Lamb to the slaughter

I have been interested to read the story of the lamb kept by a school to teach children where meat comes from. The outcry about it being slaughtered seems a little extreme to my way of thinking. Unless you're going to be a vegetarian - which is not good for children in any case - you need to know where meat comes from. Children are far more pragmatic than adults in this sort of situation and I suspect it has been blown up out of all proportion by the parents rather than the children.

I saw a comment by a member of the public to the effect that if it turned every child in the school into a vegetarian then it would be a good thing for the animals. So if we all stopped eating meat there would still be lots of animals running around in the fields would there? Perhaps there would be for leather, milk and wool but that still makes the animals into a commodity to be bought and sold and not just to be admired. You can't get leather without killing the animal and cows are slaughtered when they no longer produce milk. Animals kill for food so why should humans be different?