Meet your meat

I should probably start off by noting that the chicken and I did not have much of a relationship. In fact, before that fateful night, we had never even met. But does it make a difference? I still stood by while the blood drained out of an increasingly lifeless body, alternately cringing in empathy and licking my chops.
Let me start from the beginning. I helped kill a chicken the other night. More accurately, I watched while someone else did the dirty work. I was invited to the home of a friend, Jamie, who has been unlawfully raising a couple of chickens in his Toronto backyard. This particular chicken was not laying eggs, and didn’t appear to possess a skill set beyond staring blankly. It wasn’t even particularly adorable, which is a famously life-saving attribute. And so, its time had come.
The night before, a plan (of sorts) was hatched. My friends acknowledged little experience in the killing department — generally a comforting admission — and so they turned to an accessible repository of contemporary knowledge. “We watched a video on YouTube,” said my friend Craig. And thus, the research portion of the evening was complete.
When I arrived at Jamie’s, the large, slightly angry-looking chicken was scratching around in the rectangular backyard. I stared at her, searching for any kernels of burgeoning emotional attachment. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, knives were being sharpened, strategy discussed, and beers distributed.
The death apparatus, as recommended by the Internet, was a plastic milk jug with the bottom cut off and the top modified to provide enough space for the chicken to stick her giant head through. From there, the chicken’s throat was to be slit, the blood drained and the head severed with an axe. The body would be dumped into a pot of boiling water to loosen the feathers. Then, after plucking and sterilization by blowtorch, the chicken would be butchered. The gutting process would be aided by another friend, an ER doctor who was deemed most qualified in a crowd of creative types and academics.
Here’s a question: At this point in the story, are you rooting for the chicken? Even if you recently put a pleasantly sanitized shrink-wrapped package of chicken breasts into your shopping cart, such a situation can raise complex feelings. After all, most of us like both pork chops and piglets.
I’m a long-devoted omnivore — the exception being a six-week experiment with vegetarianism at age 13. I eventually broke down and ate a hamburger on a family vacation in Dublin, sobbing dramatically while my parents exchanged glances that appeared to express their desire to sit with someone else’s children. Since then, I have enthusiastically eaten anything that crosses my path, from hearts and gizzards to cheeks and feet. But would being present for the death of an animal impair my ability to eat it?
As it turns out, the chicken transformed into “chicken” quite rapidly. The killing went smoothly and quickly, though I had to force myself to watch. Upon being pinned down, she clucked loudly in distress and I felt genuine empathy. But by the time the feathers were stripped just moments later, empathy had been replaced by peckishness.
Tapping into the increasing focus on the provenance of our food, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that he’s only going to eat meat from animals that he has killed. He told CNN that he doesn’t want to divorce himself from the idea that a living creature died for his dinner. We’re increasingly acquainted with the horrors of factory farming, which is awful for both animals and people. People don’t like to get their own hands dirty — which is why we often leave our food to people whose hands will probably never get clean. But death in any form is rarely pleasant, and this animal lived a comparatively long and peaceful life being fed scraps in a quiet urban backyard. Forget the 100-mile diet; this was animal-to-plate in under 20 feet.
But back to Bev. The chicken was placed in a pot as the preparations for Coq au Vin continued. Gravy was made, potatoes were mashed and carrots were glazed. But five hours later, the bird still wasn’t ready. We crowded around the simmering pot and pulled off strips of meat. The flavour was there, but the consistency was closer to chicken gum. At a year and a half old, Bev was a grand-chicken. We chewed and chewed and reluctantly swallowed.
So, we ended up ordering pizza — the “Meat Lovers” was more popular than the vegetarian option, for the record — not without some sense of defeat. But don’t chalk it up to a victory for the chicken. After simmering an additional 18 hours, the Coq au Vin turned out quite nicely, and Bev supplied a total of three delicious meals. As it turns out, to know her was to love her.
Source: National Post