"I kill 80 pigs a day. I come home and my daughter asks me to pet our little dog. My name is Massimo, I work on a factory farm. I'm the hand. I'm the executioner. The mechanism that turns terror into silence. The sun never shines here. The days are marked by smells: chlorine, shit, blood. Every day. Every day. They arrive. We call them "the material." Piled up, one on top of the other. Exhausted. Terrified. It's their last day: they understand it perfectly. Electric shocks. A few beatings. Then a blow to the head. Blade to the throat. Some remain conscious, but it'll all be over in five minutes anyway. It's a waltz. One, two, three: he looks around. I shock him. One, two, three: he understands what's about to happen. A beating. One, two, three: he wants Run away. I block his head. One, two, three: screams. A blow to the head and a blade. Every year in Italy, we "process" 13 million of them like this. They call it the production chain. The assembly line of death. Yesterday, however, a "material" behaved differently. It was still. Silent. It stared me in the eyes. Then, with a wet muzzle, it licked my hand. A plea? A desperate plea for mercy? Yes, it's the final message of someone who knows it's over. Then the boss shouted: "There are deadlines!" A blow and a blade. They say they're as smart as three-year-olds, you know? They understand. They feel. They hope. They recognize their name. Three years old. Like Sophia. It's for her that I do this. When I open the door, she runs to me: "Dad, give Arthur a pat!" Arthur licks me. He looks me straight in the eyes. He trusts me. Arthur looks at me and trusts me... He has the same look, precise, crystalline, innocent: the same look before the attack. So this morning it wasn't mercy? Why was he looking me in the eyes? That bastard didn't want mercy: he wanted to trust. How dare he do that? How dare he trust me, damn it? I can't breathe. A few minutes later I'm at the table. My wife has cooked the sausages. "Eat them, they're getting cold." Sorry. But I can't tonight. I can't."

Massimo worked for 15 years in the slaughterhouse of a factory farm in Lombardy. Today he no longer eats animals. (Adamo Romano)