According to a report in New Scientist, researchers say that if people reduced their intake of beef, pork, and other meat products, the fight against climate change would become massively easier.

Courtesy of the World Society for the Protection of Animals

"For a mouthful of meat..."

A veterinarian student in a slaughterhouse

A report by Christiane M. Haupt

The inscription above the concrete ramps reads: 'Only animals that are transported in accordance with animal protection laws and that are correctly identified are accepted’. At the end of the ramp lies a dead pig, pale and stiff. 'Yes, some die already during transport. From cardiac arrest.'

Luckily I have brought my old jacket. At the beginning of October it is already freezing cold. That, however, is not the only reason for me to shiver. I bury my hands in my pockets and try to keep a friendly face as I listen to the director of the abattoir. He explains that for a long time there has been no complete health check on animals, only an inspection. 700 pigs per day – how else could they cope?

“There are no sick animals anyway. They would be sent back immediately, and the supplier would face a stiff fine. They only try it once and then never again.” I nod obligingly – stay calm. Keep a stiff upper lip. You have to get through these six weeks somehow – and wonder what happens to sick pigs. “There is a special abattoir for them.”
I hear about transport regulations and how important the protection of animals is these days. These words, pronounced in a place like this, have a macabre ring to them.
In the meantime a double-decker lorry has pulled up at the ramp. Screams and grunts emerge from it. It is difficult to distinguish details in the dim morning light; the whole scene seems surreal and is reminiscent of sinister television reports from war zones - rows of grey train wagons into which terrified, pale-faced people are being driven by armed men. All of a sudden I find myself in the middle of the horror. This is the stuff nightmares are made of, from which one awakes in a cold sweat, terrified – surrounded by fog and icy cold, in the dirty half-light of this repulsive building, this flat anonymous block of concrete, steel and white tiles at the edge of a frozen wood: it is here where the indescribable happens, that nobody wants to know about.
The cries are the first thing I hear when I arrive to start my practical training. It is obligatory; a refusal to participate would have meant five years of studies gone to waste and the end to all my future plans. Nevertheless, every fibre in my body, every thought in my head screams rejection. I am disgusted and shocked and feel utterly helpless. Being forced to watch, being unable to help. They are forcing me to participate, to soil myself with blood.
As I get off the bus, even from a distance the screams of the pigs cut through me like a knife. For six weeks this sound will be in my ears, hour after hour, without respite. Stand firm. For me there is an end to this ordeal. For the animals, there isn’t.

This is one of the things one has nightmares about, from which one awakes in a cold sweat, terrified.