Clinton the program I heard was concerned with the heath/welfare of the workers. I think it said that as cattle come in various sizes the process could not be done by a machine, instead in production line fashion people work in close proximity wearing chain mail to protect themselves from each others knives. In this country people suffer from hand problems from doing the same repetative task all day long, I think the issue in the slaughterhouse program was that the workers were asigned to one task (a particular cut) and had to do that same task allday long and at very fast speeds.

Cows seem to do OK in India without being made into shoes or burgers

I've worked on a farm and seen calves being born which is a beautiful thing, there isn't anything similar about a carrot going to seed! I have also been to dairy farms where male calves were allowed to die as they had no value, at that time the meat industry wanted other breeds for rearing as beef, not sure if that still happens now. I also have a photo of my friends children feeding one of their dairy cows that had slipped and fell in the yard, it had to stay there several days before it died. That was at the start of the BSE crisis when the condition was not yet widely known.