Based on past personal experience, it would seem that any movie Ms. Zacharek thinks is dreary might actually be worth shelling out movie-ticket prices to go and see in the theater. I was looking forward to seeing this, now even more so.

As is everyone who worked on this film. Think about how many times you have ever seen footage of a slaughterhouse: for most of us it's a number very close to zero. And the reason for this is that we're a society in denial. And the more in denial we are the more we consume, denying ourselves our natural connection to, and empathy with animals, and by extension with all the vulnerable and helpless aspects of life around us - including parts of ourselves.

I've read My Year of Meat and it sounds similar.

However, I won't be seeing this film. Because I already know and I've already seen how needlessly cruel and inhumane the production of meat, non organic dairy products and leather and fur is, and I abjure them because of it.

But people who do eat meat and wear and eat animal products need to know, and they need to see.

It's an amazing achievement to have a mass release high production value film about this topic coming to a screen near you. I never would have thought it would happen.

For people who have worked on farms or have harvested their own meat in the wild, the fact that meat comes from real animals that must be killed will not come as a shock. Of course, it is only natural that humans eat meat, as do many other animals in nature. What is unnatural is that too many of us have become detached from the actual killing and processing of meat as food.

As a veterinarian, I've had the privilege, during my education, to visit several slaughterhouses of different types (beef, sheep, and poultry) and sizes (very small, with five people doing all the work, to very large, with dozens if not hundreds of employees). I've walked from the clean end, where the cuts of meat are neatly packaged into nearly hermetically sealed and sanitized containers, and worked backward, going from clean to "dirty", ending up at that final ramp where the next cow walks into that area where it is stunned.

It is jarring. Anyone who has seen it is jarred by it. Not because it is inhumane but because it is so quick. In less than an instant that cow's brain is hit with such force that it is dead - instantly. The cow literally drops because it's gone. Death is quick and humane. It sounds to me like this movie dramatically frames that scene and manipulates people, like Ms. Zacharek, to believe it is inhumane. It may be that the writers/directors/producers are simply ignorant of what humane slaughter is, and more broadly, that animal agriculture is not always pretty and hermetically sealed.

Witnessing death, especially one which occurs so quickly, is always unsettling. As another letter writer pointed out, we are very removed from where our food comes from. Meat was once an animal, and its sacrifice is required if we are to consume it. How else would you suggest that we slaughter an animal? The USDA Humane Slaughter Act requires that an animal be rendered senseless before its death (with the exception of Kosher and Halal slaughter). Stunning, as is done in the movie, effectively renders the animal senseless AND kills it. With the work that scientists like Dr. Temple Grandin have done, many of the walkways leading up to the slaughterhouses have even been designed to decrease the stress and fear cows experience.

On another note, organic may sound bucolic and "pure", more like the "old days" of agriculture. And in a way it is... before antibiotics. I'm not talking about growth-promoting antibiotics. I'm talking about antibiotics that can save the lives and reduce great suffering in animals with active infections. Legally, producers cannot use antibiotics in even sick animals and still sell them as organic. Farmers by and large are honest people, but there are those that would sacrifice the health and welfare of the animal and withhold antibiotics when they are necessary to make a bigger profit on an "organic" animal... one that may be very diseased and which we then eat.

So please think beyond the shiny labels of "organic" and "natural" on those hermetically sealed packages of meat, dairy, and eggs. Marketing has come a long way, and without actually knowing how the animal was raised, those labels don't mean much.

So long as poverty is depicted as "funny" most white middle class movie reviewers will give movies a passing grade. (I wonder what kind of review someone actually living in the ghetto and working at a horrible job just to survive would give this movie?)

The conditions animals live in on mass-factory farms are not funny.

The way animals are slaughtered is not funny nor is it in anyway "humane."

The lives of people barely making enough to eat -- the ones working at fast food dives and slitting the throats of cows -- are not funny.

See, life isn't just about beautiful people in Laguna Beach worrying about what club to go to.

One has to wonder what Steph was thinking when she said the movie was to "serious" for her liking overall.

Life at poverty wages can either be depicted as "Clerk 2" or it can be depicted as it really is....in all it's blood, guts and gore.

One depiction makes it much easier to ignore it, if not dismiss it altogether and go shopping. Or clubbing.

After I read Fast Food nation, I pretty much swore off eating meat..any kind. But after 2 months of trying to be vegetarian and after working late late nights (where there wasnt availability of open decent veggie restaurants), I couldnt take it any more and reverted to eating meat though not as regularly. Part of problem (at least in the area I stay) is there are hardly any restaurants that serve delicious vegetarian food. An even networks such as Food channel and the media in general dont seem to encourage vegetarian cooking.

I told a lot of my friends about the way food is prepared here and the way animals are killed, people exploited. Most of them didnt seem to care and shrugged off my comments. They said "oh you are just another loonie tree hugging liberal". Thing is..you cant convince most Americans (except maybe SF liberals) to voice their opinion against these abhorrent practises. Because people love meat and meat now is cheap (sure it is rancid and there is shit in it, but they dont know that and dont wanna know).