Slaughterhouse Entry Three: Pleasant Valley Poultry

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I went by myself this time, to a chicken slaughterhouse out of state. As I was driving up, I was surprised that it was so close to so many residential homes. I go in and a woman gives me a tour. She said they only had a couple dozen birds to slaughter this morning, normally they'll have 1000 and even more on holidays. She shows me where they're cooling in an ice bath. They are defeathered but their necks are intact. Their necks looked shriveled and broken, almost unrecognizable. We go along the freezer where they store the processed birds to be shipped out. We go into the fabrication room and a group of women are cutting up pieces of meat and sorting them in bins. There are cones attached to the table tops where the chicken is stuck and their limbs are cut off. Finally she shows me the kill room. It's loud, a man is pressure washing the blood from the floors. There was a bucket full of clumped feathers wet with blood and bits of bird all over the floor. She points out a metal hanging rack with a long trough and explains they hang 10 of them at a time by their feet, electrocute them and then slit their throats. The blood drains into that trough. You could see how stained the floor below it was. After they are defeathered, they are loaded into a pressurized machine that washes most of the blood away. It shoots them out into another room where they are hung on a rotating line. As the chicken goes down the line their head and legs are cut off and their organs are removed. Then they are placed in the bath that I saw when I came in. She explained the process is pretty much a circle, efficient, she said. I peaked and I could see a small holding area with cages and feathers all over the floor. She asked if I was interested in getting into processing. I said probably not. I thanked her and I left.

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