I had a different post planned for today, one about not stressing over the holidays. Maybe I'll get back to it. But something else happened. Something that affected me deeply. I want to share it with you.
Bruce and I went to a slaughter yesterday. A goat slaughter. Why the picture of a pig? I'll get to that.
It was a kosher slaughter--with a shochet, a butcher who slaughters animals in strict adherence to Jewish law.
What does that mean? Basically, the shochet and the animal must make personal contact at the moment of death. He slits its throat while looking the animal directly in the eye. If an animal were to blink or look away, the meat cannot be sold to observant Jews.
Of the ten goats killed, several looked away. And so were available for purchase--by goyim like me.
I don't want to get too graphic here. But here's what happened. Bruce and I walked down a muddy, rutted road to some rickety outbuildings. As we approached, there were seven bloody hides hanging off a fence. We rounded the corner just as they were sawing the head off one carcass.
The smell of death was thick. Overpowering. I threaded my way between two carcasses skewered on metal hooks and made my way back to the table where they were selling the meat.
I was scared going in. Scared I was going to be sick. Scared I'd be the goy puking at this ritual, religious slaughter.
Instead, I stood behind Bruce as he picked out the cuts from a chest freezer and tears began rolling down my cheeks. I hurt inside. I began to cry.
I didn't want to look away. I watched what they were doing to those animals on the hooks. I wanted to know. Not from some prurient interest. Not because of some stupid locavore BS. But because this is what it means to eat what I eat.
The people cutting up those goats hanging from the hooks were as gentle and as kind a people as I've ever seen. They were soft-spoken and peaceful. They kept patting the carcasses as they skinned them. Almost petting the animals. They talked about the goats. About how this one was so playful. But not in a snide, joking way. They were serious, almost reverent. Several times, I was told, they said a quick prayer, thanking God for the goat, for its life, as they patted it--before disemboweling it.
I won't go on. It was gruesome. Horrible. It's one thing to see it on TV. There's a distance, a gap between you and it. There's another thing to stand there, your shoes in the bloody hay, your head reeling.
And yet it was somehow also sacred. Yes, sacred. Not a word I would have thought. But that was also part of my tears. The whole scene was somehow very human, very religious. So I wanted to tell you about it.
So why the pig at the top of this post? Because that's our pig, Bruce's and mine. That's the pig we drove to slaughter. In fact, that pig is going to its death in that picture. Those are Bruce's boots on the fence rail. It's a story told in HAM: AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER. I'll leave that story to the book. Believe it or not, it's an amazing story, if you haven't read it, both funny and redemptive.
For now, I'd like to leave me crying at a goat slaughter in a ramshackle barn amid muddy fields in very rural New England.
Because it's important. Did it make me a sudden vegetarian? No. Did it hurt? Yes.
Because taking a life hurts. And it should. We've lost that. And with it, some of the compassion I saw among those observant Jews, butchering the goats.
My experience affirmed some resolutions I've already made. You may already know these, but I'll repeat them here. I only eat meat if I can shake the hand of the person who raised the animal--and was involved in its slaughter. I only eat meat that I know comes from animals raised humanely--and killed humanely. I believe in that eye contact. Because it hurts. Because it should.
I'm not a fanatic. I cannot foist my ethics on my friends and family. If I'm invited to your house and you make a chicken from a big-box warehouse store, I'll eat it with gusto.
But in what I can control, I have found my ethical lines. Amid my tears.
Which means I'm eating a lot less meat these days. Which means I am actively involved in the process of life and death that leads to eating.
From those tears come understanding. As Emily Dickinson said of her own maturation: "A session wiser, and fainter, too, as Wiseness is." From those tears come compassion. From those tears come thanksgiving.
We're dancing around here. Seriously. Dancing. And we're white boys. We don't dance. Without biting our upper lips. But we're doing it anyway because our book, HAM: AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER, got nominated for a James Beard award! Holy cow. Or pig. Or something.
Mark Scarbrough | Posted on 
