I'm glad to hear that, Qin; at least you're aware of what's going on with those lovely food-processing corporations. Yeah, I guess livestock are just 'primitive' animals compared to the superiority of intelligent, self-aware animals. We are animals, aren't we? Maybe this is just about animal rights, or maybe it's about life in general.

"But i'm sure there is a minimum standard in which we can treat them. We will still kill them for food, but why not make it less painful for it. A sharp knife, and a swift movement of the hand will end it there and then. We can still argue about whether killing it slowly or quickly does not make much of a difference, we are still taking life....personally, i believe there is a difference."

Two problems occurr with that statement:

1.) Referring to "it", you are still objectifying animals.

“Because we have objectified animals, we are able to treat them impersonally” (Barry Lopez). [dictionary.com]

With a numb mentality, I hardly think the person holding the knife gives a flying monkey's ass whether the pig bleeding in front of him is in a state of pain. The ambivalence of caring for humane reasons and professional apathy only sets a confusing state of regression, moral and otherwise. Which leads me to:

2.) What makes you think killing is easy? Apparently you have not seen some of Hitchcock's more grisly movies, as he seemed to be one of the only directors who did not create a bloody golden pedestal for guns and high bodycounts (not that those are bad). And yes, of course there's a difference between torturing and outright murdering. Here, I'll enlighten you with some of the ways people were tortured back in the day:

1. Suspended by one foot.
2. Suspended by both feet.
3. Raised on the cross, head uppermost.
4. Nailed to the cross, head downwards.
5. Hung up by both arms, heavy weights being attached to the feet.
6. Woman suspended by the hair.
7. Hung up by one arm only, ponderous stones being fastened to their feet.
8. Tortured by means of the iron claw or pincers.
9. Torn with the hooks.
10. Mangled with the iron currycombs.
11. Hung from the wooden horse and scorched with the flame of torches.
12. Suspended by his feet from a pulley and tortured in a like fashion.
13. Thrown head-first into a caldron full of molten lead or boiling oil.
14. Put in a hot frying-pan.
15. Plunged into a boiling pot.
16. Dismembered limbs put in a frying-pan.
17. Laid on the iron bed and broiled.
18. Hand is filled with incense mingled with live coals, and who being constrained by the pain to scatter the incense, is said to have made sacrifice to the idol.
19. Clad in the iron tunic and shod with the red-hot shoes, which consume the flesh off his bones.
20. Seated in the iron chair, while a red-hot helmet, or morion, is set on his head.
21. Compelled to walk over burning coals, while molten lead, boiling pitch, or like substances, are poured over his head.
22. Cast into a burning fiery furnace.
23. Set in a tun, or cask, and burned therein.
24. Burned in a room, or chamber, that hath been set on fire.
25. Bound hand and foot and set on a blazing pile.
26. Bound to four pegs fixed in the ground, with a fire burning underneath.
27. Bound with ropes drenched in oil and consumed by a fire lighted under him.
28. Thrown into a pit full of live coals.
29. Iron shovel for stirring and rousing the fire.
30. Martyr stabbed in the throat with a dagger.
31. Sewn up in a bag, together with a cock, a viper, an ape, and a dog, and thrown into the nearest sea or stream.

Okay, so maybe all these techniques only happen to apply exclusively to Christian Martyrs (mainly recorded between 1591-1600) but I think the point is clear as burning daylight.

Isn't the human race superbly creative?

Qin also said this...

"All that delicious red meat on ur plate were made up of dead rotting corpse."

...which reminded me that Frost said this...

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

...so, we are what we eat. I suppose.

-bry

*seriously though, it looks like he's saying "processed" and not "possessed".