If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls, Would You Still Look Away?

As the holiday roast approaches and kitchens fill with warmth, one question slices through all the familiar cheer: how do we keep celebrating and keep eating, what we can’t bear to truly see?

It’s a simple thought experiment with unsettling implications.

Imagine walking down the meat aisle, but instead of meat in packaging featuring cartoon-like mascots, you are confronted with a transparent wall. Behind it: a real slaughterhouse, its machinery clanging, its floor slick, its air thick with the smell of iron and fear. Would you keep pushing your cart, or would you stop? Would you still reach for that packet of bacon, or would your hand hover, hesitate, retreat? Paul McCartney’s famous line “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian” has been quoted so often it risks sounding like a slogan. But behind it lies a deeper question about human empathy, our relationship with the animals we eat, and the lengths to which modern society goes to shield itself from discomfort.

An Industry Out of Sight

Germany’s meat sector is one of Europe’s largest, a pillar of both domestic consumption and export. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 2023 saw the slaughter of 47.9 million land animals (pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, horses) plus 702.2 million poultry. Most of these animals come from intensive systems, where they lack space and natural light. Before slaughter, they are transported, sometimes for hours, occasionally across long distances, in conditions that can cause extreme stress, injuries, and illness, especially when animals are deprived of rest, food, or water.

Once inside, speed dominates. The pace inside modern slaughterhouses is relentless. In such conditions, mistakes are inevitable. Official guidelines require stunning before slaughter, which is a process that involves the use of anaesthetics to render an animal unconscious before it is slaughtered but undercover footage from German facilities has repeatedly shown conscious animals on the kill floor, blinking, kicking, trying to stand.

The Wall We Choose Not to See Through

This is not accidental invisibility, it is structural. Physical walls keep the public out, and Germany’s property rights gives operators broad power to deny entry to journalists or activists. Yet even without legal barriers, there’s a more subtle wall: our own reluctance. Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of loving animals while eating them. In Germany, where dogs wear winter coats and animal welfare is enshrined in the Constitution, this conflict is acute. The easiest way to resolve it? Not to think about it at all.

What Happens When the Walls Crack

When hidden practices are exposed, the reaction can be swift. Over the years, undercover footage from inside German slaughterhouses has repeatedly surfaced, released by animal protection organisations. Some of these investigations have led to legal proceedings, temporary closures, and even debates in the Bundestag. Studies suggest that even brief exposure to such footage can shift behaviour. Some people stop eating meat altogether; others cut back or seek out “Tierwohl”-certified products. The change isn’t always radical, but it’s rooted in informed choice rather than comfortable ignorance.

Beyond Animal Welfare: People and the Planet

Glass walls wouldn’t only reveal animal suffering; they would also expose the human cost. Germany’s slaughterhouses are staffed largely by migrant workers from Eastern Europe, often on precarious contracts through subcontractors. Investigations during the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered cramped living quarters, low pay, unsafe conditions, and infection clusters that forced national discussion on labour reform.

And there is the environmental bill: animal agriculture is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany, contributing to methane output and ammonia pollution that impacts both climate and local ecosystems. Intensive livestock farming is also linked to water contamination from slurry and to the clearing of overseas land for imported animal feed.

Why the Glass Walls Will Never Be Built

With billions of euros at stake, voluntary transparency is unlikely. The German meat industry is deeply intertwined with political and economic interests, from subsidies for animal feed crops to powerful agricultural lobbies. The trend has often been towards less visibility, not more, tighter control over facility access, PR campaigns featuring idyllic family farms, and marketing terms like “from the region” that obscure the realities of industrial scale.

And yet, in a sense, the glass walls already exist. They’re in the documentaries you can stream tonight, whistleblower footage uploaded to social media, investigative reports buried three pages deep in your news app. The barrier is not the lack of a window, it’s whether we choose to look through it.

The Choice to See

Most of us in Germany say we value truth, transparency, and animal welfare. But truth often comes with discomfort. Seeing what happens inside a slaughterhouse will not dictate your diet for you, it may move you towards vegetarianism, or simply towards buying less meat, or sourcing from higher-welfare farms. But it will demand that your choices align more closely with your values.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the question would be whether we could still pretend not to see.

Because once you do look, past the packaging, past the adverts, past the comforting distance, it’s not the slaughterhouse walls that stay opaque. It’s us. It’s how we choose to deal with the truth.

And perhaps, as you lay out this year’s Christmas table, you’ll find yourself looking once more through that invisible wall, and thinking twice about what you choose to place on it.

by Luisa Gabriel