Abattoir day

So yesterday I spent a day at an abattoir. I have to admit that it was a truly great learning experience. I wasn't as squeamish as I thought I was going to be and learning about the while process was really interesting. 

So when I turned up I did a round with the vet doing antimortems which have to be down on every animal before it is allowed to be slaughtered. 

After that I put in some cover alls and went into the slaughter parlour. In here there was a production line. The only animals I saw being slaughtered were lambs and goats. The whole process is the same for both bar the method of killing them. In the lambs case they were stunned with an electric shocker on either side of their head then their throats were slit. With the goats they are shit with the bolt gun. After this the animals and take up on a machine by a leg to a big pully system. 

This is where the heads and tails are chopped off. With lambs you first have to check if they have baby teeth or old worn teeth. If they have the latter then the carcass will have to be cut in half and the spinal cord removed because in older sheep and cattle there have been some zoonotic diseases and infections that have been known to spread via the spinal cord. 

After the heads have been removed the animal is moved onto a station where  they start cutting strips of the hyd off they they put the two feet from the front of the animal into a double leg suspended pully. From here they put their hands between the hyd and the meat and detach the hyd from the animal. At the next station the feet hanging by the floor and cut off back to the joint and the hyd is pulled fully off by a machine the spins around pulling  the hyd off like a glove then the chest cavity is sawed open. At this point hooks are pit below the joints of the  de-hoofed animal and upside-down the only feet remaining are chopped off. The reason they chop the tail off at the beginning is because when this machine pulls of the hyd sometimes the hyd on the tail can stick and the rectum can be pulled out as well. So that precaution saves that messy situation. 

The the the organs like the stomach, small intestines, large intestines, bladder and spleen are removed. The spleen is put in a special bucket because I think it's toxic or something like that. At this station to make sure the rectum comes out they chop a small circle right in the skin under the tail stump. 

Next the lungs, liver, heart and oesophagus are removed. These are normally kept and given back to the owners of the animal. The liver has to be check because if there are and tapeworm eggs on it they it has to be thrown away. The lambs get this by eating dog poo in the field. 

Finally the animal is checked over and stamps are out on it. The kidneys are left in all the animals bar cows. I did ask why and my answer was i think it's tradition. So that was the dressing process of the lambs and goats.

With cows and pigs it is different. For cows they have to be shot then taken onto a heavy duty suspension pully. Then lowered down onto a cradle support where they are gutted and skinned then chopped in half and taken on. With logs they are shot then put into a vat of boiling water for two minutes. Then put into a polisher when most of the hair and rough skin is removed. Then any hair that isn't removed is shaved off by hand. Then the pugs are gutted with their heads and trotters left on. 

Once all of the animals have been dressed they go into a cooling/ drying fridge where they will sit for as long as the owners want after that they will either be sent to somewhere else to be butchered or be butchered by the people at the slaughter house. 

All in all I had a really good day it was such a great experience. Everyone was so nice and wished me all the best.