—A speech script on Slaughterhouse Animal Abuse

Imagine being cooped up in a dark, stuffy cubicle all day until you feel suffocated, until you are so plumped up that your legs cannot support the weight of your body, until someone comes to bleed you dry when you are fully conscious, until people come to dissect and celebrate your lifeless body. Welcome to the life of a slaughterhouse animal.

I wish I could have begun this speech with a kinder description, a more inspiring hook, a less gut-wrenching illustration, but I cannot, because this is a cold hard truth and softening it would be an insult to the suffering cattle. And that's the thing. They suffer. It truly doesn't matter how much profit is made out of this, or how many plates it would fill, the bottomline is they suffer. So let's open this overdue conversation.

In January 2025, a USDA inspector documented her experience at a meat processing facility in Montana. She had watched an employee render over five attempts to kill a cow using a 12-gauge gun, prolonging its suffering after the initial shots. She witnessed a cow remain standing after two shots to the head, and later, she saw an employee repeatedly kicking a sheep in the ribs and face. This last act has shown that it's not just about the meat or the profit anymore. It's cruelty gone out of hand, spontaneous brutality thrown carelessly on helpless animals, raw inhumanity jerked out of individuals within a brash workplace.

How, I often think after I heard about this case, how can somebody live with themselves for doing something like this? This isn't just about an inaccurate shot or an inexperienced hit anymore. This is an ironic show of cruel humanity, a statement of the lengths humans will got to for profit. And it's not just Montana either.

• In Brazil, workers have been found to twist cows' tails, shock them for fun, and slaughter fully conscious animals;
• in Yorkshire, staff were sacked for hacking at sheep and throwing them into structures afterwards;
• in Mexico, pigs were exposed to have been dragged by their limbs and stabbed repeatedly to death.

And, what about all the crimes that weren't against the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and Ethical Treatment of Animals? What about the approximated ten million male chickens grinded and gassed to death annually all over the world because of their gender, or the factories speeding up production lines to slaughter more animals per hour, or the slaughtering of heavily pregnant pigs so that their fetuses would suffocate slowly inside, or…You know what, I cannot keep on listing all this cruelty. If I go on, I will feel too much pain, ironically. All you have to know is, animals have minds, and souls, and hearts, and the ability to suffer. And that is why they hurt, that is why we hurt, that is why, as the days drag on, we can no longer sit aside. Let's talk about the solutions.

To start, I believe that strengthening the voice objecting to these unspeakable acts of cruelty is essential. We need everyone to join in the movement: and not every individual has to contribute physically, just caring is enough. This step can be better achieved when there are more influential people speaking out about the issue (hypothetically speaking, Taylor Swift). That would encourage their admirers and other crowds to at least consider joining in, but for that to be accomplished this issue has to be more public or influential first, and to do that people have to care (therefore completing the process circle).

After that, a crucial step is to promote the use of artificial meat and Seitan. That will reduce the amount of slaughterhouses needed. It will not be a smooth transition, the number of people working in the slaughterhouse is too high for the slaughterhouse industry to fade from the picture, but encouraging more and more slaughterhouse industrialists to convert to the artificial meat industry will help. Once tested to be safety-guaranteed, artificial meat actually reduces the amount of chemicals or animal diseases we consume daily. An artificial meat expert, Jane Deer, had confirmed this in 2024 December by speaking out about the process of producing artificial meat. "People see it as a crude food," she said, "but trust me, it'll be worth your time." To think about it, advancing the artificial meat industry also introduces a new and enticing fabrication into the food carpet, inviting new potential customers (notably vegetarians). If done correctly, progressing the artificial meat industry is beneficial for everyone—from animals to industrialists, all the way to vegetarians. It will be a vexing, wearisome and bumpy process, it is possible that customers will be lost or corporations will lose touch along the way, but I believe that the result is worth it. After all, what is there not to give when we have the opportunity to make the world a little less brutal and a with a lot more love for animals?

The solution I have composed is definitely idealistic and perhaps not realistic, but impossibles have come to possibles in the past, and I am hoping with all of my might that this will be one of those cases. Because, if it doesn't…who knows what will happen to the world?

All of this, all this cruelty, brutality, suffering and loss, originated from profit. And what is profit but flimsy pieces of green paper earning you shoes twice a month? I fully comprehend that there are families to feed, that not all slaughterhouse workers are monsters, but that is a whole other issue (poverty's impact on life on land and the environment). Today, we're just talking about slaughterhouse animal abuse. We're just talking about the cost, of stripping an animal's soul away. We're just talking about the humanity lost on humankind, despite gained profit, every time we murder an animal unjustly or cruelly.

More importantly, we're just talking about a bottomline. Politicians and business men had wasted themselves away for profit, until they had no bottomline, no horizon for a pause, a second of conscience. Luckily, there is a bottomline for the world. I believe there has always been a bottomline for human kind. And the bottom line is, animals suffer. And that's why we fight.

Thank you.

Situ

May 2025