It was a full morning of vocationals in Kyogle. The vocational this morning was not geared towards my horticulture profession but it was an experience like no other! First we went to the Casino (it's a town, not a gambling joint) Stock yards which was a huge place selling thousands of cattle...much bigger than the sale we saw at Tenterfield a few days back. We got the behind the scenes tours looking in the control room. We learned a little about how the Australian national livestock ID system works. Each cow or sheep born in the country is given an ear tag with a radio chip in it. Any time an animal is sold, the property where it is grown is tracked. So from the supermarket, you should be able to track that meat back to the farm where it was produced! It costs the producer 3.50 per tag and it is compulsory.
There is a tick problem in parts of Australia and all cattle are checked for ticks. Certain species carry some bad diseases to cattle. If your cows are found with ticks they are quarantined. All cows leaving the stockyards are treated in a dip no matter what their tick status is. This was an amazing thing to witness. Imagine a chute for the cows...one lane wide...a single file row of cows. The cattle go down a ramp into a 7 foot deep pool of chemical, lime, and water mix for their dip. They walk, or if too short, swim across a 20 foot section of dip to a ramp out to the other side. We thought this was going to be the highlight of our day. This process was trumped by our next stop.
After the sale yards we went to the Casino Meat Works as it is known locally. Some people also call it the abbatoir (pronounced AB-o-twah). I call it the meat processing plant. So far along our journey if there was a food production facility, tours were not given. But with our Rotary connections, a board member of this facility was able to link us up with a tour. Joe, Beth, and myself were in for a special treat.
Pictures were not allowed...which is good for our readers because you don't want to see what we saw. DISCLAIMER: The rest of this could be a big graphic...don't say you weren't warned. It was a meat plant folks, cattle are slaughtered and cut up into steaks. And we witnessed it all. Donned in pseudo-hard hats, hairnets, lab coats, and booties we enter the boning room. This place had around 150 to 180 employees cutting, slicing and packaging beef for consumers all over the world!
Then we were taking to another room to see the cows entering the plant right after being killed. We didn't get to see the kill room because they had finished killing for the day...but we did see these calves being processed. They called them calves, I know they were bigger than that...roughly 300 kilo animals (multiply times 2.2 for lbs).
We turn the corner and hanging from the conveyors are the full carcasses of beef. Turn another corner and there is a line of workers taking cheek meat off of cow heads. That's right cow heads. The eyeballs were still in the skulls, the skins were completely off...no fuzz left...and this sight was a little disturbing even to me. But make no mistake...I will still eat beef. Tongues were being removed, various unidentifiable parts were hanging down, but the EYES...they were staring right at you! Every now and then you could tell what breed the animal used to be...the floppy ears still gave away a Brahama.
Then finally we saw the skinning. It was a very efficient process, done very quickly by machine after a bloke hooked up the chain. This too was very disturbing to me. The newly dead cows come in hanging upside down, convey around in preparation for skinning and disemboweling, and there you have it. I was mesmerized, perplexed, a little disturbed, but totally satisfied with the experience.
We started the day at the sale barn, and ended up with consumer ready product in a matter of hours. We got to see the complete process from yard to near-table. Quite fascinating.
No comments:
Post a Comment