https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWyK389BJoI

In this short Surge documentary, released on #WorldVeganDay, we meet Doug, Susana and Carl, ex-slaughterhouse workers from the UK, Mexico and New Zealand. Each share their experiences working in the business of killing animals and shine a light on an industry that exists in the shadows of society.

In 1906, the author Upton Sinclair released his novel The Jungle. The book, which became an international bestseller, is a fictionalised account of Sinclair’s experiences interviewing slaughterhouse workers and researching the conditions that they were working in.

In the novel, Sinclair describes the workers becoming so desensitised to violence that the number of brawls, rapes and murder began to rise: “There is but scant account kept of cracked heads in back of the [stock] yards, for men who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families, between times.”

The reality is, we expect people who spend every working day repetitively stabbing chickens, pigs, cows and lambs to hang up their bloody aprons at the end of the day and then just integrate back into normal society. Slaughtering animals is an inherently violent thing to do and the emotional burden of doing so day after day is not something that can shrugged off lightly.

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Not a job you want.