Meat and Greet

10 October 2012

MEAT AND GREET

            Chickens have always been prominent in my life.  In 1991 a poultry farmer sold my father a five acre pasture next to his broiler houses so he could pay to replace one house's collapsed roof.  That pasture was where we built our house and where I lived for the next 14 years.  When I was in early elementary school my sister and I even liberated a rooster and a hen from his houses and kept them as pets for a time. 

            After college I worked for two and half years with the 250 poultry farmers in Washington County, Arkansas, where I visited their operations for nutrient management planning, inspections, and regulatory compliance.  Each year I submitted their production numbers to Little Rock, reporting weights and ages of tens of millions of chickens and turkeys that went to slaughter.  Despite my ample experience in and around chickens, I had never actually killed one. On October 2, 2012, that changed.

            On a warm October afternoon, a group of Duke poultry enthusiasts ventured to Coon Rock Farm outside of Hillsborough, North Carolina for a chicken processing workshop.  It was completely hands-on (and later hands-in), as we were paired together to select a rooster to kill, clean, and disembowel into a bird ready to eat, just add heat.  I paired with my friend Kim, who selected a choice clucker who was placed upside down in a metal cone on a fencepost.  Turning chickens upside down leaves them calm and passive because it incites sleep instincts, and they can then die without being overwhelmed by panic and fear (in theory).  To kill the chicken, a practiced hand can use a knife to remove the head sticking out of the bottom of the cone. 

            Regrettably, I do not have a practiced hand.  I tried my hardest to make a swift kill but it did take a bit longer than I had hoped.  After the kill, we scalded the body in hot water to loosen feathers, then tossed him into the aptly named “Mother Plucker” which stripped him of his feathers in a matter of seconds.  After chilling awhile in some cold water we pulled him out to remove the innards.  This was actually the most surreal part of the experience for me because the innards were still warm and steamy.  It was this moment that secured the connection in my brain that an animal that was alive roughly 20 minutes ago was now being deconstructed for the choicest bits.  Our Rhode Island Red had officially become meat. 

            We took our bird back to Durham and Kim later made a tasty improvised chicken pho for the Farmhand Fall Festival.  When eating the meat, I can't say I felt any guilt or remorse toward the rooster that just a few days earlier had been wandering about the barnyard, scratching in the dirt and grazing in the grass.  He had a good life, a considerably long and happy life compared to the chickens I was accustomed to working with.  But our chicken was different than the hundreds of thousands of chickens I'd waded through in Arkansas' factory-farm chicken houses.  Our bird was smarter; he had a look about him that he could survive on his own for a short time, knowing how to graze and when to seek shelter.  The birds I had worked with in the poultry industry were intricately bred to be ideal for American eating with lots of muscle, just enough fat, and absolutely no survival instinct or degree of intelligence. 

            The chickens my sister and I had emancipated as children were similar: stupid and helpless.  After my chicken destroyed my mom's flowerbeds, we took them to a small farm nearby that grazed birds.  The farmer and her husband reluctantly accepted our chickens into their flock and even as a child I could tell they had very low expectations.  Commercial broilers are not bred to live long, their tiny hearts can't sustain their rapid growth or high muscle density.  

            My feelings about eating meat have not changed.  Even at the small local scale, Coon Rock Farm is still a business, and at their age and gender the roosters were more valuable dead than alive.  In my view, tending animals is part of the human identity.  We enjoy taking care of living things and I can't say the same for any other member of the animal kingdom.  I consent that there are many ways to care for living creatures that don't result in their killing for consumption, but chickens were domesticated from the tropical rainforest to be eaten, either as embryos or animals.  Farming poultry is a tradition in my eyes and is embedded in our culture.  I have had a few moments of sadness in the past week, mostly because I wished I had been able to kill him quickly so his last thoughts would be of the sunny day with lush grass and plenty to eat, but I fear he felt panic in the end and for that I feel terrible.  Through this experience I realized how much skill is involved in chicken processing, just like the skills the farmers at Coon Rock use to let their birds live contentedly and humanely.