The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse Read online

  3. Place each bird upside-down in the killing cone while its blood drains.

  Scalding and Plucking

  1. Confirm that the water temperature in the scalder is at 150°F (65.5°C) and then slip the bird into the water.

  2. Agitate birds to ensure water penetrates the feathers and loosens them at the root. A good scald ensures a good pluck.

  3. Test readiness by pulling on feathers. When they come off easily, remove the bird from the scalder. It usually takes 45 to 60 seconds.

  4. Place the bird in the plucker and spin it until all or most of the feathers are off. If they don’t fall off easily, check the time and temperature of the scalder.

  5. Remove the bird from the plucker and place it in the cold water bath till you are ready to proceed with evisceration.

  Evisceration

  1. With a sharp, sanitized knife, bend the foot down, quickly sever the knee joint, and remove the lower part of the leg.

  2. Cut off the head, loosen the neck skin, and separate the crop and the esophagus from the skin.

  3. Loosen the trachea.

  4. Cut a shallow triangle around the cloaca (vent) to create an opening.

  5. Reach in and pull out the organs.

  6. Place the chicken in a chill tank awaiting the drain rack.

  How to Package a Fresh Chicken

  by Jim McLaughlin of Cornerstone Farm Ventures

  This is the way to give your packaged chickens a sleek, fresh appearance that inspires confidence in your customer.

  Set up a drain rack out of PVC pipe that will hold 6 to 10 birds.

  1. Drain birds from the chill tank, placing them on the rack with their heads up.

  2. Slide a bag down over each chicken.

  3. Take one bird off the rack, turn it upside down, and push it all the way into the bag.

  4. Squeeze the legs together and gather the bag tightly around the legs. Then spin it to form a “pigtail” out of the excess bag material.

  5.Staple the bag. The staple should go around the pigtail and not through it.

  6. Pierce the bag at the breast area (over the breastbone) or at the base of the clipped end of the bag by the legs, to let the air out.

  7. Place (dip) the bag into 170–200°F (76.7–93.3°C) hot water. Swirl the bag in the water or use a pair of tongs to hold the bird down (it may want to float). There should be a rush of air and bubbles, so be careful not to get burned. The shrinking is done in an instant. Dip the bag only as long as it takes to shrink (1 or 2 seconds). Do not wait until air bubbles stop as water will enter into the bag.

  8. Pull the bagged bird out of the water. Weigh the bird and put a sticky label right over where the bag was pierced at the breast. If you plan to put a label on the package do it now, after wiping off excess water. No need to close the hole if you pierced it at the feet end. Note: If you have a bubble of air inside the bag, it means the bag was not pierced sufficiently to let out all the air.

  9. Immediately place the package in an iced cooler. Do not place the bird back into ice water. If you do, water will leak into the bag, and labels will not stay on in water.

  Why We Kill the Way We Do

  There are reasons for the methodology — a system of ethics behind each step.

  Why We Don’t Kill These Ways

  Using an ax. It’s dangerous, it lowers food quality, and a decapitated carcass in the scalder is gross.

  Breaking the neck, spinning, or piercing / stabbing the bird through the roof of the mouth or throat. These methods torture the animal.

  Gassing, stunning. These are industrial / mechanical solutions that, in my view, remove any shred of humanity.

  The Way We Do It

  We kill this way because it gives us and the animal pause. Because this way reveres life and minimizes pain.

  You will hold the chicken securely and calmly in your arms and gently be sure the skin at the neck is taut. The whole idea of the cut(s) is to lower the blood pressure to the brain while the heart pumps to bleed out. One to two quick cuts to the carotid arteries with a razor-sharp knife will do it.

  Close-up: Tips on Holding and Killing a Bird

  by Jefferson Munroe

  The birds should be crated (though not overcrowded) near the kill cones. When you pick up a chicken for the kill, try to keep the entire process as quiet and subdued as possible. Any commotion probably means that something is going wrong — there is an increased possibility for broken wings or birds not dying as quickly as one would like.

  The following is for right-handed people, so reverse if need be.

  Be sure your knife is razor sharp. I test the blade on the hair on my left hand.

  Picking Up and Holding the Bird

  1. Open the bird crate for as short a period of time as possible to avoid flapping and escaped chickens.

  2. Grab the bird by its sides and gently pick it up.

  3. Once the bird is in your arms, turn it upside down — this rushes blood to its head and generally calms it.

  4. With your left hand pin the bird with its back against your chest, and firmly grasp the chicken's ankles with your right hand.

  5. Next, move your left hand to the neck of the bird and, still cradling the back of the bird against your chest, use your right hand to tuck the feet into your left armpit.

  6. When you let go of the feet you will have a chicken cradled in your left arm, leaving your right arm free to wield a knife.

