Letter from Molokai / It all happens so quickly.

The steer is stunned with a captive bolt gun to the head and drops to the floor. Within seconds, its hind legs are chained, it’s hung upside down, and the jugular is cut. In less than a minute, the steer is bled out. It’s then beheaded, dehooved, skinned and the entrails removed. The most disturbing step for me is watching the guts being emptied out. Still, I can’t help but think how my family would love to make that stuff into stews and stir-fries.

I suppose I ought to thank my family for setting me on the path that would eventually lead me to the Molokai Livestock Co-op, watching cattle get slaughtered. From Dad taking me to the fish tanks to choose our dinner, to picking out a whole, browned and crispy duck from the window, I’ve never really been afraid of what I might find on the other side of the tidy, plastic-wrapped styrofoam trays of meat in the supermarket. Because those childhood trips and animal carcasses always ended in delicious meals, jumping on the chance to visit a slaughterhouse was just the equivalent of a Chinatown market trip with my Dad. OK, perhaps a little bloodier. Or so I thought.

The Molokai Livestock Co-op is where I get my beef, as part of a cow-share via Slow Food Oahu. Getting our beef more resembles a drug deal than picking up dinner. Eight of us pick up our share of a whole cow (well, technically, steer, where cuts like sirloin and chuck come from) from the back of a truck in a parking lot. We’ve been shooed away by security, who suspect our 50-pound boxes contain some kind of illicit goods rather than vaccuum-packed steaks, short ribs, and lots and lots of ground beef and stew meat (cows have not yet been bred to consist only of filet mignon and porterhouse steaks). I’m told by an independent observer that the Molokai Livestock Co-op is the most humane slaughterhouse in the state. I imagine that this will probably be the gentlest killing I will ever see, and as much as I love the red stuff, if I can’t handle it, maybe I will have to give up meat.

The slaughter

I went to the slaughterhouse thinking more about food than about life.

Going to the slaughterhouse seemed as natural as going to a farm to harvest carrots–albiet a lot more exciting. But of course, the

difference is that there’s no “Humane Carrot Slaughter” manual. There are no sting operations to show carrots being treated cruelly.

A vegetarian asked me, “How do you know what is humane?” To which I replied, “I think you would just know it if you saw it.” But just in case, I read up on the Recommended Animal Handling Guidelines, from the Humane Farm Animal Care Web site.

From what I’ve read, what I see at the slaughterhouse appears textbook-perfect. The animals are directed into the stun pen through simple coaxing, rather than electric prods. When the animal is hit through the head with the bolt, it immediately drops to the ground. The manual says “when stunning is done correctly, the animal feels no pain and it becomes instantly unconscious.” Signs that the stun is effective are apparent when the animal is hung up. As the manual puts it, the “head must be dead.” The head and neck are loose and floppy, the tongue hangs straight out, the ears are down and the tail begins to droop. There are spasms–a leg jerk here and there–that are a little unnerving. But the manual insists that these are normal.

Once the animal is dead, the atmosphere in the slaughterhouse becomes a little more relaxed (or maybe it’s just that fact that I’ve discovered how to breathe again). Jack Spruance, president of the board of directors for the Molokai Livestock Co-op, and now active on the kill floor, makes jokes about flossing the cow’s teeth and teases the other workers. It’s a departure from the mood during our ride to the slaughterhouse, when he was intense and brooding on the perils of corporate farming and feedlots.

When he’s not at the slaughterhouse, Spruance is at Puu O Hoku Ranch, tending to his cows. He gives them no antibiotics or chemicals, raises them entirely on grass and treats them homeopathically if they fall sick. He tends to his animals so patiently and thoughtfully, herding his cows in a manner that calls to mind more Babe than American cowboy on horseback, that one wonders how he can even bear to bring them to the slaughterhouse. To which he replies, “I have a responsibility. Not just to my animals, but also to feed people.”

After making sure the animals die as painlessly as possible, he seems to relax, because he’s done good by them. You can hear the pride in his voice as he announces the weight of the second steer killed that day, a good hundred pounds heavier than the first, with a thick layer of fat around the carcass. Once the animal is skinned, with 6-inch knives shaped and curved like machetes, the tail is removed, for a future oxtail soup. The kidneys are taken out, along with their fat, ideal for making suet, the beef version of lard. The liver and heart are also saved and placed alongside the tongue cut out of the head, on a tray (this is all the stuff I’m excited about–blame that Chinese upbringing again). Up until this point, the parts of the cow come off fairly easy, with knives no bigger than most kitchen knives. But to split the carcass in half lengthwise, the operators take a loud, two-foot long mechanized saw to the animal that sends bone and fat flying. And suddenly, half an hour from when the steer was killed, the carcass begins to look more like beef than cow.

I’m not about to walk out with an arm load of steaks for the grill, though. The carcasses will age in the cooler before being processed (i.e. cut into the less cow-like pieces we recognize as food rather than animal). Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks of a slaughterhouse as a place to pick up meat. While I’m outside for a breather, a lady with a shirt that reads “Give Peas a Chance. Go Vegetarian” picks up meat for her dog. Another woman orders a bag of knuckles to boil for arthritis treatment. A catering company van pulls up asking for meat.

Inside the slaughterhouse, it’s just business as usual. There’s no big drama, there’s no moment of silence. The respect shows in how the operators process the meat. Which isn’t to say that I’m as at peace in here as I am on a farm in a field of sunflowers–that I’m OK being spattered with blood, that the sound of the loud machine saw halving the carcass puts me at ease, and that having to do the “slaughterhouse shuffle” across the fat-greased floor is my idea of a good time.

It just is what it is.