'I hate to break it to you, but I’m afraid our food
processing industry does involve killing a lot of animals.'
Death in farming is both inevitable and relentless, but it has never been further from our minds.
This is the bit that people really don't like to see,
don’t like to deal with, don’t like to think about.
So they could have died of anything.
Animals die behind closed doors, hidden from view, in huge numbers.
I feel like I can't move. I’m just sort of surrounded by a …
Just, you walk like you're wading.
In the last episode I heard from the activists.
Once you've been confronted with suffering, it changes you.
Now it’s time to meet the industry insiders.
I think sometimes what people imagine it to be
is far worse than what it actually is.
But could confronting this reality really change our view of the meat we eat?
That bolt comes out about four inches.
Which is enough to go to the key part of the brain.
This is our incinerator.
You put your birds in there, the gas burners blow gas into the bottom,
it comes up through the birds and burns them.
With 44,000 free-range hens under his wing,
death is a daily occurrence for farmer Daniel Brown.
No one likes dead animals, do they?
Well it is part and parcel of the job.
Yeah. So that's why I think we shouldn't hide the fact
that some animals die,
we have to treat them with antibiotics, dispose of the dead animals.
Sometimes I think we try and pretend none of that's happening to push back against
what sometimes we feel like is a vegan propaganda machine, I suppose.
We do have a moment going on here, where veganism is a hot topic,
where the environmental impact of our food is important to people.
But it won’t last.
It won't last?
No.
I think it will only go further that way.
No, it won't.
Because once people smell a bacon sandwich, you have to really be committed.
You'll end up with flexitarianism, where you eat less meat.
But I think most people will still be tempted by some good meat.
You don't want to let too many people on-farm because it’s a biosecurity risk.
So you have locked gates, but then it sort of appears like this locked,
hidden thing that no one can look at.
Security is a big issue on farms anyway.
Well, you can get protesters that will just come in
and film themselves at night and things like that.
So, yeah, farms are wary of that.
The dilemma is real and clearly contributes to the lack of understanding between farmers
and activists.
But for one farm visitor, the activists' nightmare
is all in a day’s work.
Where are we going first, Mike?
I think it's a calf to pick up, but sometimes you get there and there can be something else.
There can always be extras.
Larger animals cannot easily be disposed of on-site.
Mike Wilkinson is a knackerman, visiting farms in the north-west to remove dead and dying
livestock.
This is a big farm, this one, the first one we're coming to.
I think they milk about 500 cows.
How often are you down at a farm like this?
Every week.
Really?
Oh yeah, farmers can lose a lot of stock.
Believe me.
I think I've spotted it.
Number one.
What's next?
Cow. Dead, I think. But it might be alive, who knows?
Are you desensitised to it, because it is just a cow, sheep, a thing.
Desensitised to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you think that's in any way problematic?
No, it doesn't bother me one single bit.
I just don't like doing horses, that's all, because they're more of a pet, aren’t they?
Why do we treat horses and dogs, for that matter,
differently to cows and sheep?
Because they're just milking machines aren't they?
What's the going rate for a cow?
I think they're 40 quid now.
Sheep?
£7.50.
It's not a lot of money.
OK. Just a sheep.
Just a sheep.
Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right.
There you go.
Sheep and a lamb.
I definitely got a waft of that one.
Did you? They're fresh.
Are they?
Oh yeah.
They didn't smell fresh.
You'll maybe not eat meat again, if we get any bad ones.
They don't want us to eat meat do they? You know, the shops are full of stuff that's
fake meat now, innit?
Should we be looking to move towards plant-based systems?
Well, it’s started now, hasn’t it?
Is it going quick enough?
Well, I don’t know. Eh up, he's sent us a job.
Quickens the pulse a little bit?
Click and collect, it’s like working for Amazon, Argos.
Click and collect.
Your skills are completely transferrable to be an Amazon delivery driver.
All right. What's to pick up?
Dead calf.
