Some people may find the pictures at the bottom distressing. They show a pig being killed and butchered.
One day we hope to rear our own pig. If we are going to do this we feel it’s important that we are able to complete the chain, from farm to plate, by taking part in the killing and butchering of our own pigs. When our friend Chris from Wild Thyme asked us if we’d like to go along to see his own pig, Slobodan, being killed and butchered, we both agreed, but with strong reservations about whether we could watch all of it.
We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. We saw the whole process, took part where we could, and enjoyed eating part of Slobodan at the end of it all. Now we know what we are letting ourselves in for, so bring on the piglets! But not this year!
A tough one Julie and Joe. Don’t think I could do it, although I am a meat eater. However, it’s just a different mind set. I’m sure the pig had a happy, well cared for life and it looked like it was dispatched fairly efficiently (more than can be said for some abbatoirs if rumours are true) I’m told the trick is not to give it a name, but pigs are intelligent creatures, so difficult not to get attached.
Not sure if I understand the shooting in the head and then cutting throat. Did the head shot not kill the pig? As for the ‘thrashing about’, now I would find that part difficult to deal with!
As I said – a tough one, but one has to eat to live and in a lot of Europe, this is an everyday occurrence as is hunting all sorts of creatures! Pheasant season is in in the UK at the moment and it would be hypercritical of me to say I don’t enjoy eating them, but I couldn’t pot one out of the sky…..
Thanks for an insightful blog, as ever!
Hi Sally, apparently the throat needs to be cut to let the blood drain quickly. Not quite sure why! Some people just slit the throat and don’t bother with the head shot, I think it’s a matter of personal preference and how happy you are to kill an animal by this method.
Well in this country The blood is collected in a bucket and added to oatmeal, spices and herbs to make black or blood pudding. Perhaps this is also true in Bulgaria but you were concentrating on the butchery. It would be interesting to find out.
They don’t make black pudding here, we did ask about the blood and it isn’t used at all which we found strange considering they use everything else.
Well the latest dish in the ‘trendy’ restaurants in London is Pigs cheeks, for which they are charging a fortune! Not sure how they cook them tho Julie!
Well isn’t this all a mad reflection of globallisation. I watched a TV program about black/blood pudding and the main producer in UK imports dried blood from eastern europe. Keep going it is all very interesting.
You’d have thought with all the vampires out here there’d be a shortage, never mind exporting the stuff!