Slaughter

As you’ll read in this week’s cover story, I left the office last Tuesday morning on what was a tough reporting assignment. I interviewed a mobile butcher, and to do so, I watched him kill a sheep. It was a little unnerving. And a lot surreal.

When I volunteered to write this story for our annual Business issue, I sort of figured I wouldn’t watch the, you know, dying part. I don’t know why I’d put that option in my head. Never before had I looked away while reporting a story. I mean, description is a large part of the gig.

I’d recently given up eating meat, but that wasn’t the problem. (Actually, strictly speaking, I’m not a vegetarian. I eat seafood.) The issue is that, like most people who’ve eaten meat most of their lives, my experience with cooking and eating animals has been heading to the grocery store and picking up meat after it’s been carved from a carcass. The thought of watching the actual slaughtering process made me nervous.

But when I got to the small farm in Durham, I immediately decided I needed to see it: where meat comes from and what it is. Sure, I already knew. But it’s another thing to actually watch it go from animal to meat. Indeed, one moment a lamb was standing in a barn. And 15 minutes later, its legs, head and organs were gone, and it was hanging from metal hooks.

One of the images I’ll never forget is watching steam rise from the sheep’s still-warm flesh as a winch peeled off its skin during this chilly morning. I also won’t forget the moment when George Westbrook, owner of the mobile-slaughtering rig, reached down and gently patted the animal as it bled out.

Despite the fact that the sheep didn’t appear to suffer, it wasn’t easy to watch. At least for me. In fact, it took me days to wrap my head around it all.

CN&R contributing photographer Melanie MacTavish was there, too, to chronicle the morning by camera. As you’ll see from her photos on pages 20 and 21, she was a pro. Most of what she captured is too graphic for publication in a community newspaper, but I felt it was important to show part of the process. So, if you’re squeamish, consider yourself forewarned.

Melanie happens to have an appreciation for the macabre and seemed to process the whole thing easier than I. She, too, described the assignment as surreal, when I asked her about it later. “It was like an anatomy lesson on a beautiful farm in the fresh air,” she said.

I expect to get some letters to the editor about the story or the photos. Perhaps the hardest picture to look at is the one taken just seconds before the sheep was stunned by the bolt gun. But that’s the reality, folks. That animal is now hanging in a meat locker, and will soon be on a plate. If you can’t stomach this story, you ought to stick to the salad bar.