When I first started the job, I didn't realise how much stock
a farmer can lose, but they've got hundreds and hundreds of animals,
you know what I mean?
Some farmers lose a lot more than others, though.
Is that due to bad management?
Yeah, I think so.
Do you know what happened to this calf? – Born dead.
It's just one of them things, isn't it? It's not good news, but …
Purely from a monetary sense, or?
Well, no one likes having dead animals around, do they?
It happens.
For every one that goes wrong, there's a hundred that go right, isn't there?
We've got a cow to shoot.
Cow to shoot? It's like a drill.
Yeah. Oh, it’s heavy.
Is there all manner of different things that these animals are dying of?
Oh yeah.
Like what?
The list is endless. A lot of the time you never know. Who knows?
Farmers don't always know. They'll do a full autopsy if they've lost a few.
They'll think, hey, there's something going on here.
But one or two?
No.
Just goes with the territory.
Right. Cow to shoot next.
Presumably, these are the sort of jobs which you really don't look forward to.
[I'm] used to it, just get on and do it.
Somebody's got to do it. Yeah, yeah.
This cow could be anywhere.
You want to make sure you get the right one.
Might be. Might be the one in that field.
I don’t think it looks very happy.
The other cow’s gone to have a little look and ...
It's difficult not to project what you think they're doing, isn't it?
Hiya alright? Which cow is it?
Oh, in the big yard.
Yeah. It’s them that’s flat out?
Yeah that’s the one.
That’s our baby.
There you go.
That's it.
All right, that's that.
That was efficient.
That one was, yeah.
What do you think they made of it?
They’ll know, because they’ll go and sniff where,
you know what I mean? They'll know. Yeah, they're not stupid.
No, no, no, I know.
No, the cows know.
They've got a bit of brain, a cow, actually.
Yeah.
Right, let's get in this wagon.
I look at the animals you’re picking up
and I think of the individual, right,
and the fact that this cow had a life, probably not much of a life,
and is now being dragged on to the back of a truck.
And it feels … I don’t know, I feel something, I suppose.
Well, it’s got to go somewhere, hasn’t it?
Oh, no totally.
If everything lived, we’d be overrun.
Well, we are overrun.
We are.
In the UK, we eat 30m eggs a day.
Even a free-range farm such as Dan’s has to balance
the welfare of its hens with the economic reality of this demand.
It's quite busy because at night they all go up there to sleep.
And then when they wake up at about 5am, they will come down here and they can go outside
from 9am every morning.
How do you possibly tell whether one has died in the night or anything like that?
You walk around with baskets picking up these floor eggs.
Yeah.
When you just see one laid there not moving, your eye expects to see movement and it doesn't.
It goes from looking like something really industrial
when you're in there, but then when the doors open,
they're off for the day and out.
I feel like a bit of a celebrity.
They're just really inquisitive.
They're really interested in us, aren't they?
Is there an issue in how we can't possibly think
of these animals as individuals?
No. They’re group animals, if one gets ill, they probably are all feeling under the weather.
If one's happy, they're all happy.
Do they like being handled?
Not all of them, obviously.
But do they like it?
Well, we've got a mindset in the west that we think all animals are Disney animals.
We anthropomorphise animals and think that they have human emotions,
but they don't think like humans.
They think like a chicken.
They think, am I well fed? Am I watered? Have I laid my egg?
They don't like any break in the routine. That's when you get problems.
Their life is pretty short.
It is quite short. Yeah, a year and a half and then they are collected up and slaughtered.
They will always end up as nuggets, soups, stews, that kind of thing.
But they could live a lot longer.
Eventually, it has to die.
You've got to give it as good a life as you can until that point, I think.
Dan takes me back inside to deal with the day’s mortalities.
There's been two dead in house three, one in house two and one in the house over there.
So four today.
Four today. The deads will be put in this blue box
and they get put in the freezer
until the freezer’s full and then we fire up the incinerator.
That’s the hearse.
