About A Rooster — Pasta Madre Paradigm

I pulled the rooster from the boiling water and flopped its body on the table. Grabbing a handful of feathers, I tugged gently and they came away from the flesh with a quiet pop. Before thinking, I said it out loud. “It feels satisfying to tear the feathers from the skin.”

Perhaps the comment was off-color given that the animal had been running around just moments before, but it didn’t feel like an animal anymore.

I felt much the same way when I took part in a pig slaughter a few years ago. After the pig was shot between its eyes, we stood about in silence and felt the weight of its death. The weight only lifted once the pig was hoisted onto the table. We began to pour boiling water over its body, and to scrape the hair from the flesh below. As the top layer of skin peeled away under the small metal tool I wielded, I felt oddly satisfied in the way that any rhythmic manual activity can feel.

There is a clear moment for me when a slaughtered animal passes from a previously living creature to an object of fascination with the way boiling water removes feathers and layers of skin and hair. Part of this is pure curiosity and an affinity for manual tasks, but the transition from life to specimen is also a fundamental shift that allows this bird to make its way into my oven, and later my stomach. My rooster is no longer an animal, but an assemblage of flesh and bones on its way to becoming poultry.

This particular rooster met its end during a chicken-slaughtering workshop at a small farm in the Piedmont region of Italy. The birds lead good lives, wandering about the property and eating vegetable scraps and grains grown on the farm. The farmer told us that legally he was not authorized as a slaughtering facility. He explained that we were buying the birds alive, then slaughtering them ourselves. I have spoken with many American farmers facing the same dilemma. Strict slaughterhouse regulations prevent these farmers from slaughtering animals for sale on their own property. Instead, they must bring them to federally approved slaughterhouses, which is costly and time-consuming for small producers in remote areas. Some farmers have circumvented these laws by arrangements with their customers, like selling the birds before the slaughter.

After I had watched enough times to feel confident about where to place my knife on the rooster’s neck, I stepped forward. My bird was beautiful, his feathers a striking combination of brown, green, and glistening black. Holding his head as he sat calmly upside-down in a sort of funnel, I sliced his throat and felt his body spasm. I clutched tightly as he flapped around. Wincing, I glanced up at the farmer standing across from me, waiting for him to give me the signal that the rooster’s life was gone, not trusting my own hands to tell me. He was so warm. After what seemed like an eternity, he told me “cut again”. My knife had not gone quite deep enough, and the blood had begun to congeal in his veins. My face felt stuck somewhere between a grimace and an apology. Finally, his body went slack and I lifted him by his feet and submerged him in the boiling water. He came out of the pot and we began to pull off all his soggy, colorful feathers. My face and my emotions relaxed as I committed my hands to the task. He quickly joined the ranks of pinkish-yellow, alien-looking bodies, his individuality stripped away with his plumage.

When he was clean—bumpy, pink, and nearly cold—I carried him inside. I watched as more capable hands sliced him open and removed his insides. His stomach was sliced in half, its partially-broken-down contents scraped away, and the fluorescent yellow fat cleaned from the outside. The edible bits (stomach, gizzard, liver, kidneys) were separated from the testicles and the intestines. Watching the insides of an animal come outside is enthralling. The intestines bulge as they are released from their tight quarters, and you have to wonder how they ever managed to stay cooped up. His feet were chopped off and tossed to the farm’s dog. We left the rooster’s head on. “It is more beautiful that way,” the farmer told me—a reminder that the food came from a sentient being.

Back home that evening, I sat on the couch and looked at the photos and video clips a friend had taken of the slaughter. Watching on-screen was much harder than in person, the sensory detachment from the situation somehow making it more grotesque. I could not feel the warmth of the animal’s body, the freezing air, or the small squirt of his blood that inadvertently made its way onto my arm. I could not smell the smoke and boiled flesh, or see the dog straining at his leash to take part in the action. Being present, I felt focused, purposeful. Physically removed, I squirmed in my seat.

I have an emotionally complicated relationship with chickens. My family lives in Berlin, Maryland, a small town on the Delmarva peninsula, surrounded by coastal bays, the Atlantic Ocean, and Perdue-contracted chicken farms. Perdue is the third largest chicken supplier in the U.S. and has faced lawsuits regarding humane treatment of its birds and pollution of the Chesapeake Bay. Each time I return home, I drive past giant trucks full of scraggy birds in tiny cages on their way to be slaughtered. My frequent bike route takes me past one particular farm, its rows of gray chicken houses lined with large, rotating fans. I always hold my nose until it is safely in the distance—the smell is like death.

Perdue’s chickens are raised in overcrowded barns, crammed together with almost no room to move around. The chickens are bred to fatten quickly, growing absurdly large breasts that weigh them down on weak legs. Their unnatural development makes it hard for them to walk, so even if they did have space they would be unable to enjoy it. Instead, they spend their brief lives sitting in the excrement of their fellow chickens. Their experience could not be more different from my rooster’s.

So, it may not be surprising that I feel repulsed by the industrial chicken lining the grocery store fridge in its Styrofoam trays. The anonymity of the pale pink flesh, the pervasive fear of salmonella, the mental image of those sad birds driving down the highway. I feel both profoundly disconnected from and alarmingly close to those Perdue chicken breasts.

My rooster inspired none of these feelings. His pink flesh didn’t scare me; it was even enticing. That evening for dinner, I happily massaged him with butter and herbs, cooking him long and slow in the oven until his skin crackled and browned. The meat was impossibly moist and deeply flavorful.

I don’t feel particularly regretful about his loss of life, nor do I take it lightly. What I feel is a deeper involvement in his story, with his predetermined fate as nourishment for a human being. I feel grounded, and maybe even a little bit proud—the kind of pride you feel when you cook the vegetables you grew in your garden, or when you pluck the feathers from a bird.

Emily graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in geology. Don't ask her about rocks though, she is interested in the intersection of fisheries, fisherfolk, and climate change.