Waterboarding before burger

There's an article in the NYT this morning about slaughterhouses, which I find interesting because we're trying to permit one right now, and it's complicated.  Government is good at dealing with routine stuff,  but if you propose something unique, like a bed and breakfast where the sleeping will occur in a series of treehouses, or a mobile slaughter house, where a truck will drive around and kill animals at their own pasture, government stumbles, because it takes a while to figure out what the impacts and safety issues are, and how these one-off things fit under the regulations.

The article is about how the demand for local meat has increased, but the shortage of slaughterhouses makes it difficult to meet.  (Aren't you glad I stopped myself from saying, 'difficult to meat?  I know.)  What struck me is this sentence about the situation in Vermont:  "Two slaughterhouses recently closed, one destroyed by fire, and the other shuttered because of animal cruelty charges."

Um, a slaughterhouse being cruel to animals?  What could they possibly be doing to deserve that?  At first it seems ridiculous, like, hello, their point is to kill the animals.  So I did a little research, and it turns out that there are some really warped, cruel people out there who enjoy torturing the animals before killing them.  That is really, really sad.