Grazing: Abattoir
May 29th, 2009 by Web Editor in Restaurants, grazing, review
Here’s a scene from my early career. I was living in a small town in rural Georgia, a place where my big-city senses underwent continual shock. One very early morning, I awoke to the sound of screams. I’m talking blood-curdling screams. They seemed to come from several directions.
I threw on some clothes and hopped in the car. After all, I was a reporter and it appeared a mass murder was underway. What I found was that people were engaging in an annual ritual of the first freeze: butchering hogs. I’ve never forgotten the sound and the bloody scene I observed.
I suppose I am overly sentimental about animals. After that experience, it was many months before I could eat pork. I went years, too, without eating veal when I saw the conditions of crate-raised calves.
(Photo by James Camp)
Continue reading the latest Grazing.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Perhaps that experience was meant to show you (and others through you) the horrible suffering pigs experience en route to being turned into the pork you seem determined to eat anyway. Please rethink the experience instead of repressing it or rationalizing it and choose a more humane diet! The pigs are still screaming, somewhere, every day.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Blerg. I won’t let Jill be a downer on my planned dinner there tonight.
Maybe we just can’t hear tiny plant screams.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Silence… of the HAMS!!!!
sorry – couldn’t resist
June 1st, 2009 at 5:49 am
Your Abattoir post is featured on the Brown’s Guides home page this morning.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Friday night dinner there was awesome. Service was great, very few lapses. Gorgeous night to sit outside on their patio.
Tripe/pork belly was great, rabbit was definite winner, pickled shrimp ridiculously good, most everything else was good to great. Wine prices are outstanding.
We ate and drank like pigs (hogs?) and it was $200 for four people.