Straining honey

[Sutty]

Everyone needs to see an abattoir in action...

I wonder if "Kill it, cook it, eat it" is available on iPlayer? It was set in my local abattoir & members of the public watched the slaughter process, saw some meat taken from the carcass & cooked, and then ate it.
Gold standard abattoir though & the butcher won best butcher in England.

 

[JamezF]

Oooh, abbatoir stories...

Some years back I took a couple of Gloucester Old Spots to the local abbatoir. Had a pig of a job (ho ho) getting them out of the trailer, perhaps not unreasonably from their point of view. During the time I was faffing about, a chap turned up with a horse box. When I moved off from the unloading bay he reversed up and said to me the West Somerset equivalent of "Hold my beer", lowered the tailgate and entered the horsebox from the door at the front. All of a sudden a squealing ball of fury that looked vaguely like a wild boar erupted from the back of the horsebox, down the ramp, bounced off the fence and rammed a gate that was being held closed by the vet, knocking him backwards and allowing the animal to escape into the yard and surrounding undergrowth.

Obviously there was no way I was going to leave until I saw how this one got resolved Eventually they located an employee with a rifle on site (I assume this must have been a standard arrangement, which is perhaps more concerning in retrospect than it felt at the time) and hunted down the errant animal, returning its corpse to the unloading bay in a wheelbarrow. I have no idea what the procedure was regarding processing the meat at that point as I didn't really feel it might be appropriate to ask.

James

 

[blackcloud]

As an apprentice engineer I was lucky enough to get a work placement at the local chicken factory.
It was me that had to shimmy along a 15ft high girder to replace the motor in a ventilator fan.Covered in dust and feathers the stink was bad enough to start with but then they opened the sluice and a river of steaming blood gushed below me.
At least my mentor stopped laughing when he got reprimanded for sending me up alone

 

[Garry R]

I think you need guts to work in an abbatoir. When I worked in the laboratories I had to go along to help collect rumen fluid from the recently slaughtered cattle (it was a nutritional institute) and they had been fed different diets which needed analysed for different digestion rates. Only did it once as a favour as someone was on holiday. Never saw the slaughter procedure but the smell of the rumen fluid was off putting enough. However not offputting enough to prevent me eating meat including offal and a good black pudding.

 

[Moobee]

Well this thread has taken a turn!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

My father would regularly take me with him when he was popping up the local slaughterhouse, I found it fascinating. Never on a 'pig day' though as there used to be a heck of a noise after the first ones went through. Around here, the slaughterhouse had a pigs only day as the noise would wind up any other animal awaiting its turn.

 

[philipm]

Once went with my father in law to help with a welding job in a local slaughterhouse, I couldnt understand why there was a room with coat hooks until they started slaughtering the cows .It was where the entrails were hung.

 

[JamezF]

I think you need guts to work in an abbatoir.

I see what you did there

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

A thought just came to my head which made me chuckle - the slaughterman at Thomas's slaughterhouse just up the road from us (sadly gone now, as is the slaughterman) had a fitting surname - Slaymaker!

 

[Amari]

My father would regularly take me with him when he was popping up the local slaughterhouse, I found it fascinating. Never on a 'pig day' though as there used to be a heck of a noise after the first ones went through. Around here, the slaughterhouse had a pigs only day as the noise would wind up any other animal awaiting its turn.

This week's theme on 'Farming Today' week-daily at 0645 on Radio 4 is 'Bacon'. This morning's episode described the slaughter process for pigs. We were assured that the electric tong method of stunning the pig was instantaneous and caused no alarm to other pigs waiting in line. The alternative CO2 method was mentioned but not described.

 

[Sutty]

This week's theme on 'Farming Today' week-daily at 0645 on Radio 4 is 'Bacon'. This morning's episode described the slaughter process for pigs. We were assured that the electric tong method of stunning the pig was instantaneous and caused no alarm to other pigs waiting in line. The alternative CO2 method was mentioned but not described.

They showed that for pigs on "Kill it, cook it, eat it", it looked reassuringly humane, as did the other species. Cows just went down a "crush" - narrow channel between metal poles - the sort of thing they are used to on a farm, and then got a captive bolt shot to the brain - instantaneous death.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Everyone needs to see an abattoir in action...

One thing we had to do as vet students. I never went to another meat inspection class ever again as I reasoned I would never do any and better it wouldn’t come up in my finals.

 

[Amari]

One thing we had to do as vet students. I never went to another meat inspection class ever again as I reasoned I would never do any and better it wouldn’t come up in my finals.

Meat inspection classes were quite popular when I was a medical student. We were encouraged to attend the daily lunchtime post mortem demo by the prof of pathology in the morgue across the road.

 

[Sutty]

Meat inspection classes were quite popular when I was a medical student. We were encouraged to attend the daily lunchtime post mortem demo by the prof of pathology in the morgue across the road.

Our dissection classes were always before lunch - the smell of formalin on your hands (despite gloves) did tend to reduce the appeal of your sandwiches

This thread is way off track!

 

[Amari]

This thread is way off track!

That's one of the delights of the forum - though not all may agree.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Our dissection classes were always before lunch - the smell of formalin on your hands (despite gloves) did tend to reduce the appeal of your sandwiches

This thread is way off track!

I think it’s brilliantly off track
Veins coloured blue, arteries red … some sort of latex ?

Do medical students still dissect bodies?

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

Having worked in various slaughterhouses, by far the worst was chickens, with horses a close second.

The most amusing moment though was finding a bear sat on the loo reading the paper.
This was in the rendering plant, the bear Having arrived deceased from the local zoo.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Well this thread has taken a turn!

 

[Jules59]

I think it’s brilliantly off track
Veins coloured blue, arteries red … some sort of latex ?

Do medical students still dissect bodies?

AFAIK very few still do.
Its nearly all demonstrated via prosection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProsectionPlus the students now have things that didn't exist in my med students days - like computers and virtual reality 3D images

 

[Wilco]

At Surrey it's increasingly prosection for vet students. I'm rather sad about it as dissection is very useful for learning how to handle tissues prior to learning surgery.

I loved the public health and meat inspection stuff. Considered a career in it but OV work is tendered to a company who made a point of hiring EU vets at really low rates instead of UK vets meaning they weren't interested in hiring me. There's now no culture of vets from the UK going into abattoir OV roles and a bit of a crisis as a result. All because of one company and the FSA taking its eye off the ball, going back years.

Electro stunning before sticking/bleeding is good. Captive bolt isn't technically dead, it's more like irreversible brain damage so they're not suffering, they then get stuck and bled which is what actually kills them. Electro stunning they can come around from so the sticking has to be done within a certain time window so they bleed out before coming round. Not so convinced on CO2. Ethically CO would make more sense to me as the you don't get the alarm high CO2 generates and thus the welfare issue although I'm not sure what effect it might have on meat quality. CO2 is often used for large plants with a high throughput IIRC.