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What a refreshing video compared to all of those horrid PETA processing plant videos.
If only this was the norm. http://vimeo.com/22077752

Also, is it bad that I was salivating when they opened up the main cavity and all the fat and offal was pouring out? hahaha

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 it's good that you were salivating. consider it a sign of health. – tartare Apr 18 2011 at 4:10
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 it is my meat processsor :) – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Apr 18 2011 at 11:09
neat video, thanks for posting. – Mark V Apr 18 2011 at 13:58

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Thank you for posting this. I have just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and this transparency is what we need. It's so good to see people involved in food production who really care. We have to 'reclaim' the concept of animal welfare from the vegetarians and vegans and show that we don't have to deny our nature or the concept of the food chain to care for animals.

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Wow. I wanna buy meat from Larry now! He was about to cry when he was talking about putting them down! I'm gonna look him up and order from him.

It's really a great thing that parts of this nation seem to be moving forward (backward in time really) to a more conscious style of farming, slaughtering and butchering livestock. But it's really a drop in the bucket still. Keep truckin' I guess!

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amazing stuff. this was really interesting and I wanna buy meat from Larry too!

The thing is, my sister recently took us to a small operation processing house near where i am living in the UP of MI. We just moved up here sort of temporarily from a city where I could get most anything. Their operation looks very good and they basically buy pigs raised by nearby Wisconsin Amish and process them then resell for pre-orders. I got a 12 quart pot FULL of freshly processed pigs livers and kidneys. Free. FREEEEE If I had gotten there a few days ago I could have gotten some of the other offal that they THREW AWAY (they also donate lots to medical schools). There is simply not enough demand for a lot of this offal.

They gave me and my sister almost more than we could handle for free. I have some pate to make and I'm gonna attempt a 5 week cured pig's liver Fergus Henderson recipe! I would happily pay for this stuff.

My point is that a lot of people bring up cost and other factors in their reasoning for not eating better quality meats etc etc. an there are ways around this. A lot of times excellent stuff gets thrown away because people don't know what to do with it. Developing a relationship with the people you can source meat from is very worthwhile.

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My butcher gives liver away for free too. Why don't I eat it every day? – Aaron B. Apr 18 2011 at 13:22
A Yooper, ay? My maternal grandfather's family are all from the UP. I love it up there. My Uncle has a vacation home/ hunting lodge right by lake superior that the family all use and it never occured to me while visiting to look for local meat. We usually live on game and pasties when we're up there, well no pasties for me anymore. haha – Aughra Apr 18 2011 at 14:27
I'm from Chicago, so not so much of a Yooper, just visiting. My husband jokes that he shovels snow at a second year Yooper level though! Yup, no pasties for us either. I don't think I've ever seen as many deer in my life! I don't know quite where you go on Lake Superior, but I've had some tremendous luck with local farmers here. – tartare Apr 18 2011 at 16:19
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Wow! That's very interesting to see. Having nothing to compare to really, I don't really know how others do it, but I imagine this Larry guy operates one of the better programs.

And because I don't live in the Paleolithic period, and I buy my meat all nicely packaged instead of chasing it down with a spear, I chose to work out on my Powertec to build muscle and keep a strong physique. Pretty amazing what we have now.

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Nice video, thanks. It's been around 25 years since I went to visit a couple of processing plants. One was very modern, and the process was much faster than shown in this video. Larry mentions the chilling of the carcass to prevent bacterial growth, but I don't think he mentioned rigor-mortis. On the other hand the cleaning/peeling of the pig is much cleaner and better here than what I experienced back then, nice equipment nowadays. BTW, that was in México in the mid 1980's.

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