Related aside: I used to raise beef cattle, and the amount of products cow "stuff"/byproducts goes into is amazing. There's nearly nothing simply thrown out (except blood, I suppose).
Killing itself is actually a very interesting process. Cow is led through a series of corridors to a single-cow pen resembling their feeding spots in a cowshed. It puts it's head trough a familiar U-shaped opening (or has to be pushed a little by remotely controllable hind side wall/gate). There it get's calmed down by a slaughterman with a license to kill. He then grabs a big, ceiling mounted, pneumatic bolt gun and skillfully shoots the cow in a specific spot on the forehead (bolt retracts after the shot). This stuns the cow and it literally falls to the ground with it's legs straightened out(1).
After stunning, the whole single pen rotates on the back-front (in relation to cow position) axis, by 90 degrees. What was the side wall becomes floor and what was the floor becomes the wall (it's L-shaped). There the difficult part starts. A man in the other room has only seconds to tie a chain to a hind leg and lift the cow before the cow starts kicking. The smoother the process, the more time there is. Halfway trough the lifting it is paused to stab the cow in the main artery, so the cow can momentarily bleed out and as a consequence die.
This other room is a place of carnage with floor covered in blood, most of it flowing trough floor grates into big tanks on the floor below. It would be pretty problematic to have the cow aproach by itself if there was only one room with floor covered in blood. Cows still smell what's happening but this L-shaped flipper helps keep a resemblance of normality.
0: https://www.theearthawards.org/red-recycling-how-abattoirs-p...
1: There is a phrase in Polish "Wyciągnąć kopyta" meaning "to die", which literally means "to straighten out one's hooves". Used mostly in books or by older people. I saw it used in books for many years before I witnessed it in reality at work. I guess the people of the past were much more aware of where the meat comes from.
I'm sure there is at least once slaughterhouse in Europe doing that. I am skeptical that it uniformly matches European practices, but I'm not well informed on that topic.
In English: to kick the bucket.
In Spanish: estirar la pata.
This is a theory. You need to see movie Dominion [0] to see the reality.
*mechanically separated meat is something different, composed primarily of non-meat carcass material. Mechanically separated beef is not allowed for human consumption due to the risk of made cow disease. Mechanically separated pork is still part of hot dogs and similar meat products.
Also it tastes bad, but that's mostly due to texture rather than taste-bud-response per se, so it presumably works fine in applications where that doesn't matter.
> Is there anyone who thinks we shouldn't use the entire animal if we do kill it?
As someone who is actively in favor of factory farming, I also don't see any reason not use every piece of the animal that can be productively used - to do otherwise would be, by definition, pointlessly inefficient.
FTR once you killed an animal it makes no sense not to use it fully so I agree with you - but that wasn't my point, had nothing to do with it.
I'm not sure why this is hard to grasp, unless your entire premise is that killing animals for human use is innately immoral and unacceptable. To that, I simply disagree.
how is that relevant?
> the animal was killed, so isn't it more respectful to use as much of it as possible
'respectful' - using that word about an animal you've killed is self-deceit. The animal is dead, and when it was alive it had no concept of 'respect'. Deluded talk.
I also don't get the point of your related aside. My post was about animal suffering, not use of the carcass so it looks like you're changing the subject.
Similarly, as a hunter what I consider "respectful" you appear to consider "deluded." Arguing over that seems like arguing over religion and isn't something I'm interested in doing today. Have a great Friday!
