I grew up on a ranch. Watched my dad slaughter cows, chickens, rabbits, goats... watched him put down old / injured horses, dogs, and cats. When I got old eno

I grew up on a ranch. Watched my dad slaughter cows, chickens, rabbits, goats... watched him put down old / injured horses, dogs, and cats. When I got old enough I helped. Hardest time was killing and butchering a steer I had trained, and showed in 4H. I think I was like 12 at the time, but you work with an animal all summer... get it trained to follow you around and not pull on the halter... and then the reward is someone buys it to kill it. I ended up being vegetarian for a few years in high school after that. Anyway my only point here was... nobody, and I mean nobody including the PETA activists, cares more about the animals than the ranchers who raised them. One time we were slaughtering a steer and the guy shooting the animal was a dumbass who shot the animal 3 times in the wrong places. Animal was angry, scared, hurt. Dad saw what was going on, jumped the fence as fast as he could, grabbed the gun from the guy, smacked him hard in the face with the gun handle, and then put the animal down as quickly as he could. Dad then yelled at the hired man, using the harshest words I had ever heard at the time, and told him to get lost and never come back. Dad pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the ground to settled up with the man, then just turned his back on him. I'm pretty sure Dad broke the guy's nose, the amount of blood coming off his face was a pretty good indicator of how mad Dad was that he wouldn't show respect to the animal. Similar time, we had been invited over to help a neighbor, and the neighbor's grown son was trying to put a steer down and mistakenly put bird shot in the shotgun instead of a slug -- Dad took the shotgun away from the man. Put the animal down quickly, and then Dad yelled at his neighbor (a man he had known for 20+ years) about what a dipshit his son was. We left and never talked to that neighbor again -- pretty harsh considering we only had about 5 neighbors within 20 miles of us. Factory slaughter houses are different, but if you can buy meat from a local rancher who slaughtered the animal himself you can be fairly sure he did the job humanely.