I have to say you are really brave to handle that! Guess we do what we have to do, but I'm not sure I could've handled that--plus those hours away from home. Glad things are better for you now.

That sounds terrible! I've never had to do a job like that, thank goodness, but I've known of a few people who are chicken catchers, and that's also a horrible job.

Yuck! I've known people who worked at meat packing plants (my best friend from way back in high school did) but I never knew what they did at work. Good for you, though, for sticking it out and doing what you needed to do!

Sounds really gross, but not any worse than what I've seen as a nurse. Like the live maggots on a patient's legs for weeks, open chest wound we had to pack just over another patient's heart, open abdominal wounds, nasty infected draining wounds. I think it's worse because these are living humans, especially the maggots...there were some nurses who couldn't even walk into the room.

Kath...maggots on the patients for weeks? Why was that?

Susan, it was actually longer than that if you count the weeks he had them on him at home. No running water, no electric at home and he just never got help for it. I can't even imagine. The new flies would lay eggs in the wounds on his legs and keep hatching. We did soaks on his legs, antibiotics, etc...but the mds didn't think anyone should try and scrape them off because they were eating the dead tissue and keeping his legs from getting infected or so we were told. We finally just did it, but more would hatch, over and over. We finally got rid of them all and he went home.

It is unimaginable how many people don't know exactly how the meat comes to their table!

kath- yep, yep, yep! Now some places are using maggots with great success on diabetic ulcers- they were used hundreds of years ago with good outcomes- seems like 'what goes around comes around' sometimes. Maggots do have their uses.

OMG Kath....I'm sure I wouldn't be able to stomach that.

I had the same job as Moonie.....only difference was it was beef. I was 23 and freshly married and they sure did pay a fabulous wage for the time....couldn't pass it up.....we needed the money. I was sent to the kill line right off the bat. I was issued a pair of thigh-high gum boots and gloves with "grips" on the palms. They explained my job and what I would be doing...... I spent the next 7 months standing in blood up to my knees every day for 9 to 10 hours a day. I would go home and cry nearly every evening. I quit when I absolutely could not face one more
day there. Desperation was not enough motivation for me to go back......horrible......

My ex and I have a trucking business and I've seen a WHOLE lot at those meat packing places - especially coming out of the MW. When people were ranting about the pig being such a disgusting animal and ordered chicken instead, I shook my head. Chickens are some of the worst out there too - and the slaughter houses. The stench is horrid. I remember being a mile away from one place and I didn't think I would make it before losing my breakfast. Hearing your stories makes me really wonder why I eat meat. BUT...

I don't eat pork just because I can't bring myself to eat such an intelligent animal. It's not a moral thing with me, just an inability to make myself eat it. I'm not at all logical, in fact, because I eat hamburgers, but I can't manage to eat steak because it's more obviously animal flesh.

What I guess I want to know....or maybe I don't.......do the animals suffer? Are they killed as humanely as possible?

My dad worked in a packing house for 34 years. I don't think he had to work the kill though. They say that it has a big turn over because it really is disturbing. I can under stand that. My dad boned the Cure 81 hams.
Leslie

Coral...they try to be as humane as possible......there are federal directives that say they must be. The packing plant that I worked at used the captive bolt stun system. The animal was rendered unconscious by this method. Humane?????....thats questionable.....

At the plant I worked, they shot the hogs in the head. Supposedly these guys were good shots and were expected to make a kill with the first shot.

When I was on the skull splitter, the girl behind me had the job of plucking a little pea-sized "thing" out of the brain and that "thing" was used in some form for birth control.

Indianakat - 7 months? you're a stronger woman than I!

I've also heard about maggots actually keeping an infection from getting started. That's just gross!

Oh.. I meant to add that one of the worst things about that job was DH having such a 'cushy' job when I was on the kill floor. Somehow it didn't seem fair! LOL

Thanks, indianakat. Wish I could manage the vegan thing!

Makes me very happy to be a vegetarian.

I don't care what anyone else eats -honest I don't.
TBS, about 20 years ago, I decided that if I was not comfortable with killing a cleaning something, then I ought not be eating it.
I read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair about that time - about the meat packing plants in Chicago.
This thread is a good reminder!