If you truly want to educate yourself about the reality of slaughter and how that meat gets to your table, don’t look at staged pictures such as these, see the real undercover videos, shot when no one knew they were being filmed. See the horror and fear in the animal’s eyes, the pain and agony of slowly dying while being cut apart while still alive and THEN decide for yourself. At the age of 56 after a lifetime of blindly eating meat, I watched the documentary “Earthlings” and then “Meet Your Meat”. It changed my life that very day. I became vegan and have begun to make it my life’s work to educate humans on the horrors that we commit every minute of every day to sentient beings around the globe.

Just part of this process is how milk gets to your table. Did you know it comes from a mother’s incomprehensible grief? The cows are impregnated year after year. Immediately after birth the calves are torn away from them, some with umbilical cords still attached. The females are doomed to a life like their mothers, the males to only a few weeks chained in a veal stall before being killed. The mother mourns and cries out for her baby, while the milk meant for that precious one is taken for humans. Her own life is cut short by this brutal, unrelenting process and then she is trucked to slaughter to endure what all the others do, a horrible and cruel death. Why is this necessary when there are such wonderful alternatives such as soy or rice milk?

Is it worth it? Truly look at the truth and then decide.

I have been a vegetarian for 11 years, since I was 9 years old. Nevertheless to those brave enough to be apart of their meat’s death, I praise you. In response to a previous comment, someone said they didn’t worry how their tofurkey was harvested. I think you should worry about it very much. A great deal of our soy is grown on ex-rainforest. How many species are threatened, people are displaced, and how much environmental damage is caused by the clearing of those lands to grow monoculture industrial soy? How much pollution is created by the way it is grown, processed, packaged, and shipped all over the world? We cannot assume that switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet is good for the environment. If one simply substitutes animal products for imitations you may save a little cruelty and grain from being fed to cows and not much else. I think it is much better drinking milk from a friend’s goat and eating chickens that have been raised nearby in a humane manner than drinking soy dream and eating imitation chic patties. Or even better, perhaps, food processing almonds for almond milk and eating legumes. It is very easy to forget to look at the whole picture, but it’s very important to remember that all food on industrial scales has inhumane consequences.

You are offended by comments here that discredit flesh eating… sorry, but it is an open forum and I see lots of opinions that agree with your views. Fortunately, there are others like myself who realize that eating meat is not only a cruel process but an unhealthy and unnecessary one. Man does not need meat to thrive. A plant based diet is much healthier, has less negative imact to the environment, can ease world starvation, utilizes resources more efficiently… and oh yeah, a plant based diet is kinder to animals. Go Vegan.

We process beef the old fashioned way, by hand, whole carcass, dry aged. We want stress free animals because we market the meat under our own label, low stress means better meat quality. We are 100% vertically integrated, from having calves, raising them their entire life on some of the most beautiful ranches in Northern California, hand selecting which animals we slaughter, processing our own (one of the owners works at every slaughter), and selling it to consumers. We can’t do quantity, nor would we want to. We only produce quality beef.

To answer a few questions: We stun them with a mushroom head stunning device. It’s very quick and painless. We dispose of some of the blood by placing it in a barrel and a tallow truck comes and gets it. The remaining gets washed down the drain and into the industrial septic system. Yes, there is a bin of hooves. Yes, we have a USDA inspector that is on the floor the entire time. We do one animal at a time, and the inspector does a good job of keeping a close eye on everything. No, this was not staged… Chris was up for a photo shoot at the ranch and he found out we were slaughtering the next day, he asked to see it. He brought his camera, asked if he could take a few pictures… I had no idea I’d someday be seeing these pictures online…. I would have reminded Butch to shave!