Inside a Slaughterhouse: The Human Cost of Your Meat - Modern Farmer (2024)

The work starts when I put my whites on. The long coat and apron are required by the federal health inspector, who shows up daily. I’m surrounded by the rasp of knives being sharpened and slid into hip holsters that hang around waists with chains. The assertive whir of the saws hits my ears first as rib cages become short ribs, hind legs become dog bones, and vertebrae are sheared from spines. The room smells like bone dust and dried spices, smoked bacon and wet concrete.

Good shoes are a must. Beneath my Doc Martens, the floor is already strewn with fat and meat scraps and bone fragments as the cutters heft chunks of what was very recently a living cow, deftly scraping every edible bit from the bones. The butcher pushes a massive carcass into the cutting room from the cooler, hanging from a hook on a rail. It looks like a red and yellow wall of flesh, but the cutters work it like sculptors, carving away to reveal the recognizable food within.

This is a dying art—and an art of dying. I grab a cart filled with freshly cut steaks and roasts— wrapping and weighing, labeling and stacking. Two days a week, gunshots from the kill floor punctuate the mechanical noise of the place.

This is what it’s like to work at a meat-processing plant.

In August of 2023, I began my time at a small-scale, family-owned, USDA-inspected plant in rural Virginia, where I worked until February 2024. I was in the middle of a season at an organic vegetable farm, realizing I preferred working with animals rather than plants (having had prior livestock farm experience). I wanted to stay involved in local food production, and meat processing was the only piece of the puzzle I hadn’t seen yet. Besides, I’ve always been fascinated by the craft of butchery and, as a hunter, I knew I’d gain valuable skills. So, I jumped into the fire.

Today, it’s kill day, and the slaughter crew is on the front lines of the transition from animal to food. Where I worked, they slaughtered two days a week. Pork and beef must be kept separate and are killed on different days and stored apart. The crew stuns, kills, bleeds, guts, and skins them all before breakfast.

Here’s how it works: Livestock are unloaded into the pens, and provided with water and shelter. Legally, they must be slaughtered within 24 hours of drop-off. When their time comes, they walk one at a time onto the kill floor, where they are restrained in a box-like device. This standardized equipment is designed to minimize livestock stress, and similar to the squeeze chutes used for handling back on the farm. Then, under federal law, they are rendered insensible to pain. At this particular plant, the preferred stunning method was a rifle round to the brain, but electrocution, gas, and various bolt guns are also permitted, depending on the animal and facility. Afterward, the animal is dressed; if it’s pork, it’s cooled and cut immediately.

The “suck truck” (a truck with a huge trailer and hoses) then collects usable byproducts such as hooves, hides, and viscera to be hauled to a rendering plant—one of around 300 in the country—and made into a plethora of industrial products used for anything from shampoo to dog food. It’s considered a form of biological recycling.

Although the plants try to use as much of the animal as possible, there are restrictions. Trimmed meat and fat become burger and sausage. Organs go into pon hoss (similar to scrapple), bones are cut for soup and dog chews. Anything that can’t be consumed or rendered must be discarded.

But beef must be aged for a week or more to help develop its flavor, mellow its texture, and reduce its moisture content. When it’s ready, the butcher brings it out to the cutting room and then the process starts again: breaking, boning, wrapping, and freezing—stored until it’s picked up by the retail or custom slaughter (private use) client.

It’s a dynamic and dirty job, but someone has to do it. One of the more than half a million workers helping to get the billions of pounds of meat on America’s tables is Britny Polk of Mount Jackson, Virginia. She’s been at the plant for six years, learning from her mother, who worked there for two decades. In addition to wrapping hundreds of pounds of meat a day, Polk manages cut sheets—instructions on how customers want their meat butchered and packaged —and much more.

“As I’m wrapping, I get pulled away a lot to help wait on customers, answer the phones, doing bills, scheduling hogs, beef, and lambs,” she said in an email. Depending on the day, she also makes sausage and hamburger patties using a modified cookie dough machine, orders supplies, and makes sure people show up to drop off their live animal and, later, pick up their meat.

The need for these services is only growing, yet there is a constant labor shortage. “We have a really hard time finding workers and for workers to stay,” Polk said. There are unique workplace hazards here; using sharp implements and machinery comes with an elevated risk of injury. Live animals may behave erratically and even a deceased animal can kick. On busy days, the time flies, but it’s still hours of standing on a hard floor, and around constant sensory stimulation.

Heavy lifting, slippery surfaces, sub-zero temperatures, and exposure to bestial bodily fluids are all part of a typical workday. Every season can be stressful because people often celebrate with meats: spring lamb, summer grilling staples, and holiday roasts. But it can also be fun, and time flies on busy days. I worked in an environment where people were supportive and shared a sense of humor. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have participated in a part of our food system that’s too often intentionally overlooked.

It was awesome watching the butchers breaking carcasses into primals and fabricating mouthwatering cuts. My coworkers were rock stars of the food prep world, cutting it to order right there behind the counter. I miss cracking jokes while listening to music, lamenting bizarre cutting requests (New York strips ground into burger?), or wishing someone would breed a cow with more than one heart, tongue, and tail so we could keep up with demand for offal.

I saw some truly exemplary meat: exquisitely marbled steaks, thick chops from healthy hogs—aesthetics and culinary qualities reflecting the mindful husbandry of the livestock. But that’s not always the case, as farming practices vary. Meat from stressed animals can exhibit off coloration or blood spots, and underfed animals are woefully lean or even atrophied. “There is a lot that goes into producing a good animal,” Polk said. “If you’re not feeding them appropriately, when they need it, your beef will either be way too fatty or it won’t have enough fat on it. A lot of factors go into having a nice-looking cow to process. ”

Regardless of who raises the animals and how, it’s the meat processor’s job to turn them all into food. I sincerely hope that more consumers will try to understand that there is a human cost behind their meat. “A farmer brings this live animal in and we go through every step from killing to wrapping to ensure people have food. It would be great for everyone to know how we get that product to people,” adds Polk.

There are no windows in slaughterhouses, but I aim to shed light on this crucial and underappreciated profession in the spirit of transparency, acceptance, and progress. The meat industry is here to stay and awareness is what it needs to survive.

“I think everyone should educate themselves on the process of how a living animal becomes a steak that is ready to eat. People should care because this is how you get your food,” Polk said.

For those interested in the fascinating fields of meat science and butchery, learn hands-on. Do a season on a farm or with a deer processor. Consider a meat-cutting apprenticeship. It takes an open mind, a team player attitude, and a stomach as strong as your back, but also a love and respect for the people, places, and animals that feed us. My experience at the meat plant is summed up well by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote: “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” If you purchase meat, you are part of this system, and blissful ignorance and denial are a disservice to every being within it. It’s time for consumers to recognize their role, take accountability, and help wherever they can.