A Great Moral Blind Spot of Our Age

‘If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls’

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian,” Paul McCartney has said.

Perhaps for that reason, slaughterhouses and factory farms have not only thick walls but also often barbed wire fences. Yet every now and then we catch a peek of what goes on behind those walls. One glimpse comes from video taken by an undercover investigator who worked at a chicken slaughterhouse in Dobson, N.C., from June through September.

The investigator, an employee of the nonprofit Animal Outlook, shared the video with me, and it........

© The New York Times