That is just so sad, and makes me rethink my eating habits. Or at least who I purchase from.

I do remember that people like this have studied animal behavior more closely and used it to make the design of slaughterhouses more humane. But interestingly she also observed that animals have the ability to hide pain:

https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/temple-grandin-on-why-slaug...

Yes, actually all animals know to hide their pain. Why ? Because they have to.

When a predator sees a group of possible preys, the first thing he does is to observe the them to detect the weakest one. Hence the weakest animal has to hide his pain/sickness and pretend to be ok.

In this context, when female mammals give birth, they automatically eat their placenta and lick the blood on the floor: to leave almost no traces that would give clues to predators that birth has taken place (to protect their offspring, in other words)

Placenta is also very nutritive.

Reminds me of the The Katering Show. They did an episode on making placenta lasagna, called plasagna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LhgJjicMz8

Likewise when many animals vomit they eat the vomit again, especially predators where the food is hard won and highly dense in nutrition. Finding food is really difficult in nature and something as high quality as a placenta is not reasonable to waste.

I don’t know how you’re going to change your buying habits to avoid this. The story described actually sounds humane. There is no awesome way to kill an animal for slaughter. The entire point also was the animals knew when you’re taken to this place you don’t come back and die. This involves an intelligence and knowledge of mortality and the past, which in an animal farm that slaughters their own cattle, is unavoidable. My experience is even at farms that transport for slaughter the animals know this is where past animals have disappeared to and the anxiety can be very high among animals.

I always find it surprising people think animals aren’t aware of mortality, their impending death, etc. Spending time with animals it becomes clear, at least in my experiences, that the primary difference between their experience and ours is the ability to communicate it and that life writ large has a very similar existential experience.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. And I too find it surprising how people often downplay animal sentience and awareness, and capacity for suffering. There is ample evidence of these in primates, cetaceans, birds such as corvids, and domestic animals like dogs and cats.

But killing a large animal, like a cow, by hand using a knife is hardly "humane" or "unavoidable". The slaughtered animal would experience severe pain and awareness of its situation before it eventually loses consciousness.

I wonder how animals understand death, because to understand death they'd need to understand consciousness and the lack of it, and I feel like that's human level complex thinking. Animals have logic, of course, IF predator is coming at me THEN I have to run for my life BECAUSE ... because they run on instinct? Because their herd does the same? Because they've learnt about what death is?

Mountain goats have probably slipped and fallen off cliffs, but I doubt they have fear of heights. Interestingly they probably are able to calculate whether a jump is doable or not, but do they doubt themselves? I guess cats and dogs show doubt..

I think it’s strange to believe as evolved animals like them we somehow evolved awareness of ourselves when nothing else did and every other animals is basically a reactionary meat machine operating on preprogrammed instinct. This feels like something more likely intensely fundamental to most animals but our lack of experience with them in our life makes us doubt. But pet owners know for a fact their pets are aware and think and feel in some approximate way to how we do. I think life, death, and consciousness are all hallmarks of most animals experience. In fact I think it’s fundamental to adaptability to complex and new experiences in the wild and survival and is why complex animals are more complex on their behavior than say single celled animals.

If done right the time of awareness is brief when slaughtering with a knife. A bolt gun is better for sure but not guaranteed by any measure. The truth is it is more about the person than the tool - their experience, thoughtfulness, and compassion.

But the suffering doesn’t start with the fatal injury and suffering is often less about pain and more about the torment of what’s about to happen. That’s true for people and for animals. IMO that’s the point

Their ability to communicate with us. I’m sure they communicate among themselves just fine. Us humans just unilaterally decided that inter species communication is a requirement for sentience, even though we’re also incapable of it.

> Or at least who I purchase from.

There is no ethical slaughter.

Plants feel distress too, we are just happily ignorant of it; not too different from people who are happily ignorant of the fact that meat doesn't just appear in the grocery store.

While I cannot encourage it, ceasing to live and reproduce is the best way to reduce the suffering you cause to other life forms to sustain yourself, and reduce your resource burden on the planet, and if that's what you value, not doing so would be defined as hypocritical.

Although I disagree with the GP, neither of your arguments are fully thought through.

> Plants feel distress too, we are just happily ignorant of it; not too different from people who are happily ignorant of the fact that meat doesn't just appear in the grocery store.

Yet meat introduces an additional, unnecessary layer of suffering while also increasing the amount of plant suffering (you need far more than 1kg of feed to produce 1kg of meat). If everyone ate only plants, the amount of plant suffering would decrease. Unless you go to the absolute and define any amount of suffering as fully equal, this argument is not a defense for meat production.

> While I cannot encourage it, ceasing to live and reproduce is the best way to reduce the suffering you cause to other life forms to sustain yourself, and reduce your resource burden on the planet, and if that's what you value, not doing so would be defined as hypocritical.

Again, you're taking the absolutist route that reducing the suffering of animals isn't worth anything unless it fully eliminates suffering. Incremental improvements are worth it, because they still reduce suffering. This is the "you want to improve society, yet you take part in it, how curious" argument in disguise - and it's pretty disgusting to apply it here.

Oh man, that’s horrible, that definitely makes me rethink my eating habits as well, oy

This is why we need cellular agriculture

I lived across from a farm in Ireland for a few years, and sometimes I heard the most horrible wailing coming from the barn across the road. It was about 180 meters away, so quite loud.

I asked a mutual neighbour the next day "were they slaughtering the cows last night?" And they just said "oh, no, they just took the calves away and the cows get sad".

As a parent myself I feel worse about dairy than beef. Weirdly I think I'd be more comfortable eating a carnivore than an herbivore. That feels more "fair", in a sense. But it's a horrendously inefficient way to get calories.

Oddly this is one of the things factory farms try to do better. From what I have heard, because they don't have time to deal with spooked cattle when killing so many of them, the whole killing area is designed so they don't know what's coming until the last moment.

Factory farms do not make animals suffer less, quite the opposite

No, factory farms are indifferent to suffering. The suffering or wellbeing of the animals means absolutely nothing either way unless it affects efficiency or profit.

Factory farms optimize efficiency and profit, not suffering. That the most efficient and profitable methods tend to cause greater suffering is merely a coincidence.

There is no malice, just indifference.

Looks like you're making up a strawman to ague with. But either way, I hope no one is ever indifferent to the suffering of you or your family. Sounds like hell.

"Factory farm" is the wrong term to use here. This is specifically about the slaughterhouse, which might have almost no connection with the farm.