Asklemmy

I’ve spent a lot of time around German butchers, who specialize in two of three areas during their training: 1-slaughtering, 2-meat production, and 3-sales. In my experience (so take this with a big grain of salt), people who specialized in 1 are significantly more callous towards human life than those who didn’t.

My husband’s hopefully passing his licensing exam today and though he specialized in 2&3 (hence the big grain of salt), he still had to work at a slaughterhouse for a few weeks during his training. He’s not a squeamish person at all (he once knowingly selected The Lullaby’s Smile [trigger warning: this is very effective body horror that so paralyzed me with anxiety to listen to that I couldn’t make myself get up to turn it off] to fall asleep to and is a big fan of schlocky horror movies), but he could not stand it. He hasn’t paid for meat since (though he does save things from the trash, both for himself and for a network of people we know who are happy to accept free meat past its sell-by date and capable of determining whether it’s safe to eat) and will work at a vegan butcher shop after his licensing as a direct result of his experiences at the slaughterhouse.