When we built our house in Illinois, I purposefully had a roast pig for our housewarming party. I wanted the children to understand at a young age that animals are food. I also brought the children to see the hung deer our neighbor killed. We got to eat some nice venison.
I knew that my messaging got through when my 6 year old daughter asked her mother in a low voice:
Mom?
Yes, dear?
Do people eat . . . bunny rabbits.
Why yes, they do.
Do they taste good?
Score!
When I was a young boy (Brooklyn, NY in the 1950s), my mother used to take me every Friday morning to the kosher chicken market, where she would pick out a live chicken and we would watch it killed and cleaned. She told me years later that she did it so I would know that food doesn't magically appear in butcher shops.