The slaughterhouse looks like a horror movie – red walls from five feet down, heavy-looking metal doors on sliders, the municipality butchers wearing long aprons. They are blindingly white, and the men carry the sharpest knives I’ve seen. They are acute as triangles, sharpening their edges on tinny plates.
Outside, eighty-odd pigs lie on top of each other in pens. It’s night, so they sleep now while they wait. They will be let in, three at a time, to the holding pen indoors where they will be systematically killed, taken apart, and made ready for the morning’s meat market.
This is your meat, your meal tomorrow, and it’s beginning to snore.
We CIEE students are the witnesses. The Follow the Food activity has raised awareness in our consumption, but probably none of the groups has had as emotional an impact on us. The meat group isn’t even my own. I decided to join them because I thought, as a sometimes carnivore, I should face the reality of slaughter. Now I stand here rethinking my decision. The air is smothering and smells like the foulest outhouse you can imagine. I guess this is what death smells like.
Yesterday, the meat group watched a cow die. I spoke with select members of the group hours after it had happened and something was shaken. Tess showed me pictures of the whole thing. As she was flipping through her camera’s photos and video, she mentioned how viewing through the camera lens had allowed her to feel detatched. A picture of the moment of death. She shrugs. It’s a screen, she explains. It doesn’t feel real.
For a moment I am reminded of a novel I read in Germany, Homo Faber. As the narrator transforms from a disconnected, self-repressed man to a feeler of emotions, he transforms his view of the world from behind to in front of a lens. The screen acts as a barrier; it’s called a “screen” isn’t it?
The pigs are getting restless, they know what’s coming. How could they not? The butchers are excited. It’s not that they’re blood-thirsty. This is their job, and we farang are interested in it. The fact that we care is important. They will make it a good night.
A butcher walks into the pen, holding a thick steel pipe. He corners a pig, kicks the others aside, and bludgeons the animal. The pig goes down. Swiftly one man holds down the unconscious animal, one slits the throat, and another catches the blood in a bag. As the blood is draining, they apply pressure to the stomach to hasten the process. Air escaping the throat passes between the vocal chords and they vibrate. Pig’s swan song, a hoarse call, rushes out, first high-pitched then falling until it fades away. This animal’s life is over, but it will now serve another purpose.
They dip the pig into a vat of boiling water to scald the hair off. The butchers use their knives to shave the hair. Suddenly, the head is removed, the pig hung upside-down from its feet, and the meat is gradually transformed from animal to meat. Corpse to commodity.
It is a difficult event to witness. It may have been the close air, or the fact that I’ve never before seen something so animal-like die, but at several points I become short of breath and feel faint. I step outside and crouch down while the blood returns to my face. People are mostly quiet. We all are affected – no denying that. Some cry, some disconnect, some just stare.
Afterwards we discuss, trying to make sense of it. It’s respectful in that these butchers take pride in their work. I hear at the cow slaughter, they wai-ed, or bowed, to the animal before killing it. Alejandro describes it as a sort of dance, and that’s kind of true, a ritual at least.
I am a vegetarian, and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. My reasons are varied and multi-faced, but I now have learned this has nothing to do with the experience tonight at the slaughterhouse. Animals will eat other animals. As long as the process is not disrespectful and clean, I’ve come to terms with it.
Whatever your views on the subject, I think it is an incredibly fascinating experience. If you get the chance, give some consideration to going. Examine your food – be it meat, tofu, or Coca-cola.
Don't you deserve to know where they're coming from?
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