To think bad of people that work in slaughterhouses??

[RiverMeadow]

I was reading something earlier and it got me thinking about the members of staff who actually work in slaughterhouses and who see these things first hand.

Regardless of whether you eat meat or not we're all still human and I'd assume it's a job that's a very hard one emotionally... or am I wrong?? Do the colleagues just look at it like a job and not physically killing animals? It would break my heart 😭

It might be the only work available and the working conditions can be horrendous, especially in the huge corporate plants in America. If you get a chance to read Fast Food Nation there is a chapter on how the workers are treated, it really is horrific. It's not just the animals that are suffering. The loss of small abattoirs in the move to more centralised operations is having a massive impact on animal welfare and carbon emissions. If you eat meat you are supporting this system unless it is locally produced and slaughtered.

How patronising. People have to work. Do you think factory workers in these places have PHDs and chose this work?
I've worked in fish factories, only employment locally, very grim work but you know, women feeding their children.
It reminds me of when Extinction Rebelion tried to close the ( meat/fish?) market in London and tried to set up vegan stalls in it itself.
Deluded idiots ruining a weeks wages for working class people trying to get a wage.

@Nellydean21 If you read my first post it wasn't intended to be patronising. More of a 'good god I feel awfully bad for the people that need to do that job, how would it affect them emotionally and do they look at it as just a job'

I do appreciate the title makes it look worse but that was not my intention.

I don’t think we should have slaughter houses because I think the entire process of raising animals for slaughter is morally abhorrent. I don’t, however, judge a slaughterhouse worker as more morally abhorrent than any person who eats meat. In fact, I think they are less so, since they are by and large economically vulnerable people forced to take a dangerous and traumatising job out of necessity, while the average meat eater comfortably buys packets of meat in the supermarket without ever being confronted with or caring about the horrendous human and animal cost to get it there.

100% agree with this, very well put.

Unless you were a vegetarian and badly needed a job and could cope with it you would do it.

It's a hard job I imagine but there are other jobs out there that I know I would find it difficult to do. If they didn't do it we would all starve to death.

I think worse of people who eat meat but wouldn't kill an animal and don't like to consider how it ended up on their plate. People who won't eat anything on the bone for example, for fuck's sake just go vegetarian then if you can see it's wrong.

I wish everyone who ate meat hunted it so animals had a life before slaughter and so people would eat less meat and have less of an environmental impact.

'if they didn't do it we would all starve to death.'

You really wouldn't, there's more to life than burgers and bacon butties.

@leli fab! Sadly most of the animals in the egg and dairy industry also end up in a slaughterhouse- you may wish to look into veganism.

@BBCONEANDTWO how would we starve to death? Right now most of the world’s crops are fed to animals bred and killed for food. We could just grow crops for humans on that land instead.

@SadSisters very articulately expressed and I agree 100% both on lawyers and on slaughterhouses.

It's a job at the end of the day. As it's been said a few times some might get ptsd others may not and won't have an emotional attachment.

I'm sure if the animals could kill humans to eat they would.

You really wouldn't, there's more to life than burgers and bacon butties.

All those vegans wasting away. Maybe we should hold a festival to buy them some cheeseburgers before they literally die from lack of meat.

'I'm sure if the animals could kill humans to eat they would.'

Animals don't have humans alleged intelligence do they, so just because say a cat catches a bird that doesn't mean that carting off truckloads of distressed sheep, cows and pigs to be horribly slaughtered is ok.

We have choices, we aren't animals who hunt because they can't pop to tescos and buy alternatives.

I couldnt do it. I think you'd have to have very little empathy to do a job like that. I wouldn't have any as friends put it that way.

Much rather work as a slaughterperson and kill animals than a PIP/ESA assessor and kill humans.

I'm back to add another side - it has been mentioned that workers in the industry can be treated appalling. The factory I worked in is one of the largest in Europe with many plants. They are rigorously and regularly inspected to ensure the workers weren't exploited and their rights were well protected. I'm sure my experience was very different to those on the factory floor but it wasn't as grim as is being made out. The supervisors and floor managers were all early school leavers/Eastern Europeans who worked their way up and were earning really really good money. its very easy to have idealistic opinions when you are very far removed from it.

I don't knot if it's been mentioned but wasn't there a programme on year's ago about an abattoir where the volunteers on the programme had to go and assist with the slaughters in order to determine whether they would still want to eat meat if they had to do the killing themselves?

I'm sure being a lawyer is hard emotionally too but thats a different story. I'm taking about the physical killing of a being and how awful it must be to have to do that for a living so I'm not really sure what you're getting at?

Well, if a defence barrister gets a murderer off on a technicality and then they kill again, well the barrister has played a part in the death of that victim. Likewise with a sex offender.

The comparison I was thinking of whilst reading this thread, though, is people who used to be involved in executions when we had the death penalty. That still happens in the US. That isn't something people supporting the death penalty ever appear to think about, that there will be real people who actually have to do the killings.

To answer the OP's question, it isn't a job I would want to do. But I'm not a vegetarian and I do have cats, who bring dead rabbits, mice and birds into the house and eat cat food. So I wouldn't have a leg to stand on if I made any kind of moral judgement about this work.

As long as the killing is humane. If it isn't then we should all be campaigning against it.

Just googled and there was one on BBC in 2005 called Slaughterhouse The Task of Blood. Its on you tube, it was made to show people what goes on and to make you think about it.

@Mittens030869 The comparison I was thinking of whilst reading this thread, though, is people who used to be involved in executions when we had the death penalty. That still happens in the US. That isn't something people supporting the death penalty ever appear to think about, that there will be real people who actually have to do the killings.

I agree, but maybe it's not as bad as the person is obviously guilty if you know what I mean.

@ItsSpittingEverybodyIn I'm not sure I could sit through it but I bet it's interesting to have an insight.

Bloody hell! Just started watching it I definitely can't get through that. The bloke that works there that they are talking to first his name is Aaron I think, he's totally messed up. Loves killing!

Except that they're not always obviously guilty, and, as the executioners weren't on the jury, they wouldn't know for sure.

Then there are also the jurors who have to decide whether a defendant is guilty or not, and they don't get to choose whether they serve on the jury or not. It's bad enough if the sentence could be life imprisonment, but if it's execution, well all I can say is at least I never faced that dilemma.

And then of course in the past there were soldiers who were conscripted into the army in the two world wars.

I have nothing but respect for them. It's a grim job, not well paid, can't say I would do it but I do eat meat. I think a lot of food production jobs are physically demanding and poorly paid which is why food is cheap in this country.