I just watched Our Daily Bread (documentary, 2005), and its blunt, unembellished footage left me with something to think about. This “something” isn’t quite surprise, and certainly not shock. Below are a few screenshots.

Chicks on the assembly line
Chicks on the assembly line
Chicken meat
Chicken meat
Pork
Pork
A worker trimming pigs' feet
A worker trimming pigs’ feet
Milking cows
Milking cows
Chickens being sucked into a machine
Chickens being sucked into a machine
A fish being 'automatically dissected'
A fish being ‘automatically dissected’

I’m not a vegetarian; but I do care about life — to be precise, about the meaning of life. Looking at these images above, what comes to your mind?

In fact, the entire film has no music, no narration — it simply documents, plainly, the production process of the modern agricultural assembly line: animals from infancy to death, plants from sprouting to withering. Some shots might even strike you as overly bloody, yet in reality this all permeates every corner of your life, my life, everyone’s life. I find myself wondering about this question (which is also what many people take away from the film): for the workers living under such an assembly line, what is the meaning of their work? Beyond efficiency, what does this rather science-fiction-like, highly mechanized production actually bring to people?

Probably just food, after all.