the abattoir

Today, my group had a trip to the slaughterhouse. It really wasn;t as bad as i'd expected it to be.

bascically, the sheep are put on this conveyer belt, with their heads covered so they can't see a thing, then as they emerge to the "sticking point" (cutting point), they get to look around for about 1 second beofre electrodes are placed btw their ears and it stuns them. they go into a state of epiletic fit for about about 45 seconds where they are unconsious. before they become consious again, their necks are slashed with a very very sharp knife by 2 muslim men (so the meat is halal)

the only horrible part was when the sheep were bleeding to them, because they are fitting, some of them are still kicking and "struggling" when really, they are just in a state of fit. it was quite a sight to see an entire floor covered with bright red blood, like tomato ketcup. in fact it was gross. but torable consiering my many many more horrible, smelly, decomposing Post mortem practicals.

all those horror stories you hear about slaughtering? Not here.

yeah.. i was actually wondering if i could ever eat meat again after this trip, but i guess i still can. they were really humanely slaughtered.

One thing about this abattoir is that words like "abattoir, kill and slaughter" are actually banned! The manager of the place (processing plant they call it) is a psychologist and she took measures to entire a high standard of staff moral to enhance their productivity.

I guess working in a factory, where you do the same horrible thing everyday: slaughtering, cutting together with all the bad smell and almost no interaction or variation can bring people down. Apparently, abattoirs in the past (and some still) are extremely horrible places to work in. horrible as in not the job itself, the people too. they were rude, male dominated, rowdy, work safety was at a zero coz of knives and anger and dissatisfaction. This "processing plant" is revolutionazing these stigmas now. cool..

Oh.. but i dont think i'm ever eating suagages again.. they are really made of real intestine walls!!!! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! everytime someone said that sausgaes are made of intestine walss i thought they wer joking. i had no freaking clue that it is true!!!! and you know what! they dont wash the insides of the intestine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they are just rolled out, washed on the outside and run thru rollers to flatten and squeeze out the insides of the intestine but no water actually runs thru it!!!

ekkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!! never again!! never again!