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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: Inside the Abattoir

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Inside the Abattoir

15/11/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Inside the Abattoir

This episode includes audio of the slaughter of farm animals, which some may find upsetting. But if you happily eat meat, should you be willing to listen along as cows become beef? 

Would you be happy to witness it? And what might change if you did?

Emily Thomas visits Tideford Abattoir, a slaughterhouse in the south of England to get an uncomfortably close up view of animals becoming food.

As our food supply becomes ever more global and industrial, many of us have become distanced from the origins of what we eat. And nowhere, perhaps is this more pronounced, than with animals. Most of the meat we buy bears little resemblance to the breathing, thinking creature it once was. 

Across the world, slaughterhouses, or abattoirs, have long stayed in the shadows, inviting little public scrutiny. But as consumers demand a more transparent food chain, could we be heading towards a more open approach to slaughter? And how would this change our attitudes to meat?

(Photo: Slaughterman with cow carcass. Credit: BBC)

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