Slaughter

IAN The lot of the workers who harvested the vegetables and gathered up Rosie for slaughter is not appreciably different from that of those on nonorganic factory farms. (182).

The killing of animals we eat generally takes place behind high walls, well beyond our gaze or ken. (227).

Beyond the stench in my nostrils (which, believe me, was not so easy to get beyond), the pile offered an inescapable reminder of all that eating chicken involves - the killing, the bleeding, the evisceration. And no matter how well it is masked or how far it is hidden away, this death smell - and the reality that gives rise to it - shadows the eating of any meat, industrial, organic, or whatever, is part and parcel of even this grassy pastoral food chain whose beauty had so impressed me. (385) From Feed Lot to Diner Table

What do American's truly know about the food they find on their dinner table each night? The answer is not very much. Michael Pollan states in his book, "The killing of animals we eat generally takes place behind high walls, well beyond our gaze or ken" (227). The naïveté of the general populous is obvious from this statement. American's have become detached from their food in such an extreme manner, that most American's don't know the conditions in which their food was slaughtered. Now, imagine thatYou’re walking down a grass field when you see a concrete building. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see inside? Suddenly those concrete walls are replaced with glass walls, revealing masked worked breathing compressed oxygen, giant crushing machines, and cows hanging upside down by their tiny feet. Not the greatest sight in the world. Wish you had the concrete walls back? Sure, the imagery of the inside of a slaughterhouse is horrible – perhaps mind scarring. But what is more disturbing than dead cows is what the concrete walls represent.

After entering a modern slaughterhouse, one would find the whole process to be utterly disgusting. It is not that actual slaughter that is gut wrenching, but the conditions under which the slaughter actually occurs. Not only do the cows stand up to their knees in feces, and consume the bodies of chickens and pigs, they are also pumped full of vaccines, that haven’t been tested thoroughly enough to determine their long term effects on the human species. According to researchers, most vaccines used in cows could have potentially harmful effects to the human body after long term exposure, but the drugs haven’t been tested enough to show any evidence that they are safe in the long term. Now, what does the government do to these slaughterhouses, and companies that are not only practicing what could be considered animal cruelty, more pressingly is the harm that these processed meats could present to the American people? Almost nothing. In fact,The U.S. Government shields the general population from the horrors of the slaughterhouse. Illiterate, migrant workers brought illegally from other countries man these machines, animals are cruelly slaughtered, and even when a machine maims a worker, these abattoirs continue to pump out thousands of pounds of animal meat. So what? Why do you care how your meat is slaughtered as long as your meat tastes good and is cheap right? NO! By buying meat from stores other than your local barn supports the concrete wall and the hidden secrets that should be revealed by transparent walls instead. Polyface Farm slaughters their own meat on tables not surrounded by //any// walls despite what regulations say, and the farm turned out being more sanitary than government approved slaughterhouses! By eating processed or ground meat, you could be at risk for E. Coli, contracting a disease from blood that came from a maimed worker, or even parts of cow that should be eaten! So what? That's what.