
The art of butchery - sergeant3
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/butchery-is-in-our-blood-whether-we-eat-meat-or-not/
======
xkcd-sucks
Raising your own meat is absolutely wonderful, if you have the space. Animals
are good for maintaining your property (sheep, goats), for getting the pests
out of your garden (ducks, chickens), and so forth-- The more complete your
food web is at home, the less effort you'll have to spend maintaining it.

The meat tastes really really good, and is much cheaper than buying it at the
store-- For example, my ducks cost less than $4 each to raise, and the whole
herd takes about 15 minutes of effort per day. I never thought of duck as
'poor person food' when I was a kid...

Butchering is a huge pain in the ass, but it's fundamentally similar to taking
apart computers/machines etc. and doing butchery is a good way to practice
your surgical technique, if you have to do that kind of stuff for work or
whatever. The downside is that you might start getting hungry whenever you
have to cut up rats.

I used to be into squirrels and rabbits-- Truly 'poor person food--' but have
gotten increasingly paranoid about disease, as transmissible prion diseases
have been 'tentatively reported' in squirrels [0] and tularemia is endemic in
rabbits where I live [1].

[0]
[http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%...](http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2963333-8.pdf)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tularemia#Epidemiology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tularemia#Epidemiology)

~~~
sfgc
Are you plucking or skinning or breasting?

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Plucking... not considered in the '15 minutes of effort per day.' But scalding
at the right temperature and killing before the pinfeathers come in make it
easier... and really, pinfeathers don't make a carcass unedible

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Falling3
The premise that the lack of slaughtering/butchering manifests itself
elsewhere does not seem to be supported by the evidence. In fact, what we
often see is the exact opposite. The introduction of slaughterhouses correlate
with increases in violent crimes.

"The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest
rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex
offenses in comparison with other industries."

[http://oae.sagepub.com/content/22/2/158.short](http://oae.sagepub.com/content/22/2/158.short)

~~~
EdwardDiego
> The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest
> rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other
> sex offenses in comparison with other industries."

Industrial slaughter is vastly different to slaughtering your own.

And the correlation is easily explained - it's well-paid, difficult and
unpleasant work, and it attracts men who tend to drink hard. Alcohol and crime
correlate very well.

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buckbova
This article makes some dubious claims like lack of butchering our own meat to
a rise in slasher films. It reads like nonsense speaking from some unknown
authority.

~~~
venomsnake
Well Texas Chainsaw Massacre has been admitted by the creators to be allegory
about working in a slaughterhouse ...

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hackeraccount
When I was a kid one of my friend's hunted. I remember going over to his house
and helping butcher - skin would be the word I'd use - squirrel and rabbit. It
seemed more like and anatomy lesson then anything else.

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jessaustin
Squirrel is difficult to skin. I'm impressed that she did it with hands and
knife alone. Typically we would nail the front feet to a solid post or
similarly immobile piece of wood, in order to use both hands on the hide.

~~~
Oatseller
"Squirrel is difficult to skin."

You're doing it wrong (I was lucky enough to have someone show me this when I
was young [a long, long time ago]).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c8OyexZ10E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c8OyexZ10E)

I haven't hunted in years. When I was young a friend's mom would fix our
squirrels with home-made biscuits and gravy .. good times.

~~~
jessaustin
[mind... blown]

I learn so much on HN! I'll have to try this next time. Hopefully that wasn't
some special breed of loose-skinned squirrel.

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abruzzi
I've long wanted to learn butchery. I wouldn't want to do it for a living, but
it seems a good way to become familiar with how we're all put together (by
taking an animal apart.)

~~~
ovi256
I would recommend you start by butchering to pieces a whole chicken or rabbit.
They're the closest you can easily get to an unbutchered animal, as they're
available at most butcheries, supermarkets, etc. They would already be cleaned
of feathers or pelt and emptied of viscera, so it would be a simple exercise
of cutting into pieces, separating meat from bones, and so on - literal
hacking. If someone who knows how to do it cannot show you, there are Youtube
guides.

~~~
gus_massa
You can do part of this exercise while eating a roast chicken.

For example, while you are eating a wing, count how many bones each part have
and compare it with a (picture of a) human skeleton. Repeat this with a
chicken leg and thigh. (Remember to count that thin bone as another bone.)

~~~
grogenaut
better yet, try and seperate the parts naturally and with minimal cutting /
effort. Roast chickens can be picked apart pretty easily if you go at it
right; you can also just smash through the bones with a knife. Try the former.

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zedpm
I've started butchering most of my own meat and I've found it very rewarding.
I've gotten to the point that I look forward to days where we butcher because
it's become a social gathering with a great group of people. So far I've
worked on pig, goat, lamb, deer (which I shot), and I look forward to helping
with a cow.

Almost all of the meat I cook is raised by someone I know and butchered by
myself and/or folks I know. I've never been as satisfied with a piece of meat
as I've been since I started participating in the processing. I highly
recommend trying it if you know someone who can show you the ropes.

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LukeB_UK
I went on a pork butchery course on Friday and it helped me fully connect the
animal in the field to the meat on my plate. I'd seen it on TV before, but
actually cutting up a pig and getting hands on really opened my eyes.

~~~
Falling3
I find it really strange that people think the way to connect with an
individual is to cut up their dead body. I understand the sentiment, but it
seems like a far cry from any sort of real connection with "the animal".

~~~
sdrothrock
I think one of us is misunderstanding what he said.

The way I read it, he was not saying "butchering made a connection between me
and the animal I was butchering," but rather that "butchering helped me make a
connection between the steak and the animal it came from."

That is to say, I understand him as saying that he now recognizes that a given
cut of meat comes from a given place on an animal, rather than being just a
piece of meat.

~~~
Falling3
Oh I understood. I just think he's got a long way to go if the connection
merely shows him what muscle group his food came from.

~~~
LukeB_UK
As I mentioned, I'd seen the full process (farm to plate) before on TV in
documentaries and I'm fully aware that the pig in the field will eventually
end up on my plate, but actually having the dead pig in front of me and
cutting it up helped me fully connect the two by adding the hands on aspect of
actually being involved.

This isn't about having a connection with a particular animal, it's having a
connection with the process.

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facepalm
Weird, the second article of this kind I encounter within a day (the other was
in German, though). Meat industry submarine?

Because I think it's just meat eater apologism. The issues with eating meat
don't change if you do the killing yourself or in an artsy way.

~~~
stegosaurus
The idea of a humane killing is nonsensical to me, really.

Imagine a thought experiment in which you could either die painlessly, or live
but be required to endure days or weeks of incredibly painful torture (for the
purposes of the experiment let's say that it doesn't leave lasting
physical/emotional damage).

I'd pick the torture. I assume most other people would too.

I think that should illustrate fairly well that the distinction between life
and death is so much greater than that between joy and suffering.

~~~
vacri
What a strange dichotomy. Who is advocating for the torture of animals?

~~~
Falling3
Directly? Very few. Indirectly? Almost everyone.

~~~
vacri
What is the animal analogue in that story, where the animals are tortured,
then set free to live their own lives?

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njloof
Also recommended for hunter-gatherer acolytes: [http://honest-
food.net](http://honest-food.net)

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comrade1
My father and uncles used to bring their deer every year to a professional
butcher that produced beautiful cuts - butterflied rib, nice roasts, perfect
steaks... But then.... I still remember the year they decided they could do it
themselves and we had misshapen chunks of meat - Basically fist sized and
smaller pieces of meat from wherever on the deer - for at least a few years
until they got the hang of it. But even then it was never as good as the real
butcher.

