Shechita

I haven't yet written about shechita, but I have been meaning to. I finally had my camera ready for the latest one, and so I took a bunch of pictures. Only click to see further if you think you can handle it, some of the pictures are a little gruesome.


I wrote this after I saw my second slaughter. (My first slaughter was Halal and had quite a few differences to Kosher slaugher.)

On Sunday, we killed a lamb, this time kosher, and I held the head as her neck was sliced. It was a little traumatic as she was convulsing with involuntary reflexes with her head half cut off and blood dripping out. However, since it was my second time, it was a little easier to deal with, and the butchering was easier too. Kosher standards require many more things of the meat than regular or Halal slaughter, and it was really interesting to learn about taking out the forbidden fats and veins, and I did some of that as well. We cut the lamb up, then soaked, then salted, and then we cut off a bunch of meat, from about a third of the lamb, and ground it up so we could have lamb burgers for dinner. While they were good, I could still smell the awful smell of the slaughter room, and it was a little hard to eat. 

 I think the smell is the most difficult thing about slaughter. The convulsing of the animal is a very close second. This being the third slaughter I have been involved it, I felt it go more efficiently and I was much more familiar with the steps involved. However, there was a point when Robert accidentally cut into the stomach, and the smell of the fermenting was so bad I had to run away and almost threw up.

So without further ado, the pictures:

Just after the cut, the blood is draining.

Close-up of blood draining. The animal died in about 6 seconds.

Beginning of the skinning, here Robert is cutting at the neck. The head has already been cut off.

More cutting at the neck.

Skinning from the bottom. You can see that the feet have been cut off too. We do that and the head at the same time, while it's still in the red metal pen. 

After some initial cuts on the table to help start the skinning, the animal is hung to complete the skinning, allow for more draining, and to empty the body cavity.

Robert skinning. You can see the full abdomen.

More skinning.

Skinning really does take a while because you have to be careful to not cut into the animal's flesh. This is especially difficult with these sheep because they are so lean, so there is little fat to buffer.

Pulling the guts out. You can see the stomachs and the small intestine. The part that is tied off (on the left) is the esophagus, so digested food doesn't flow out while we are working with the animal.

Checking the lungs for lesions. Robert explained that lesions arise because of the poor conditions many animals are raised in. They arise because of lung infections and constant irritations from bad air. They have never found any lesions on lungs because the sheep are pastured.

Examining the heart.

Robert inflated the lungs and then held them under water to check if there were leaks. Since the sheep are raised so well, of course the lungs are perfect.

The final carcass, all skinned. I know the trash bag ruins the picture.

Salting the meat. (We had already soaked it).

There are no pictures of cutting out the forbidden veins and fats because I was actively helping and could not do that and take pictures at the same time. That is done after the meat is cut into big pieces, as you can see above. The meat is much easier to cut up when it is cool (since the warm meat moves a lot more and it's harder to cut precisely), so we refrigerated the meat for a couple days before butchering it. That's it!