Last updated at 22:56 02 March 2007

Lunchtime on Thursday and in a farmhouse kitchen in the heart of Wiltshire, a white dinner plate is reverentially placed on the table. On it are four slices of meat, carved from a saddle of lamb that has been roasted with garlic and rosemary in the Aga for 40 minutes.

It's been beautifully cooked, seared burnt-brown around the edges, while at its centre there's a touch of vivid pink that bleeds a watery red jus on to the ceramic surface.

Just the job normally, a real favourite, but today I can't stomach it. I try, cutting off a sliver and putting it in my mouth, but have to force myself to swallow, and it's all I can do to hold that morsel down, to stop myself throwing up there and then.

The trouble is the lunch and I are somewhat over-acquainted. We first met on a hillside on Dartmoor on Tuesday afternoon. Together with farmer Brian Lavis, I picked out the nine-month-old lamb from a skittering flock, and on Wednesday followed behind as it was transported to an abattoir in Dorset, where we met, briefly, again that night.

The following morning I returned at daybreak, to watch as Faw-Faw, my fluffy friend, was turned from mammal to meat - electrocuted, throat-slit, beheaded and skinned.

An abattoir worker then carved a slice from the carcass's steaming hindquarters and handed the still-twitching flesh to me in a plastic bag.

I took it away and an hour later cooked it, and now it's on my fork, in my mouth, then sliding haltingly down my throat.

It's been quite a journey for both of us - from pasture to plate - and it's one the rest of Britain can experience for themselves next week, in all the Technicolor gory of television.

Broadcast on BBC Three, the emotively named Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, will show lambs, pigs and cattle being slaughtered in an abattoir. For an added twist, the spectacle will be witnessed by a group of specially invited guests, who will be served the meat to eat.

Heavily plugged and promoted, the programme makers insist this isn't just a ratings-grabbing bloodfest, but an attempt to question modern Britain's relationship with the food we eat - to reconnect people with the animals that fill the shrink-wrapped packets of meat they buy in the supermarket.

Planning on sticking a leg of roast lamb in front of the family this Easter? Then isn't it your responsibility to know where the animal came from, how it was reared and how it was killed?

Or is that just a load of middle-class, sentimentalist angst? They are only animals after all and if you're really that worried about it, then isn't the simple answer not to do it, to go vegetarian? After all, saying sorry to your sausages, crying over your casseroles, is all a bit After The Lord Mayor's Show.

The truth is, of course, that like most people, I try not to think about it too deeply. I eat meat because I like the taste of it, and don't want thoughts of butchery and brutality to spoil that pleasure.

But turn the clock back to Tuesday afternoon and I've nowhere to hide. I'm in the middle of a five-acre field near Launceston, Cornwall, wondering how one goes about choosing one's lunch when the menu's got four legs and a fleece.

I'm with Farmer Brian, 62, whose family has been working these pastures for more than a century, and who keeps 1,200 ewes and 150 cattle. He gathers the sheep into a pen and points at a black-faced lamb. "Good eating, that one," he says in an accent as thick as the mist shrouding the granite-topped hills behind.

How do you know? "He's from a crossbred ewe and a Suffolk tup, nice size too, big fat back end on him." So much for the parentage of the animal (he/it is a castrated male), does he have a name? "Tom," he says with a laugh "I've probably called him many names, but none you'd repeat in polite company."

A blue plastic tag in the animal's right ear bears an identification number - 4454 - and so it is that Faw-Faw and I are introduced.

He's a decent-sized chap, full of life, and he bucks and kicks as I sink a hand into his fleece to steady him, so I can spray a blue streak of marker-paint down his back to aid identification.

Released, he runs off to join his chums and enjoy his last few hours of freedom.

Until he had the misfortune of meeting me, there's no doubt Faw-Faw had a good life. Born last April, he has been running free outdoors ever since, and has eaten nothing more than his mother's milk, grass and a handful of winter feed made from wheat and barley.

I can be sure of this because Farmer Brian's animals supply The Real Meat Company, a business that has spent the past two decades sourcing meat bred to the highest welfare standards.

The result is meat that is of a high quality and great taste, if more expensive than the standard fare.

It was set up in 1986 by Richard Guy and his wife, Gill, a couple so dedicated to the good food cause that they eat only their own meat, preferring to go vegetarian when away from home.

Richard was among those invited to take part in the forthcoming BBC series, and says he is intrigued to see what impact it will have on the viewing public.

While he acknowledges there is a sensationalist aspect to the pre-filmed show (the guests, one of whom was a vegetarian presenter from the BBC Asian Network, weren't told they were going to an abattoir until the very last minute, in order, no doubt, to maximise their shocked reactions), he believes the questions it is asking are valid.

"I believe that if you eat meat then you have asked someone by proxy to kill something, and you personally carry a responsibility for how that animal has lived and died," he says.

"It's important that people confront what other people are doing on their behalf, and make their own decision. The problems come if people cease to be aware of how well or how badly it can go for the animal, if they say "I don't want to know the detail, count me out"."

But surely if you're really worried about animals' welfare, isn't the best way to prevent their suffering to stop slaughtering them altogether?

To let them live. "No, I think that not eating meat is cruel," Richard argues. "We have eaten meat for a very long time and I would venture that if an animal has lived a good life, it is better than not having lived at all, and that is what would happen if people stopped eating meat altogether.