The majority of farmed animals die at the abattoir,
where huge numbers of livestock are dealt with every day.
With most animals travelling to industrial-size slaughterhouses
around the country, smaller abattoirs are struggling to stay afloat.
Hello.
You all right?
Yes.
We’ve got masks there if you want to wear them.
I mean, it looks good. Right.
Today we're going to process some lambs.
How many?
56 lambs, yeah, yeah, so small amounts.
OK.
While larger abattoirs focus on high volume, the Mettrick brothers believe they can offer
a more bespoke service.
So we’re just going to give you a look over - we don't want to get in with the animals
or spook them at all.
A big part of the problem with larger abattoirs is the fact that these animals will be travelling
in very hot conditions, potentially for hundreds of miles, even.
Us as a business, and us as a small abattoir industry,
want to see more small abattoirs and a distribution
of them over the country so animals don't have
to travel so far to slaughter.
That isn't the way things are going.
It isn't the way things are going.
And it's very frustrating when we can tick so many boxes with regard to animal welfare
and traceability.
There has been a concentration on volume and I think it's time to redress that balance.
So we'll go through the other side where we can get a better look. It is a bit of a maze.
It is a maze.
Every door looks the same.
Shall we start at the top end and work our way through?
How does this differ from a larger abattoir?
These men can do all the different processes.
These guys are treating each individual animal, and some of these lads who are here will be
selling this lamb
at the end of the week.
This was my granddad's butcher shop.
I still get people talking in the shop now about seeing
the carcasses hung on the rail, in the shop, with the customers.
It's amazing how quickly people dissociated the meat from the animal.
At what point is that, the removal of the fleece?
No, I think it's the head.
Once an animal becomes unrecognisable, then it's something good to eat.
I think it's something that's innate, and I think some people think they're going
to be repulsed
by actually seeing an animal killed and whatever.
And sometimes the reality is different.
Do you want to go and have a look at the CCTV stuff?
All abattoirs are now legally required to have CCTV cameras installed across the site.
As the resulting footage can be emotive, it’s a side of the business that even
the most humane slaughtermen are wary of showing.
The sheep are taken through into this area here
and the stunning equipment actually renders the animals unconscious.
And he’ll look for an animal where he can put the tongs
on the head of the animal.
So the animal now is stunned.
And he's now going to put it on an elevator, which works like a ski lift.
If you move to camera seven you'll see he's already
killed the animal straight away.
So the animal is already bleeding out.
This is the contentious part, and for you it must be difficult to show?
Yeah, it is very difficult for us to show because
some people will look at this
and say those animals are still alive.
It's hard to explain to people that that is an involuntary action.
Do you, as part of your work here, focus at all
on the individual life that you're killing?
You have to focus on the animal as an individual because every animal can be different.
We are trying to consider the animals both as individuals and also in the way that they
behave as a species.
They’re sentient beings, they can feel pain.
They have actually been bred for a purpose, which is food.
It's all about telling people this is how it is.
If you want to eat meat, this is how it's produced.
And we do run the risk of people misinterpreting what we do and making us a target.
And that is a worry for us.
But if small abattoirs are going to survive and people are going to understand why
they're important, then somebody has to say something.
Back at the farm, it’s time to dispose of the latest batch of dead hens.
So, we check the temperature, so now we can put our birds in.
I just wanted to sort of get a sense of how far
removed we are from the nuts and bolts of death in farming.
Doesn't the entire culture pretend that death doesn't happen?
And you just have to manage it as respectfully and pragmatically as you can, I suppose.
I don't like filling the incinerator, but now it's filled, I'm not going to
be thinking about it at teatime today.
Otherwise, you couldn't carry on, could you?
The sheer scale of livestock farming inevitably makes us look at these animals collectively.
But our desire to ignore this world comes at a cost – both to the individual people
who work long hours in difficult jobs to put food on our plates,
but also to the individual animals whose lives mean little more than meat.