EEK: The Slaughter House

(readers discretion is advised)

Today we visited a local slaughter house. Slaughter house? That's right, we saw how our meats are slaughtered and packaged. The right way. The slaughter house we visited has been in buisness for the last 18 years and is a family run buisness. In 2007 they had a fire that burnt down the old facility. The family decided to keep going with the buisness and built a new facility that is about 12,000 square feet plus 5,000 square feet for livestock. The slaughter house slaughters beef, sheep, pigs, and lamb. The slaughter house has USDA worker on site all the time so that they can make sure everything the facility does is USDA approved. Farmers around New England bring their livestock to the slaughter house to get killed the right way. Farmers or people in general can't sell meat that does not have a USDA approved stamp on it, it would be considered illegal. The facility is organically and humanity certified, as well. They say "If it's not written down, it never happened" so they write and take note of eveything that happens in the facility. The kill about 40-45 beef animals, 100-120 lamb, and 200 pigs a day.

The meat does through different rooms just for the final product to be ready to be put on the shelves. The first room is the slaughter room. The slaughter room is where the animals get stunned, hung, and their necks slit to drain the blood out. After that the hide gets removed, carcas is cleaned and stamped. The workers clean the knifes and tools they use after every animal. It takes about a half hour for a goat or a lamb to go through this process, and 45 minutes for a cow. After the slaughter room, the meat goes to the meat hanging room, where they obviously hang the meat. Hanging the meat, surprisingly, makes the meat taste a lot better. To get the best flavors beef will be hung for 2-3 weeks, goat/lamb will be hung for about a week, same with pig, and buffalo for about 2-3 weeks as well. After the meats have been hung for their specific times, they will go to the packing room. The packing room is where they cut the meat up, seal the meat, and put a USDA stamp on the package. After the packing room the meat goes in the freezer room that is kept at a temp of negitive 7 degrees fahrenheit. It will stay in the freezer room until the farmers who brought it there come and pick up the final meat.

In the end the slaughter house wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. The facility was very clean and did their job in a sanitary way. Other slaughter houses should follow in this facilities steps. They do their jobs the right, humane, sanitary way.

#organic #slaughter #sanitary #food #usda