  Making the Cut

  1. At this point, the key to a quick death is ensuring that the skin around the carotid arteries (directly below the jaw line) is taut. I take the thumb and forefinger of my left hand and place them just below the base of the jaw line.

  2. From this point I draw the skin back behind the head of the chicken and pinch it together the way one would hold the scruff of a dog or cat. Pulling the skin this tight will constrict the airflow of the chicken, so I try not to hold it for too long. If you’re practicing you can pull the skin taut and then let go a few times to make sure you’ve got it right.

  The Fine Points

  When you’re ready to make the cut you must slide your knife rather than saw it — your knife is very sharp, but you need to use the edge. This point in the process is one of the only times a very sharp knife is very close to fingers, so be sure you’re holding the bird tightly.

  3. With your finger and thumb behind the chicken’s head and the skin taut below the jawbone or mandible, make your cut 1⁄4" below the jawbone. I try to follow the jaw line.

  4. When you make the cut, the blood should spring out of the neck for a second. If it dribbles out then you probably haven’t cut deeply enough and the bird will take longer to die.

  5. I make a second cut to the other side to ensure that death comes quickly, but one cut should be enough if the first cut is properly done.

  6. When you make the cut the bird should not flinch — if it does your knife isn’t sharp enough. Blood will start flowing and the bird’s eyes should flutter as blood pressure to the brain drops and consciousness begins to leave it.

  7. Let go of the skin with your left hand. There should be a constant stream of blood from the bird’s neck. If not, make another cut or two to ensure a quick death.

  8. Once you are sure the bird is bleeding properly move it into the kill cone quickly. If not the wings will start flapping and there is a higher chance of broken wings or you getting slapped in the face by a wing.

  Congratulations, you just killed a chicken, humanely.

  The Main things to Remember

  Hold the bird under your left arm if you are right-handed, and vice versa. Hold it upside-down, its head toward your front, its feet up and back. With the hand that is holding the bird, pull the head down. Wait till the bird is calm.

  With your other hand, find both of the bird’s mandibles (jawbones). With a razor-sharp, sanitized knife, cut cleanly, firmly, and quickly across the blood vessel above each mandible.

  Place the bird upside-down in the killing co
ne while its blood drains.

  Blood and Humanity

  You recognize the smell of blood from the inside out. At this slaughterhouse in South Dakota, wearing haz-mat coveralls, rubber boots, hairnets, and hard hats, we all looked the same — Temple Grandin, myself, the man operating the hydraulic squeeze chute that holds the cattle, the rabbis, the people in chain mail wielding saws and sharp hooks working the processing floor — allied in this weird hallowed hall where animals walk in and meat comes out. The hum of a slaughterhouse is the smell of blood and disinfectant.

  In the Field with Cows and Temple Grandin

  I was lying in a field in South Dakota, looking up. It was spring beautiful, the end of a long few days. The pasture was green gone. The wide-open vesper of the South Dakota plains merged possibilities of beauty with the realities of dirt, sun, rain, fertility, and the smell of clover, trodden grasses, and a herd of cows, heavy with life.

  “Lie still,” she said, “and the cows will come up to smell your hair.” She chuckled as she spoke. I was with Temple Grandin. If she could laugh lying so close to so many cows, so could I.

  Temple Grandin is a livestock behaviorist. She has Asperger’s syndrome. She is a rock star, and she is an angel. These facts and metaphors are not in opposition. In reality they are connected at the core in perfect harmony. For Temple relates to the world as animals do. She possesses amazing gifts and intelligences that have forged the highest standards of livestock welfare around the globe. And like rock stars and angels, she has her share of detractors.

  Temple and I were enjoying the end a long day at the slaughter and processing plant for the Dakota Organic Beef Company in Howard, South Dakota. Temple was there to consult, and the owners hoped to receive her seal of approval and humane certification for their kosher and non-kosher systems. For a few days as a visitor I was awestruck, privileged to watch Temple work, happy to drive around with her in a pickup truck eating frozen Snickers bars and listening to classic rock on the radio.

  A slaughterhouse must be calm. There should be no scent of fear in the air. If I smelled it or the animals smelled it, it emanated from me. The only possible trepidation I picked up was on the faces of the workers, not the animals. Why was this stranger in their midst? Who would want to visit a place such as this? Fear transmits, and we humans are as much a herding animal as cattle are. Easing into calm and peace with this place was the only way to cope. The bright lights, the hydraulics and saws, the blasts of hot water, the carnal smells, the workers in hard hats and rubber coats, their aprons stained with flesh, blood and bone: all this and yet it was calm. It worked. I breathed it all in and in return learned great lessons from Temple, from the rabbis, and from the processors who worked together in that place.

  Here humane slaughter took on meaning beyond theory or rote definition. The ritual slaughter of a kosher kill leaves no doubt that the stroke of blade against throat means blood and death. In contrast, the action of a stun gun to the head of an animal means collapse, hoist, and then blood flow. In this scenario, the responsibility of the kill lies on neither the operator nor the hoister. It’s like a firing line: no one, then everyone, then no one is responsible.

