For the first time yesterday, I helped butcher a whole animal -- actually, a few animals. Two lambs and a pig, thus far the most incredible experience of my internship. Sorry I have no pictures -- I don't know how squeamish my audience is.
This might sound morbid, and I know my veggie friends will curl in horror at my next statement, but it was generally an enjoyable experience, if not full of teachable moments. Butchering forces you to be incredibly attentive, incredibly thorough; to feel the meat with your fingers in order to recognize the different textures of the different muscles, or to feel the seams along which to separate those muscles so that you don't waste any part of the animal. An err in cutting along the ribs could mean a ruined tenderloin, and wasted -- note this -- not product, but life.
This is where shit started to get real.
You'll start with, say, a whole pig carcass, and it's an eerie thing. You shave it, you feel it, examine it, you treat it delicately. This animal's about to be cooked; it experienced pain so that we could enjoy it. And here it is, on your stainless-steel table, lifeless.
I had the honor of segmenting the pig's head. With a hacksaw, I first sawed off the snout and then skull in half, following a vertical line in between the eyes. Then I took out the tongue, my fingers feeling the ridges on the top of the pig's mouth and the tendons connecting the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. Yet another strange, indescribable feeling when you're an intern doing it for the first time. It took all of two minutes, but it was gruesome.
I kept reminding myself that I was thankful someone slaughtered this pig, hopefully humanely as possible (it's what we aim for at our restaurant); that it led a good piggy life, and I would be thankful to prepare and enjoy it.
But I wouldn't enjoy it. The slaughterhouse made a massive gaffe, and the head didn't match the carcass. The head wasn't fresh, so all of that loveliness we would normally use to make headcheese -- i.e., the entire head, minus the brains and eyes -- were unusable.
Know how I found out it was unusable? Chef tried to simply pop out the brain with his index finger, which should happen easily if the animal was killed recently. No dice.
I had just defiled an animal, one whose lifeless peepers stared me in the face, to no avail. That idea hit me like a wrecking ball at full force.
This journal entry isn't exposing anything new. But I think it provides some insight into why nose-to-tail eating has become popular. We're human, we form bonds with animals. We're also hypocritical, because we eat many of those animals. But if those animals are raised the right way, they can be incredibly healthy for us*; the least we, as humans, could do is show respect for a creature that nourishes us well. Maybe that's why Catholics say grace before a meal, because my grandmother couldn't bear the thought of catching a lamb's blood while her mother killed it. And what better way to show appreciation than to use all of the animal, and not be forced to cringe at the sound of half a pig's head hitting the side of the green bin?
I'm planning on seeing an animal slaughtered. Not because I want to, be because, if I eat and prepare meat, I have to. It's the only way to actually understand where our food comes from, to truly understand why we should be respectful of the beings we enjoy at dinnertime. And maybe I'll become a committed vegetarian... we'll see.
So perhaps the way I've described this experience doesn't make it sound too enjoyable. But working slowly and carefully with something that was once living is humbling and meditative. And now I am one giant step closer to understanding how that meat gets on my plate.
I wasn't expecting the restaurant industry to do this to me.
*An animal's diet can alter the fats, compounds and minerals in the meat it eventually provides. Corn provides empty calories, but pigs allowed to forage on nuts tend to produce fat and meat that is higher in those brain-boosting, omega fatty acids. More on this later, I'm sure of it.
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