Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Meanwhile, an alternative...

The Danes are getting great mileage out of this article on a Danish Crown slaughterhouse and it strikes me as well deserved. The photos are outstanding and this one was the most impressive to me - hogs waiting to be slaughtered.



The slaughterhouse at Horsens was truly one of the most fascinating places I have visited on my travels. It is an experience that will leave a mark on my daily life, and help me to understand, just a little, about another important aspect of my food. As you can probably tell, this post is not an in-depth exposé of an industry, and my experience is not enough to knowledgeably critique the process of delivering Danish Crown bacon to your breakfast table; nor can I account for the processes of Danish Crown outside what I saw in Horsens. But I was pleasantly surprised by the openness of the plant about its operations and methods, and it is clear that when they designed the slaughterhouse they were thinking ahead in terms of what consumers will want to see from food producers: more transparency. And while I can’t comment on the conditions of the lives of the pigs before they get to the slaughterhouse (the vast majority of which come from Denmark), I can only make an educated guess that, through my experience as a resident of Denmark, the laws that govern the treatment of pigs would be about as strict or stricter as they would be anywhere else in the world. Anyone with any knowledge on that would be welcome to chip in. [More]

It is hard for competing meat companies to say things can be done better when faced with examples like this.  Bottom line, this could be the best answer to the slide in meat consumption, not confrontation or security.

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