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Because the tarp marks the shift that<br />
happens.<br />
“On that side of the tarp, the chickens are<br />
viewed as livestock,” he continues. “On this<br />
side, they’re viewed as food. It’s the difference<br />
of just a few seconds.”<br />
And standing on one side of the tarp, you<br />
don’t have to see what’s happening on the<br />
other.<br />
Some mornings I work on the same side<br />
as Holtz, plucking and cleaning the carcasses<br />
he hands me. We use a simple machine. It’s a<br />
half-barrel with rubber fingers all across the<br />
inside surface, like a giant scrub brush turned<br />
outside-in. The floor of the plucker is covered<br />
with the same fingers and spins, powered by<br />
a small electric motor. Twenty seconds in the<br />
barrel and a bird is clean of feathers. Much<br />
faster than plucking by hand.<br />
“I think the fastest time for plucking a<br />
bird by hand is four seconds,” Holtz says from<br />
around the tarp. He’s got two birds scalding<br />
in a giant pot of water, preparing them for<br />
the plucker. “Of course, I can’t vouch for the<br />
source. Just something I googled.”<br />
This morning I’m on the table side,<br />
helping to eviscerate the chickens: removing<br />
everything from the inside that’s not meat, fat,<br />
and bone. There’s an art to doing this with one<br />
hand and in a single motion. Making sure not<br />
to rupture the gallbladder, which is filled with<br />
nasty alien-green bile. There’s a skill to putting<br />
your fingers in the right place and applying the<br />
right pressure when you remove the liver and<br />
the heart from the rest of the mass. Making<br />
sure not to rupture the gallbladder; whatever<br />
the bile touches is thrown out and we don’t<br />
want any bird to be wasted.
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