Killer of Chickens

I woke up this morning knowing that it wouldn't turn out to be like any other day at work. I had been anticipating the range of emotions I would feel as I prepared to process the first batch of broilers on the farm. I wasn't quite sure whether I would be nervous, nauseated, focused or seemingly desensitized to the thought of ending an animal's life.

The anticipation began the previous morning when I fed the nine-week-old chickens a final time. With just enough grain to last until the late afternoon, their intestines would empty out and minimize contamination before the butchering would take place. I couldn't help but wonder if they knew that it would be the last meal they would ever have.

Hours later, when the moment finally arrived, I was focused and fully alert, hoping to avoid a mistake that would prolong the chicken's suffering. Tucked inside a stainless-steel cone, I gripped the broiler's head with my left hand, plucking away the feathers on the side of its neck. Picking up a knife from the ground, I prepared to make a swift cut with the end of the sharpened blade. But my grip on the knife's handle was looser than it should have been. It was the kind of mistake I was trying to avoid. I slit both sides of its neck, attempting to keep its windpipe intact. My cuts weren't deep enough. I slid the blade through each side once more and blood began flowing down my arm. The warmth surprised me. I released my grip and the chicken was instantly dead. A few seconds later, its body began to violently convulse, spraying blood across my face, dripping down from my lip. Manure particles shot up from inside the cone.

The lifeless chicken made its way to the scalder, a boiling cauldron of water precisely heated to 145 degrees, and on to the plucker before it landed on a stainless steel table for evisceration. After watching a few demonstrations, I continued the process of cutting off the chicken's head and oil glands, and separating the neck and feet for later use. It brought memories of my mom in the kitchen, who taught me to cut up a whole chicken to use in a number of Filipino dishes.

Turning the chicken on its back, I proceeded to make a midline cut into the abdomen, inserting my hand into the opening and detaching membranes attached to the bundle of organs. Scooped into my fist, I gently pulled them out, attached in one piece. I separated the giblets, heart and liver, and discarded the rest. I scraped away the lungs and other remnants,  rinsed the chicken and let the body cool off in a tub of iced water. It was finally ready to be packaged and sold within a few hours for $4.25 per pound.

The entrails and blood, attracting flies outside the processing shed, were gathered into buckets to be fed to the pigs. Reflecting back on the moment of ending the chicken's life, I was reminded of Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, where he too had a similar experience at Polyface Farm in Virginia. With a knife in hand, however, Pollan couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with the chicken he was about to kill. He wrote:

“It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater… that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends.”

I believe that the majority of Americans don't know, or rather, don't care about where their meat comes from. Meat has been a crucial portion of the Western diet, but I feel that it can't be fully appreciated and prized as it ought to be. To have raised a chicken from its infancy to its juvenile stage, and to have killed it to serve on the dinner table -- its life means so much more. I plan to savor and appreciate the flavor imparted with each bite, and I'll know that it would turn out to be the most delicious chicken I ever tasted.