Words on a Killing

Hauntingly Blunt Look Into Meat Processing

Let me preface this by saying it's going to be rambly and blunt in ways which may bother others who don't want to think about slaughtering animals. (But then, if you don't want to think about that, you shouldn't read this book because it details the process of a slaughter house.)

I'm one of those people who clings to meat despite the disgust I feel every time I think about it being the muscles and flesh of once-living creatures. When I realize what it is, I usually feel sick and stop eating. If I see a vein in the meat on my plate, I feed it to my pets instead and feel too ill to keep eating. If there's a bone in a piece of meat, I won't eat it because that bone makes me think of death and corpses. But hamburgers, chicken nuggets, beef jerky...? Those I chow down upon with no ill feelings. I like the taste and so long as I don't have to think about the reality, it doesn't bother me.

It's a flaw, I know. Perhaps even a product of my upbringing. I was raised in an area where hunting was the main source of meat. In abstract, it doesn't faze me to know that animals die for meat because, as I was taught, animals also eat other animals for food. And it's true, where hunting for food (not sport) or raising individual animals to feed only one's own family are concerned: an individual of one species takes down an individual of another in order to feed their family. Questionable in that, unlike wild animals, we aren't obligate carnivores, but... humans are horribly selfish creatures. We want what we want, and seldom do we question what we actually need.

The idea of gnawing on flesh disgusts me not for the fact that it's a sentient creature's hide but for the fact I don't like the idea of eating a corpse because it sounds filthy. Yet, when I see an animal head trophy, I have to look away because I feel so sad for the creature's fate. I am a hypocrite, an animal lover who at once both loathes and loves meat. I have struggled for years with the fact I “just can't live without” beef jerky in particular, yet I have the heart of someone who'd be better off a vegetarian.??

How do I manage? Well, in my mind, I like to hide behind thoughts of how “humane” the meat industry claims its slaughter methods are, and honestly until I read this book I assumed that meant the animals lived happy lives on a farm until one day, without them ever being scared, they were taken to another farm - the slaughterhouse - and killed instantly for processing. Like hunted animals: oblivious to their fates, never suffering. They still die, of course, and that's the part I prefer not to think about, but I was content to assume humane meant a lack of suffering and fear.

Boy, was I wrong! This book sheds a whole new light on what passes as “humane” in the meat industry, and I find myself both regretting this knowledge and feeling like I needed to have it.??

How can giving a fellow creature brain damage to knock them out and slitting the throat of their twitching body until they bleed out count as humane? How many of these animals die for no purpose whatsoever because their meat is overstocked and gets thrown away, expired before it could ever be purchased? Why is this a thing that society has chosen to ignore?

I find myself questioning the last bit a lot right now. This book is thought-provoking, and honestly I'm not sure how much longer I can handle eating my beloved beef jerky when I know that somewhere out there a cow was led to a horrific death then sawed apart in front of their herdmates just so I could gnaw on their dehydrated flesh. It doesn't sit well in my heart.

As you can see, I have a lot of emotions and thoughts as a result of reading this book. It's short and generally easy to read, though at times the scenery descriptions get repetitive and once the gender of a cow is mistyped as male when previously it was female. (Chapter five, the black cow which was once called a female is referred to as male. It's most likely a typo but it was a little odd.) The prose flows a bit more like an article or other piece of journalism, though that may be unavoidable by nature and certainly doesn't detract from the information provided.

Oddly, the portions from the cow's point of view were less emotional to me than the ones which just cover the witnessing of slaughter. Perhaps it's because we don't know the cow or what her life once was or how she feels other than intensely afraid. I have the same issue in horror stories where it starts mid-action and all we're told is how scared the human character is: I find it difficult to connect without more detail. But I didn't need a direct connection to the cow to empathize once I saw the proces she unwillingly endured.

I wish there was more to say, but honestly I can't quite sort out my thoughts. This book will make you think an awful lot.