Horses show marked stress and anxiety pre-slaughter

I truly HATED reading this Horse.com article about the stress that horses endure en route and prior to slaughter. I have been a vegetarian (who does eat limited seafood now, so a pescetarian) for 13 years of my life, and one big reason that I chose to go meatless was my profound desire to take myself out of the cycle of stock animal suffering. From birth, to over-hormoned growth in tight confinement, to their end in the kill chute, livestock that are destined for the dinner table usually have a pretty egregious life on this earth. Though people like Temple Grandin have worked hard to ease the suffering and anxiety of animals bound for slaughter, and many modern farms promote humane methods of raising and keeping their livestock, those moments right before the animal's death can only imagined to be truly traumatic. This article details the physiological stress reactions that horses undergo in their last dark minutes of anxious waiting before they meet their end, and it is certainly compelling: