The
pictures that go along with this are very graphic. View at your own discretion.
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| Michael and the pig. |
The day started out bright and early with a feeding of all the pigs. We stood
around bubbly and cheerful, weirdly excited for what we were about to do. The
UHDP men found a large stick and carved out a hand grip, rubbed charcoal across
their blades, put on a large pot of boiling water, and laid down some fan palm
leaves on the ground. We were ready to go. We were instructed that clubbing the
pig in the head is the most humane way to kill a pig. “Hit it once” they said,
“right between the eyes and ears. About 80% of your strength and it should pass
out.” Michael steps up to the challenge. He hops down into the pig pen and
takes the large wooden club. Once our instructors give the okay, Michael lines
up his bat. He hauls it above his head and brings it crashing down onto the
pigs. What comes next is a blood-curdling scream from the pig – a pig which is
very much so conscious. Michael turns back to the instructors with a look of
bewilderment, surprise, and panic. We were told one hit would be enough, yet
here this pig is standing and screaming, trapped in a 6 foot wide cement pen
with a man who just clubbed it on the head. “Hit it again!” the translator says
to Michael, and he does. The pig is still conscious. Unsure of what to do next,
Michael steps back and a Thai UDHP staff jumps in. He clubs the pig I believe
two more times.
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| Feeling the warmth seep out of the pig. |
After the first strike, my jaw
dropped. I turned around and covered my mouth. The sound of the pig screaming
was hard for me to take. Not only that, but all the pigs along the row jumped
up to see what was happening, and squealed as well. I knew we were here for a
reason, so I forced myself to turn around and watch. But when they called for
people to help lift the pig out of the pen, I stepped back. I was nowhere near
ready to be a part of this process. In the panic and confusion of our group,
the pig woke back up before it was lifted out of the pen, so it had to be hit
yet another time. By the time it was carried over to the bed of palm leaves, it
ceased to move or twitch. “If it’s already dead, we may not have to stab it”
out translator Pi Tik said. But for good measure so we didn’t skin the thing
alive, it was stabbed though the chest into the heart with a 7+ inch blade.
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| Giving the pig a nice, clean shave. |
We poured boiling water onto the
skin and scraped it with machetes. The hair and dark coloring came right off.
We carefully scraped every inch of edible skin to de-hair the pig. I helped
with this process, and it made the animal seem less like a pig, and more like
meat. Then it was beheaded, before being split down the middle. Upon seeing the
organs there was no doubt in my mind that the bloody pink carcass in front of
me was a piece of meat. I was now in science mode, attempting to identify each
organ that I saw. The organs and pooled blood were collected and the pig
quartered. From there we went to the sala, the place where we have most of our
daily meetings and all our meals, to prepare the meat.
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| Beheading |
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| Scooping out the blood from a cavity it pooled in. |
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| Detaching the organs from the body. |
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| A clean carcass, about to be quartered. |
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| The dog cleaning up leftover blood. |
They laid out a few tree-section
cutting boards and large knives. “Does anyone have any experience cutting meat?
Does anyone want to try?” I was washing my hands at the time, but heard a score
of people call my name… I guess I’ve talked about Broken Rocks a few too many
times, but I was happy to try. We cut off the skin and fat layer and sorted the
meat into what I perceived as “nice cuts, shitty cuts, skin and fat, and bone”.
Weird thing about meat in Thailand, the cut of meat is of no importance.
Whether you get meat of a prime cut, or the fatty, crispy skin with hairs
attached, you order the same and pay the same price. Because I was raised in
America and especially because I worked in a restaurant for three years, it
pained me to do the next part. We took the great cuts of pig and minced them:
chopped them with a butcher’s knife until they were pulverized. The “shitty”
cuts of meat were to be cooked and eaten as they were. Why this wasn’t done the
other way around, I’ve yet to figure out, but that’s Thailand for you.
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| Mincing the meat. |
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| Splitting open the bamboo, checking to see if the rice is don |
That afternoon we collected food
and fruits from the agroforest. I helped kill, defeather, and prepare chickens
as well as catfish. Then we had a grilling party. We spent nearly all afternoon
preparing the dishes. There was an endless amount of garlic to be peeled, many
peppers to be mashed, meat to be roasted, and rice to be cooked. While we
waited, one of the men made an instrument out of a section of bamboo and sang
for us. By the time dinner rolled around we were famished and staring at a
delicious feast. I dug in, and it tasted great.
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| Derek trying out the bamboo instrument |
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| Green and spicy and delicious :) |
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| Our feast! And oh, how delicious it was. |
So why did we kill the pig? If
you haven’t grasped it by now, I’ll help you out. Where does your meat come
from? If you said the supermarket, like I expect you probably did, where does
the supermarket buy it from? Which country? Which state? Do you know the
farmers name? Are the workers there treated fairly? Do they make a fair wage?
How are the animals treated? How many hormone and antibiotic injections do the
animals receive in their lifetime? What kind of diet do the animals have? How
many inches of feet of feces do they stand in? What does the kill floor look
like? How sanitary is the area they are cut and packaged in? How many gallons
of gas did it take to get the meat from farm to table? Was it “free range”
“organic” or “humanely raised”? Can you give me an explanation of what exactly
that means? Especially in context to the farm your meat came from? How much do
you really know about the food you’re eating every day? Not that much? I
thought so.
How is it that such a crucial
part of human life – obtaining sustenance from food – has been so far removed
from our daily lives? If the industrial food industry collapsed overnight,
would you have food to get you through the next month? Would you have seeds to
plant in the coming spring? Do you even know the small scale, local farmers and
meat producers in your area? Which pig do you think is healthier, one raised in
a commercially farmed pig plantation in America, or one raised on a small farm
in northern Thailand? Which means which pig will give you the most nutrients
and sustenance? The idea that humans aren’t expected to grow or find their own
food is just astounding from a survival standpoint. We take for granted the
food systems set in place in America and many developed and developing
countries. At any time of year, you can find fresh meat in the isles of your
deli, and fruits and veggies stocked in the dead of winter. We put little
effort into the food we eat, and little thought into the nutrition value of
such food. We are so far removed from the process of obtaining meat; we allow
our commercial meat industry to get away with humanely and ethically abomidable
practices. We allow our FDA to pass legislation created by CEO’s and VP’s of
top companies, that they do not enforce upon themselves. We allow legislation
that is near impossible for small business to follow and thus must shut down.
What does that leave us with? Big business. We are blissfully ignorant of a
broken and corrupt system because it’s easier to not think about it than it is
to fight it.
This is why we killed a pig.
Because we are omnivores. Because we need food to eat, and sometimes that
includes meet. Because if we don’t do it, we don’t eat. Because we are human. Because some things are at the top of the food chain and others are not.
Because it makes sense, more sense than any meat I’ve eaten in America.
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| Meet Sammy. Remember to give thanks this Thanksgiving. |
