Slaughterhouse Entry One: Nelson's Processing

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We pulled up and everything was so small and dirty. There was a dead deer, legs resting on the side of the building, their's guts hanging out and their's eyes glazed over. We came in from the back where the meat was being cut into steaks and bagged for sale. Animals all from local farmers and Nelson’s themselves. We worked our way backwards through the processing, the animals progressively becoming more intact. There was a man cutting tissue off of a leg and others were removing the fat. We went into the fridge and walked through dozens of cow carcasses, cut in half, hanging from the ceiling. Everything was so tightly packed. I was inches from a dead animal at all times. He pointed out a few bodies hanging and identified them: cow, pig, deer, lamb, and one bear. He noted how much the bear carcass resembled a human and laughed. We made our way to the second section of the freezer. There was a pig body hanging in the doorway and the man told Corey to just shove it out of the way. He moved them back and slid through. He let go and the pig swung back in front of me and, dangling tissue and coagulated blood dripped from the bottom of the body. The man shoved them back and they moved along the tracks in the ceiling. He points out different cuts of meat on the body of a cow cut in half. He then asks if we want to see the kill room. Corey and I were both hesitant, but the man reassured us, saying an animal had just been killed and all we would see is their body. He laughed saying "it's dead, it won't bite." He pushed the sliding door open to a room immediately smelling of blood and shit. There was a young brown steer decapitated laying on his back on a metal cradle waiting to be skinned. There was a bucket under his neck to catch excess blood. It was incredibly quiet for a moment while we stared at this animal. The man began to explain the slaughter process to us. In the right corner of the room there was a large metal gate. The animal is led against the wall and the gate is latched. The animal is pressed between the wall and the gate. The floor below them is slanted so their body is forced against the gate. They are then shot in the head. The gate is unlatched and they roll onto the floor. They are cut from the torso to the neck. They bleed out. They are decapitated and then skinned, which was the stage where we saw this brown cow. The man apologized for not allowing us to take photos of the kill floor, complaining about the ongoing animal cruelty investigation against his business. "Those damn PETA people have been a pain in my ass." He said. We made our way out of the facility, shook his hand, thanked him, and we walked out. I took a look back at the dead deer and saw two live pigs in a pin a few feet away from the carcass. I asked if I could walk towards them. They were covered in shit and smelled of it. The man told me to be careful not to touch anything "If they got out, there's no getting them back." Corey and I got back in the car and left.

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