia, because that is a voluntary way of leaving life, whereas what is happening now is mass killing <...> I am standing here crying right now. People called me from there and asked: ‘Why do they scream when they are being burned?’” veterinary epizootiologist Svetlana Shchepyotkina told journalists.
Global methodological guidelines on humane euthanasia adopted in the United States and across the CIS state that the use of curare-like drugs to kill animals is “strictly prohibited.”