The Slaughter Process: Introduction
When discussing using livestock animals for meat, it’s important to understand the process of how an animal goes from being alive and well on a farm to the neatly packaged meat cuts we see at the grocery store. Throughout the entire process, there are obstacles of animal welfare and food safety that must be overcome in ways that producers are transparent about. The general public has every right to know where their food comes from and how it is made.
However, as fewer and fewer people are obtaining experience in agriculture, the truth about this process is being overshadowed by propaganda from animal welfare extremists who have made it their mission to paint people involved in “animal agriculture” as the bad guys. But the truth is that producers are very responsive to popular opinions and, contrary to that popular belief, value animal welfare more than consumers could ever imagine. |
I speak from personal experience when I say that, when you spend every day working with these animals (even knowing that they’ll eventually end up in the food supply), you grow very in-tuned with their habits and needs, and develop a compassion for them that far surpasses the care of an activist who’s never even been on a farm.
But how can ranchers love these animals so much then still send them to the slaughterhouse? We understand that God put these animals on earth for a purpose, and we spend our careers insuring that every animal lives the best life possible and dies painlessly. Farmers have gotten pretty good at this. I can confidently eat meat and know that no being suffered for my meal, because I have been educated about the process.
But how can you be educated about the process, too, and know that you’re getting information from objective sources who aren’t feeding you lies because their checkbook depends on your grocery run, or the flipside… how do you know you aren’t buying into a lifestyle that puts your health at risk only because animal rights activists profit off of showing you the worst case scenarios? We can’t all take days out of our jobs to travel to farms or slaughterhouses and see this for ourselves… even if you did, you’d still only get a tiny fraction of the picture. So who can you trust to give you the most accurate information?
But how can ranchers love these animals so much then still send them to the slaughterhouse? We understand that God put these animals on earth for a purpose, and we spend our careers insuring that every animal lives the best life possible and dies painlessly. Farmers have gotten pretty good at this. I can confidently eat meat and know that no being suffered for my meal, because I have been educated about the process.
But how can you be educated about the process, too, and know that you’re getting information from objective sources who aren’t feeding you lies because their checkbook depends on your grocery run, or the flipside… how do you know you aren’t buying into a lifestyle that puts your health at risk only because animal rights activists profit off of showing you the worst case scenarios? We can’t all take days out of our jobs to travel to farms or slaughterhouses and see this for ourselves… even if you did, you’d still only get a tiny fraction of the picture. So who can you trust to give you the most accurate information?
This series is going to be one of science (as every Farming Truth series is!). I’m going to explain each step in the slaughter process alongside studies. I’m going to give you my personal take on a lot of these issues, and also recognize the points of view of the activists. The goal of this series is not to point fingers, only to run the two opposing arguments alongside each other in an attempt to bridge the ever-widening gap between producers and consumers in the developed world.
Here's a quick run-down of the topics for each post:
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