THIS time it knows … and feels … what is being done to it? No, EVERY time it—they—know and feel what is being done to them. Whether you raise them yourself and slaughter them or turn them over to the tender mercies of the slaughterhouse, you are participating in pain and terror that you can't begin to imagine. Some assembly line deaths go a little easier than others, but none are without fear and pain. Videos show us the cow resisting continuing along the chute because she can hear or smell the carnage within. But her resistance is soon overcome. Some animals are not slain by the bolt but only stunned, coming to on the disassembly line to fight and struggle and, often, cause grievous wounds to the workers. Many chickens are only stunned, not killed, by the electric shock along their assembly lines and, instead, drown to death in scalding water. Live baby roosters are fed into macerators, a wood chipper sort of device. Castrations, tail docking and ear trimming or tagging and so on are done without anæsthetic. And on and on. But you probably know all about that and laugh it off.
Some cruelties are every bit the equal of those described in this compelling story. In Korea, for example, dogs are raised as pets and then, on holiday, taken into the country for the family picnic and hung slowly, one foot touching the ground so that the agony lasts a long while, before being killed and roasted. The prolonged suffering is, as the story suggests, thought to make the meat more tender. I was raised on a small farm and our animals suffered when being slaughtered, but nothing like the one time my father decided to have one killed professionally, I suspect because he thought a pro could eliminate the suffering altogether. His misconception was soon corrected; I watched with him—at first, till he sent me into the farmhouse—while the abattoir owner began to section the hog while it yet squealed in agony, bleeding out through its gashed throat as it hung from a sort of crucifix. The goal was to keep the heart pumping as long as possible to make the meat whiter. It was many years before i became a vegan, but that destiny might have begun there in that abattoir.
Yes, as FictionPhial notes, it is remarkable that no one ever considers "not eating the stuff." Including some, I gather, who have read this story. But I think that is the lesson the author intends.