  I breathed it all in and in return learned great lessons from Temple, from the rabbis, and from the processors who worked together in that place.

  By blade, though, there is most definitely a killer, a slaughterer’s hand that fells a fellow creature. There’s no denying the connection between life and death when there is blood in those crucial and important moments. Once those moments are mechanized and obfuscated from view, they make one more link in the chain of disconnects, giving us permission to be complicit in the treatment of any animal as another cog in the machine. Without blood, and by justifying its absence, we remove ourselves even further from the relationship of man to creature. We do know better and we do remember the difference, but we just choose not to.

  In ritual slaughter, the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of one person. The act must be done with care, training, and the intention to act for humanity. In the end, humane slaughter keeps us human as well.

  Chapter 5

  Education, Marketing, and Outreach

  A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, it that the two statements in that sentence are connected by an and and not by a but.

  — John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking

  The mobile poultry processing trailer (MPPT) described in the preceding pages is the cornerstone of a poultry program. But it will remain a pile of dysfunctional stainless steel in the back of a trailer, rotting away in the back pasture or someone’s barn, unless it is supported by three important driving forces:

  Community

  Advocacy

  Outreach and education

  Education

  It’s all about education. You must educate both your Crew and your community, and this includes your regulators and our policy makers.

  Community Poultry Day Workshops

  Poultry Days are such fun. You can keep them low-key and low-cost, and they’ll still make big impacts. They are relaxed opportunities to inform the growers in your community about the MPPT, to introduce the Chicken Crew, and to share information that helps people raise healthy, happy birds and happy healthy chicken dinners. They are a chance for farmers and backyard growers to share information in a comfortable, safe setting.

  Hold a Poultry Day in the off season (not your broiler season). In New England, we hold ours in February. It is a great excuse to come together in the winter, share information, and get excited about the upcoming season. Farmers connect with other farmers. Backyard growers meet like-minded folks and ask questions in a supportive setting, even if they feel their 10-bird flock is too minuscule to bother anyone about. Mentoring relationships between the experienced and the novice develop comfortably.

  Most important, Poultry Day is the chance to tell anyone and everyone who might be interested in using the services of the MPPT and Chicken Crew, to schedule their slaughter and processing dates the day their chicks arrive in the mail.

  Funding Your Poultry Day

  Make your event free or ask for a suggested donation at the door. Perhaps a local feed store or restaurant will help sponsor your Poultry Day or donate to defray any costs. Suggest that they support this education outreach as an investment in their community while the poultry program develops. This is short-term money for a long-term benefit.

  Consider making and selling T-shirts that promote your program.

  Poultry Day Suggestions

  Hold the event in a public space, accessible to everyone, where you can serve food — a Grange Hall, school, or community building, for example.

  Start simply. Schedule a straight-up day of events and send out the schedule so people can plan to attend the workshops that interest them.

  Publicize your Poultry Day. Write a press release and send it to local papers two to three weeks before your event.

  Contact your local radio stations. Commercial radio stations have community calendars as well as spots for free public service announcements; local stations may interview you or set up a call-in show. Local NPR stations frequently have community calendars where you post your workshop information online for free.

  Be ready to give interviews. Media outlets may want to talk to you before the event — or come out to get some interviews, hear some chickens clucking, and try some coq au vin or chicken stew.

  Talking Points

  Here are some typical questions and possible answers.

  Q: Why is your poultry workshop important?

  A: It connects growers, provides an educational opportunity, builds mentoring relationships, shares information, and supports your local food web.

  Q: Who are you trying to reach?

  A: Farmers, backyard growers, eaters!

  Most important, be sure to say when and where the even
t is. And thank your donors, speakers, participants, and the farmers who raise chickens.

  Mix up your speakers. Invite local experts and one or two from neighboring communities or your state’s agriculture department. Or show a relevant documentary film. According to a friend who has run an annual Farm Film Fest, films are surprisingly affordable and the directors are eager to share them.

  Set up a resource table. Include books, calendars, cookbooks, feed information, and pamphlets from your state’s department of agriculture. Include a range of information that appeals to different levels and age groups. Kids can raise chickens too!

  Film your Poultry Day for community television if it exists in your community. In our experience, these segments get a lot of airtime.

  Make It Delicious! Make It Delicious! Make It Delicious!

  Poultry Day is always a big hit when the day’s events close with a workshop titled “Cooking with Local Chicken.” (Don’t fake it here — be sure it’s really local!) Because small-scale poultry production usually translates into a higher price per pound, and eaters will most likely end up with a whole bird in their hands instead of cut-up parts, help your Poultry Day participants learn how to cook this wonderful-tasting bird economically. (See recipes, pages 110-125).