"The fields would be empty of sheep and cattle, they would not exist. The lambs have had a good life. It is going to end for some of them but that is OK."

Many will disagree with that position, while more will wonder what the fuss is about. Shouldn't we be thankful there's enough food for everyone to eat, rather than going around conferring rights on animals that many of the world's human inhabitants don't have? Isn't it soft, squeamish, overly sentimental?

As I head east from Devon towards Dorset, I start to worry about how squeamish I may be when confronted with the realities of the slaughterhouse. I stop for food - a meat pasty, provenance unknown - and get chatting to one of the customers about what I'm up to.

The woman, in her 60s, tells me how as a child, her father, a farmer, used to bring home the baby piglets that were squashed to death at birth - the runts of the litter, rolled on and crushed by their mother. "Bit of butter, then pop them into the frying-pan whole. Lovely job," she says. "Nothing to it."

While my childhood wasn't quite that raw, I was brought up in Somerset with various animals around. I shot and still shoot the odd pigeon and rabbit, and have been to an abattoir once before. I was ten, and it was a school trip to a chicken paste factory.

Whether the outing was intended to be educational, or was in fact some sort of punishment, I am unsure (the presence of "Killer" Carnegie, the school's PE teacher, on the trip may well have been significant) but it has remained with me ever since.

In stunned silence we watched chicken after chicken being hung by their feet from a conveyor belt before being electrocuted, having their throats slit and then immersed in boiling water to remove their feathers.

The finale was watching a hangar-full of hair-netted women pick the flesh from the carcasses as they passed by on a conveyor belt. I have never eaten chicken paste since. I was put off by the smell and the sights and, anyway, it's not that much of a sacrifice.

But I'm far more worried about the lamb. It's a big mammal, with lots of blood, and I'm concerned that I might be put off all meat for life. I don't want to be. I like it too much. And I don't really like vegetarians. They make life complicated when they come round for dinner.

The trouble is I'm also starting to form some sort of bond with Faw-Faw. On Wednesday night I visit him at the abattoir in Sturminster Newton, where his life is going to end. He's in a barn divided into stalls that are filled with 20-odd cattle and the same number of sheep. There's straw on the floor, hay to eat and water to drink.

The idea is to keep the animals as calm as possible. Not only is this good welfare but it ensures the meat is good. Stress and panic cause lactic acid to build up in the beasts' muscles, which can spoil the taste. All the sheep turn their backs to me but Faw-Faw keeps craning his head around.

Could he have guessed what's going to happen, who's to blame? Ridiculous.

The following morning at 7.30am he's herded the 50 yards from death row to the abattoir. It is a clinical place, where the animals are hooked up and slaughtered efficiently.

The slaughterman places a giant pair of tongs about his head, and a massive jolt of electricity renders him instantly unconscious.

He's then hooked onto an overhead conveyor belt by his rear legs, and a single sweep of a knife severs the carotid artery in the throat. This process takes about ten seconds.

Suspended upside down, the lamb's still-beating heart pumps a flood of blood on to the floor for about one minute. Faw-Faw is no more.

I'm doing fine so far but it's the transition from sheep to meat that gets me. As he passes down the line his feet and head are cut off, the pelt peeled back and the guts tumbled out.

The carcass is steaming and I feel nauseous, a feeling that reaches cheek-bulging proportions when I place a hand on the pink, slightly sticky, ribcage. It's hot and the flesh is soft, gelatinous. And yet no longer alive.

A few yards on and the bureaucracy kicks on. The carcass is weighed, visually checked for signs of disease, stamped by the inspectors and then a joint of meat cut out and handed to me. I hold it in my bare hands and feel that heat again, the muscles ticking, the flesh twitching, and enough's enough. I'm out of there.

An hour later, I'm back at Richard's farmhouse near Warminster, and have pulled myself together enough to place that same piece of meat in the oven, a sprinkling of dried rosemary and a bit of garlic on top.

Some 40 minutes on and out it comes. It looks and smells delicious. I try to eat a piece but twice have to spit it out. Something about it, its animal smell I think, reminds me too much of that slaughterhouse.

The third mouthful I manage to swallow - I persevere, because in a way I feel I owe it to Faw-Faw. What a waste otherwise.

It's a good bit of eating, as Brian promised, and doubtless would have been better still had it been hung for a week or so, as is normal practice. But I can't eat any more now anyway.

Richard says he'll send me some other cuts, and I thank him, fairly confident that by then the memories, my senses, will have dulled enough for me to really enjoy it.

In the meantime, I reflect on the experience and am surprised how much it has affected me.

I'm very aware that what I've seen is top practice - a good farmer producing a welllooked after animal that is killed as humanely as possible in a well-run abattoir. This is not how the majority of meat we eat is produced, and that should be real cause for concern.

In Britain, eating meat is seen as a right, rather than a privilege. Mass production has depressed prices to such an extent that there's no longer anything "special" about eating a leg of lamb, a chicken or a joint of beef.

Instead, we plough through it three meals a day, oblivious to the fact that it is different from a loaf of bread or a bag of spuds, and that it is only cheap because corners are cut that are damaging to the welfare of the animal and the quality of the end product.

There should be an element of respec - acknowledgement at least - between eater and eaten, and there rarely is. Keep the nut cutlets on hold for the moment, but kick out the chilli sauce. No more donner kebabs for me.