When I watched The Dying Trade the day it premiered on YouTube, I emailed its creator, vegan activist and filmmaker Jack Hancock-Fairs, within 24 hours.

It hit me that hard.

I’ve interviewed undercover investigators, former slaughterhouse workers, psychologists and animal advocates over the years… however this felt different.

Because at its heart, this isn’t a documentary about slaughterhouses.

It’s about the complexity of loving someone with vastly different values.

Jack is a passionate vegan and animal rights advocate.

His father is a career slaughterhouse worker.

What unfolds isn’t simply an exploration of animal exploitation. It’s a deeply human story about family, identity, empathy, moral conflict, and what happens when two people find themselves standing on opposite sides of one of society’s biggest ethical divides.

After watching it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I knew I wanted to have this conversation.

In Jack’s own words:

“The Dying Trade is an attempt to understand my father. It’s been the most meaningful project I’ve ever undertaken, but also the most emotionally complex. Making this film has at times put real strain on our relationship. But it’s also helped me see him, and the world he works in, with a deeper level of empathy.”

Watching the film, I couldn’t help but wonder… if this journey helped Jack better understand his father, did it also help his father better understand Jack?

Today we explore not only the extraordinary psychological toll that slaughterhouse work has on the people doing it, but also one of the hardest parts of being human: loving someone you don’t fully understand, while desperately wishing they could understand you. What do you do when the walls someone has built seem to protect them… yet also keep them from seeing the truth you wish they could face?

The Dying Trade—now retitled I Exposed My Father’s Evil Industry—is an extraordinarily personal documentary. Yet somehow, it’s also incredibly relatable.

It explores the meat industry with honesty, nuance and compassion, while gently asking how we navigate relationships with people we love when our values seem worlds apart.

While I didn’t quite get the answer I’d been hoping for, I did leave feeling deeply seen.

I found myself with a greater empathy for Jack’s father… for slaughterhouse workers like Tom, who recalls skinning a cow while she was still giving birth, saying, “It takes 25 seconds, but it stays with you for the rest of your life.” And perhaps most unexpectedly, for my own father, and the protective walls we build when facing a truth feels too painful or too costly.

I hope this conversation, and Jack’s documentary, leave you with that same gift: a deeper understanding of the people in your own life, even when you wish they could see the world differently.

The Dying Trade | Official Trailer:

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That’s it for this week in Healthification.

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With love and gratitude plant friends.