Suffering the horrid conditions inside, and judgment outside, these individuals do the dirty work for us. Hidden from the public’s eye, they face the results of speciesism and the hierarchy of value almost daily. The toll it takes on their mental health is unbearable, turning both worker and animal into victims, as well as products, of society.

“At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows’ heads. Each one of them had been flayed, with all of the saleable flesh removed. But one thing was still attached – their eyeballs. Whenever I walked past that skip, I couldn’t help but feel like I had hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me. Some of them were accusing, knowing that I’d participated in their deaths. Others seemed to be pleading, as if there were some way I could go back in time and save them. It was disgusting, terrifying and heart-breaking, all at the same time. It made me feel guilty. The first time I saw those heads, it took all of my strength not to vomit …”

“… And at night, when I close my eyes and try to sleep, I still sometimes see hundreds of pairs of eyeballs staring back at me.”