>Killing animals shouldn't be completely abstracted away from society - we need to understand what we are doing in a hands on way.
I agree, but I think its worth pointing out that in many parts of the country (esp. the non-costal areas), much of the population has shot and cleaned a deer, turkey, etc.
So to assume in modern America that this kind of intimacy with death is universally abstracted would be a mistake. After all an estimated 43.7 million Americans hunted last year [1].