Our distant relationship with where meat comes from is one of the most bizarre things about humans. Especially next to our psychopathic relationship with our own pets.
I've seen people freak out with disgust because there's a tiny feather or some dirt in their carton of eggs. Or disgusted by the hanging, swinging corpses behind the butcher when they go to order something that's sliced off the corpse.
So that's my anecdote: give away delicious eggs (the taste really is night and day different from supermarket eggs) and people complain that they don't look like the ones in the supermarket!
Right now I have a basket of eggs on my kitchen counter ranging from spotlessly clean to 40% mud covered and some with a fair amount of chickenshit on them. It's all good: having this many eggs is an excuse to come up with new uses for them. Made a batch of lemon bars (filling is mostly eggs and lemon juice/zest) and they were awesome.
I guess being distant from it creates more (theoretical) passion for animals, because you just haven't developed this "emotional immunity" due to everyday exposure as our ancestors did, and so you "humanize" them more.
My point is: pushing people to be more in contact with swinging pigs and feathers (especially in childhood) won't make them less likely to want to eat meat, it will just make them desensitized and used to it.
I eat less meat now since I don't really want to eat meat from the store anymore. Not only is the animals treated well (apart from the obvious killing part), but the quality of the meat is much higher, and obviously it's much fresher.
Also, eggs. Lots of them.
Try suggesting to someone that maybe they should be turned into bacon this Christmas. I'm not talking about vegans, but regular meat-eating people. Study reaction.
There is a contradiction there. Look at it carefully. Try to generalize that to other living things, for example humans.
/End of Public Service Announcement