Slaughterhouse Entry Two: Patriot Processing

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We pulled up to a much larger processing facility. There were cows resting along the pasture beside the building. We go in and first see the freezer full of bodies hung upside down. All of them were skinned and bisected except for 2 pigs. Both were gutted but their skin was intact. One was decapitated. The other had a head. Its eyes were wide open but glazed. There were bloody slash marks all over the face, especially around the eyes. He shows us where they cut the meat into slabs. Men are quickly cutting fat, bone and waste and throwing it in a barrel. They tell us about all the many uses for the inedible pieces. They make basketballs out of the skin. Bones into makeup. One man asks me if I'm looking for a job. I laugh and say, “Oh no, no”. The man beside him says “get a job doing anything but this”. I couldn't tell if he was joking, but I laughed. I ask if we can see the kill floor, he agrees ,but we must leave all cameras in the office. We walk through a narrow hallway and he tells us the cow they have just killed is so large they have to cut off the head before they can hang it to bleed it. He says there will be a lot of blood. He asks if we are sure we want to go in, “You can't unsee these things”, he said. We agreed to continue. In the room there is a cow laying on a metal cradle being skinned. We watch as they expose the flesh and fat and it moves in a way the carcasses in the freezer do not. They cut off the tail. There's a pile of skin on the ground. Beside the skinned carcass there is a cow that has just been killed and decapitated. Someone is shoveling the blood into a barrel. Shovelful after shovelful. They raise the skinless cow in the air and cut out its insides, maneuvering them into a large barrel. Steam pours out as the intestines hit the bottom of the barrel. Vannah asks what the large bath is in the back of the room. It's a scalding bath. He explains that after the pigs are shot they are placed in a bath of boiling water to loosen the skin for shaving. He then explains how the animals are led to slaughter. They walk through a series of narrow hallways. He said the walls are comforting for them and they walk on through to slaughter. I can't help but think that there's not enough room for them to turn around anyway. He said it may seem ironic but he tries to make the process as humane as possible. He said “Some people say the animals know they're going to be killed, no they don't know. They don't know where they're going. They don't know what's going on.” But I could smell the blood and manure of the kill floor a mile away. We go outside into the fenced in pasture where they raise cows for slaughter. A small black cow walks towards us. He says “This is my pet”, and calls him over. He calls him Blackie. The cow comes over hesitantly, hiding behind him. He starts scratching the cow behind the ear and the cow warms up immediately. He says, “They're just like us, everybody loves a scratch behind the ear.” You can tell this man cares for this cow, but still says in a few more years he’ll send him down the road for slaughter. I walk over, he backs away at first but finally smells me and starts licking my hands and coat. The small cow kept brushing his head against the man while we talked. You could tell he trusted him. We thanked him for the tour and got back in the car and left.

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