What about the slaughterhouse workers, don't they need the jobs?
Short answer: Slaughter work is among the most traumatic, dangerous and poorly paid jobs there is, defending the industry on jobs defends one of the worst employers there is.
The objection
“Whatever you think of the animals, millions of people depend on these jobs. Going vegan throws workers on the scrapheap.”
The answer
It’s worth taking seriously, so look at what the job actually is.
Slaughterhouse work is consistently one of the most dangerous and lowest-paid jobs in the economy, with punishing injury rates and brutal line speeds. It’s disproportionately done by migrants and people with the fewest other options, a last resort the industry leans on rather than a prize anyone is protecting.
And it leaves a mark. A systematic review of the research links the work to serious psychological harm, a recognised pattern sometimes called perpetration-induced traumatic stress, plus elevated depression, anxiety and substance abuse. There’s a more startling finding too: the presence of a slaughterhouse is associated with higher rates of violent crime in the surrounding community, an effect not explained by other factors. Asking people to kill, all day, every day, does something to them.
So “think of the workers” cuts the other way. Defending animal agriculture on jobs means defending one of the worst employers of vulnerable people there is.
Nobody is proposing we throw workers on the scrapheap. The answer is a just transition, the same as for any declining industry: retraining and investment as demand shifts to plant-based and cultivated food, which need farmers, factories and workers too. Protecting people means not trapping them on the kill line, not preserving it.