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Thoughts on the Turkey shechting

by Anna Stevenson · January 3rd, 2009

The day before the Hazon Food Conference, I learned how to eviscerate a turkey in less than 10 minutes.

On the day, I was mostly aware of how elated I was at having learned this new skill. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, but under the careful tutelage of farmer Jim, I really felt that I got it.

Since then, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the larger significance of the day. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who say “Eww, gross!” I’ve read Sue Fishkoff’s great JTA piece on the event, and the rude comments left in response. And in the quiet of the winter after the excitement of the Food Conference has calmed a bit, I have the time to offer some of my thoughts on the subject (other than my glee at my new poultry-gutting skills!)

Taste.
First of all, the turkey was delicious. Delicious. The meat was rich and flavorful. The skin and fat were amazing. I picked every piece of meat off the bone and savored every mouthful. There were plates being sent back to the kitchen with hardly-touched carcasses, and we redirected them to our table. I think having to eat the meat off the bone threw some people off, but oh! It was worth the sticky fingers.

The turkeys we ate were (I think – correct me if I’m wrong) Burbon Red and Narangasset—both somewhat endangered heritage breeds. Why bother to preserve them? Well, they taste good. And, even more importantly, genetic diversity is they key to withstanding pests and disease. The standard broad-breasted white turkey bred for commercial production is so weak it can’t stand up, needs drugs to boost their deficient immune system, and can’t reproduce on their own. Any number of diseases could wipe this species out, and if we want to keep eating turkey, we’ll need a diversity of breeds to balance the gene pool.

The farmers who raised these birds told us that, ironically perhaps, eating heritage breed turkeys and other animals is the best way to preserve them, because it enables farmers to make a living raising them. Farmers are the only ones preserving this biodiversity – if they find they can make a living doing it, they will.

Slaughtering, plucking, eviscerating, and butchering a turkey is disgusting.
No, it’s not. It’s beautiful. If animal meat makes you squeamish, go see the Bodies exhibit or find yourself an illustrated anatomy book. Our lives depend on our intricate series of tubes and containers, a central distribution system, waste collection… the “asher yatzar” (bathroom blessing) comes to mind: if but one of these openings or hollows was closed where it should be open, or open where it should be closed, we could not function. Ditto with animals. Putting my hand inside the carcass of a dead turkey and pulling out the still-warm entrails was an AWE-some experience. Meat comes from a living animal, and if you can’t hear that – you shouldn’t eat meat.

Cost
On the topic of the kosher industry, and providing affordable meat to Jewish families, I have this to say: We as Jews and as Americans need to get away from the idea that eating meat is a right. Meat takes a lot of work to grow. Meat processing takes time. And you can get a lot of meals out of one goat or lamb, and man more out of a cow, but you need the means to store it, or a community to share it with, and you’re not going to have steak every night.

Rav Mandel, head of kosher supervision at the OU, said himself: it is consumer demand for meat that keeps the slaughterhouses operating at such a speed, and that keeps the CAFOs full of suffering animal inmates, causing vast environmental pollution.

Cheap meat is not a right. Now, 25 people to schecht 18 turkeys may not be a sustainable business model, but to Hazon and Roger’s credit, they turned the twin problems of the expense of kosher meat and consumer ignorance of meat production into one solution: the farmers were paid for their animals, the shochet paid for his services, and the participants got to learn about meat production – while producing kosher, organic, humanely-raised meat for the Food Conference.

Yes, I would have liked to eat a little more meat at the Food Conference. I was a vegetarian for a long time, but I eat meat now and have come to enjoy it, especially on Shabbat. But if you can’t get good meat – better not to eat it at all. Andrew Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, who spoke at the food conference, named not eating factory-farm meat as the “#1 thing that people could do” to change our food system. Eating good meat, less often, must become our minhag as Jews, and our common practice as Americans.

So…turkey shechting. I’m grateful for having learned a new skill. I know there will be more poultry eviscerating in my future, and I’m glad to have had the chance to practice and improve. And overall, of course, I’m grateful for the conversation, and the slowly shifting state of kosher meat production in this country. It’s about time!

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9 Responses to “Thoughts on the Turkey shechting”

Fern Says:
January 4th, 2009 at 1:19 am
“Meat comes from a living animal, and if you can’t hear that – you shouldn’t eat meat.”

As a vegetarian, I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment and commend you for being one of the few (it seems) meat eaters who really “gets” the above idea. I’m not a militant vegetarian, but I think its nuts to want to eat meat ans simultaneously want to be totally disconnected from the meat production process.

I think your point about eating less meat is also a good one. It’s better for the environment to raise and process meat on a smaller scale, it’s better for the animals, and it’s better for people’s health to eat meat in moderation. I wish I could remember the rabbi who I originally heard this sentiment from, but he pointed out that eating fleishig meals every night for dinner is a relatively new occurrence in the Jewish community. Just a few generations ago meat was too expensive and too scarce to eat it as often as American Jews eat it today.
Ashley Says:
January 4th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Here is a good video on meat slaughter: http://meat.org
Nadya Says:
January 5th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Anna-I really appreciate your post. I was an on-and-off vegetarian for a long time but upon reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma and learning more about the industrial food industry, I was completely turned off from eating that kind of meat, and have been a vegetarian since. That being said, I would gladly (though not too frequently, given the environmental implications of meat consumption, etc.) partake in meat if it were kosher, grassfed, free-range, etc. and readily available where I live. I was at the Food Conference and ate the very turkey you described. I agree with you–it was delicious! And it made me incredibly glad that Hazon gave people an opportunity to take part in conscious and responsible meat consumption. I still consider myself a vegetarian and am not going to be eating just any kind of meat now that I broke my 2 year no-meat streak–but I don’t feel like I compromised my values at all, because it’s not the meat eating I disagree with per se, it’s the way it’s all orchestrated.
lauren ahkiam Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Anna!!

