Slaughterhouse gas chamber displayed during animal rights protest in Chichester

The protest, which also featured real footage from slaughterhouses, was organised by members of Sentience, an animal rights group which uses outreach and protest tactics to start a conversation about animal welfare.

Speaking to the Chichester Observer on Friday, organiser Steve Ferrett said he wanted to inspire a healthy conversation about farm industry practice and the ethics of eating meat.

In the days after the protest, he feels he achieved that.

"Our team is really experienced,” he said. “So we were able to converse with people on all sorts of different levels. One guy actually came back and he said he was really impressed by the way we had designed the event, and that he was really impressed with the conversation he had with us, so much so that he decided to give veganism a try.”

Even so, the use of slaughterhouse footage in the protest prompted a great deal of discussion on Facebook, with some readers claiming it was simply too violent for public broadcast.

“Although children need to learn where their food comes from, and that adults are not always kind to animals, I'm not sure that graphic horror on a big screen is the way to do it,” said Chichester Observer reader Bridget Stap.

“What about little children with curious minds who are trying to see what’s going on? Are you trying to give them nightmares?” added Yazmin Lush.

To that, Mr Ferrett has an answer: “When parents come up to us and say ‘do you think you should be showing slaughterhouse footage in the street because it’s upsetting my child,’ we're respectful of it and we understand it, but we also ask the parent ‘why do you feel it’s upsetting? if this is what we’re going to be paying into for your child to eat, shouldn’t we let them see where it comes from? Why are we hiding it?

“When you have that conversation on a nice, respectful level, nine out of ten parents will actually come round and say ‘I never thought of it like that’.

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