Pet Your Food

"On the slaughterhouse floor at Quality Pork Processors Inc. is an area known as the "head table," but not because it is the place of honor. It is where workers cut up pigs' heads and then shoot compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out. Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the Minnesota plant - all of them employed at the head table - developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.Scientists have yet to figure out if there is something in the brain matter that could be causing the symptoms. Quality Pork has not said what it does with the pork brains"- Dow Jones Newswires.


It was this story last year that was the last straw for me. Not since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, had the written word so changed my very intimate relationship with food. Then, as now, I was forced to look at each piece of meat with suspicion. Quality Pork processes pork for Hormel Chili, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out where the pig brains are going, (what did you think was in it?). I'm not big on Hormel Chili or Dinty Moore Stew, or Civil War Era canned horse meat, so I could probably avoid this issue altogether. But after thinking about the head table, having in turn up in my dreams, giving me pause every time I ate something I didn't make myself, I realized that gastronomic elitism wasn't going to save me. I had to face the fact the our food system has been corrupted on a major scale.
I set out to compress the distance between me and my food. Vegetables are fairly easy. There are plenty of local produce stands and farmer's markets in New london county. In the winter I just suck it up and go to the Supermarket, I figure a bag of carrots from Stop and Shop probably has a minimum of swine brains in it. It's the meat that's the hard part, coming as it does, all wrapped in plastic from who knows where.
So I went to Beaver Brook farm where they make sheep. I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but I figured that if they looked happy and healthy, I would eat one. I approached the barn and was greeted by the guard sheep, and it was adorable. I rubbed his little head and introduced myself. He smelled like sheep, that is to say, food. Gamey, musky, earthy, like all my favorite wines, cheeses and parts of the human body. I walked into the barn and dozens of sheeps were there, basking in the low hanging afternoon sun. They stood collectively, and stared with the blankest of stares. Their ears stick straight out, their eyes are on opposite sides of their heads, pointing in different directions. It reminded me of that scene in The Birds, when Tippi Hedren is in the attic, surounded by birds, harmless birds, but hundreds waiting to attack. I leaned over the fence to get a good look at my dinner, and a sheep mooed right at me. But it wasn't a moo, it was more a Bhaaa! Then they all started doing it, hundreds of sheep moos. So I left before there was any real trouble.
I bought some cheese, lamb and frozen lamb stew, all of which was delicious. When I go to a restaurant, I like to be able to see the kitchen, and when I buy meat, I like to be able to see the barn.