I will echo Fern and Nadya as a vegetarian who welcomes your words. This has been my frustration lo these almost 20 years (!) I’ve been a vegetarian. If people can’t handle killing it, they shouldn’t eat it. Now, I personally would still not eat the above turkey, but I would have far fewer qualms about you eating it :).

Funnily we just re-watched the clip from Michael Moore’s film “Roger & Me” where the woman skins the rabbit, which seems to bother everyone so deeply.

On a similar note, just read “My Year of Meats”, and if ever there was a vivid and moving picture of the impacts of CAFO and the repercussions of the perception of cheap meat as a right, that is IT (and great for those who can only pay attention to narratives, like me).

While we in the food movement may disagree on whether or not to eat meat, it’s nice to have places in the where we can have overlap on trends and practices.
lauren ahkiam Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Hrm, and as for the commenters on JTA, they sound defensive to me, like people not interested in confronting or considering the potential harm of their past actions, and have instead resorted to name-calling and character slights against committed people working to live their convictions.
Roger Studley Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Anna –

Thanks for participating on the farm and for your thoughtful post. I couldn’t have said it better myself. We need to take responsibility for the meat we eat, to eat less of it, and to treat the animals with kavod, rather than as commodities. Yesher koach to everyone working to raise consciousness and change the system.

And the turkey was, indeed, delicious!

See you on the farm next year. :-)

~Roger
Roberta Schiff Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Although the heritage turkeys schected and served at the Hazon Food Confrence 2008 led less inhumane lives than mass market turkeys, they were still raised to be killed. Our bodies are not well set-up to digest flesh and it is not necessary for good nutrition.

Two public remarks at the Food Conference were disturbing to me.
1) People were asked to stand up in many categories such as new attendees, those who attended all three years, those who were Rabbis or Cantors, etc. Then there were questions about who had eaten the turkeys.One was:
“If you are a vegetarian but ate the turkey, please stand-up.” These people received a lot of applause. I would wager you would not ask something like “If you are usually Kosher but eat treif too, please stand-up”. If this was asked, I don’t think people would applaud. Then one speaker compared the work of the 25 people who shechted and prepared the turkeys to the “36″ the righteous persons who hold up the world. Really? First of all the identity of the 36 are never to be known, but I think they have more serious and world saving work to do rather than participate in the killing of any living beings. I hope that the 2009 conference will put more emphasis on healing and repairing the world by working to reduce world hunger and environmental damage rather than so much time, effort and talk about “sustainable” meat. I hope we can be less elitist and more open to the suffering of both people and animals.
Anna Stevenson Says:
January 8th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Thanks, everyone, for your comments.
Roberta, I specifically want to respond to some of the things you said.

I, too, was uncomfortable with the comparisson to the lammedvavniks. I believe that eating meat is a moral concession. The comment was meant to make visible the amount of work that goes into meat production that is usually invisible…but I agree it was overstated and inappropriate.

For some, eating meat is not good nutrition. For a large number of others, eating _some_ meat is healthy. (I strive to eat it only on Shabbat). A diet that includes some meat is also part of a balaced local foodshed that includes dairy and manure for crop fertilization. In addition, I believe strongly that meat from nearby is a better way to get protein than tofu made from chinese or GM soybeans.

About the vegetarians eating turkey: Our current industrial food system offers a conscientious person very few options. I was a vegetarian for 8 years because I didn’t want to have any degree of participation or endorsement of CAFOs and their environmental and social violence. But giving peopel another option is exciting. I fully respect people who don’t want to kill (altho know that if you eat dairy, the boy animals born to the lactating cows and goats are killed, and so you’re not really ‘not participating’ in killing animals unless you’re a vegan). But if it can be done in the best possible way — healthy for the land, the farmer, and the eaters, I am proud to bring this alternative to folks. None of us should be too dogmatically stuck in our opinions to not have them shaken up after a while. If all those folks who ate turkey went back to being a vegetarian afterwards, I still applaud their openmindedness.

Finally, I support your call for more conversation about food justice and environmental issues. We have a lot of work to do!
Roberta Schiff Says:
January 9th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Thanks, Anna, Even though we disagree about eating meat, I am glad to hear that you don’t eat factory farmed animals, and restrict the amount of meat you do eat. I am vegan and do work to educate people about the treatment of male dairy calves and also that the average cow now gives 10 times as much milk as her ancestors 50 years ago. And this can only be forced for a few years, so she is slaughtered at 4 years of age and her flesh becomes “mystery meat”. Her calves are not allowed to nurse, even the females.
Your last paragraph is what I want to hear more of – let’s do some real work about food justice, whether we eat meat or not. Those who do eat a lot may be more ready to eat much less when they realize how much it impacts the environment and contributes to worls hunger.