More on where food comes from

Last night was another late late night of filming in the desert followed by a beer with Talia to unwind. It wasn't until about 3:30 am that I finally drifted off, only to be awoke at 8 am by the woman who had been out with her husband collecting 3-toed jerboas for Talia's work. To make it worth it for them, I agreed to take 40 animals (males and females) so I could go through the females and maybe get a few more embryos. A few ended up being 2, but that puts the final embryo count for that species at 415. Pretty good numbers. Meanwhile, Talia and Sarah finished building the trackway constructed of reclaimed cardboard from the recycle center and filled the bottom with the sand we'd collected yesterday. I think they got some pretty good movies of the animals running along the track and sorted ones that are the most active and easy to get to do what we want.

Once we finished that part of the day's work, we went into town to meet the daughter of the couple collecting jerboas for us. She speaks reasonably good English and had sent me a text message the day before to see if we wanted to hang out. After we got ice cream, we wandered through the market and around town a bit and saw the most amazing thing. I don't know how many people will remember the Sarah Palin interview that was done right around Thanksgiving 2007 where she was standing in front of a guy dropping turkeys into funnels to have their heads chopped off and drained. Well, we saw the chicken equivalent. I looked over to see a pair of yellow bird legs flailing from a body that was head down in a metal funnel. Below the funnel was a bucket of partially congealed blood swarming with flies. Once the bird stopped kicking, the man pulled it out by its feet and dropped the animal into a giant wok full of nasty brown water set over hot coals. The hot water started to loosen the feathers and scales so they started to come off the body. He then took it out of the hot water and dropped it into a big metal drum that had ridged finger-like projections protruding into the barrel. He leaned down to flip a switch, and the drum started to rotate like a washing machine on the spin cycle. As he scooped more hot water into the contraption, the rubber projections caught the feathers and scales until all that was left was a completely naked chicken. He then turned off the motor, fished out the plucked chicken, and handed it over to his wife who gutted it on a makeshift table set up over a cage of live chickens and bagged it up for the person who had purchased the bird. While the whole experience was a bit morbidly fascinating, I think the strangest part was seeing the live chickens in the cage looking at the dangling head of their brethren who had gone before.

Every experience like this just reminds me of how detached we are from our food. We don't even know where our meat comes from. It arrives prepackaged in styrofoam and plastic wrap and could have been butchered days and days ago someplace far from the consumer. I once asked someone here why they don't buy meat from the supermarket, since I've seen packaged meat here also. The answer was that if you buy from the supermarket, it isn't fresh. If you buy from the person at the local market, the animal was killed that morning - or right there in front of you. Every day at this local market, there are 4-5 vendors selling fresh pork. If you arrive early in the morning, you can see the whole butchered carcass - organs, feet, and all - laid out on the table, often with the head on a motorcycle cart in the background. By the end of the day, nothing remains, and each vendor will stay until the last cut is purchased. Nothing is refrigerated which would probably gross people out back home. But it's also not bleached a fake red color or turning gray-green from being kept for too many days before being marked down to the budget meat price. Makes me want to find a local farm share when I get home and do this omnivore thing right.