gone with the blue

The Factory

This morning I went inside the factory. Luckily I saw a film a few weeks ago that had footage of slaughterhouses so I was at least a bit prepared. It was just as gruesome as you would expect. After putting on the sanitary coat, hairnet and boots we went in. The animals are penned outside the night before, ready for killing that starts at 6 am. They were working cows when I was there. In the first room the animal is killed, by a boltgun to the brain (the sheep and pigs by head to toe electrocution). One man does the killing. After death the cow then moves along the conveyor belt and falls down a shoot into the main room. The room is metal, cold, noisy with the clanging and whizzing of machinery, busy. The cow spills out through the trap door onto the floor, still quivering. If the cow is still alive, trouble. But not an often occurrence. Five people work the cutting. First, the cow is hung upside down, its neck cut to let the blood flow and then its esophagus tied. The blood splashes onto the floor and then drains through a grill. Then, its head is cut off. He knows exactly where to cut the joints, efficient, quick. Reflex spasms cause the cow to jolt about. The cheeks are cut from the head but the rest is not used. The heads are stacked. Then the cow is lied down, two men skin it. The feet are cut off. An electric saw is used to cut its chest open and split it into two halves attached by the spine. The organs are removed - one giant sack, prepackaged by nature. Some of the organs will be used. Then the cow is hung up again. The inspector makes quick tests to check for disease, then the final cutter finishes preperation and uses another electric saw, hung from the ceiling, to cut down the spine and split the body in two. The carcass is then removed from the cutting room into cold storage, hung to tenderise. Some carcasses are then sent to butchers, the rest are divided into various cuts, for preorder, retail, or for the factory butchers. Sausages are made from the off cuts. The blood, skin and solids from the cutting room are filtered underground. The liquid is carried to a dispenser that sprays onto a field. The small solids flow out of a pipe at the back of the factory into a compost area, drying in the sun and picked at by birds. The large solids are collected and packaged for site removal. The factory processes 100 cows a week, 700 sheep and 200 pigs. This is a small sized slaughter house, some process upwards of 100 cows a day.

Later I was taking the dogs for a walk in the fields across the road from the factory. In one field I climbed a large mound of earth and only when I got to the top I saw there were hundreds of bones all over. And the wind turned and I could then smell the stench, somewhere between shit and rotten flesh, and I could see that this was not a mound of earth but the final destination of those large solids. The meat and skin had all long rotted back into the ground but the smell persisted. I held my breath to take some pictures, left quickly and went home. And that evening for dinner, beef gulash. Delicious. 

PS All kiwi beef and lamb is free range, none of the meat is intensively farmed. From what I've seen the animals live a happy life (until they get zapped).