Kill It, Cook It, Eat It is a very smart show from BBC 3. I’ve only watched the beef episode and it’s drawn out to fill an hour, but you can skip to the end of part three for the moment of truth, minus the smell and what must be a near tangible moment of empathy.
From that moment on it’s mostly a discussion of what makes grass-fed, sustainably produced meat delicious. Not necessary, not inevitable, not ordained; just delicious.
There’s no way they could run this on standard cable in the U.S. let alone broadcast. (Who would sponsor that hour? Carl’s Jr: you’re all talk and no action.)
And the whole experience on Kill It… is already far removed from factory farming. That’s a sight few want to see. Not even those who are paid to do so:
Today, roughly two-thirds of the workers at the beef plant in Greeley cannot speak English. Most of them are Mexican immigrants who live in places like the River Park Mobile Court, a collection of battered old trailers a quarter-mile down the road from the slaughterhouse…A spokesman for ConAgra recently acknowledged that the turnover rate at the Greeley slaughterhouse is about 80 percent a year. That figure actually represents a decline from the early 1990s.