Moldavian Pig Slaughter

fx

Sat, 19 Mar 2016 18:48:11 GMT

Thanks again

fx

Sat, 19 Mar 2016 18:45:12 GMT

Thanks a lot Arissa!

fx

Tue, 8 Mar 2016 13:05:48 GMT

Indeed young people today have no grasp of where meat is coming from, that is not showing more respect for the animal, but rather less.

fx

Tue, 8 Mar 2016 13:02:07 GMT

Well that may be just too much information right now ... but glad you liked the article!

Gunnar

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:56:09 GMT

Hi FX, I found this article very interesting, and not disgusting at all.
By the way, I have helped an operation like this myself, many years ago, and I remember sticking a corn cob in the pig"s anus, to prevent spilling shit all over the place.

Martin

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 02:42:03 GMT

Thank you for the pictures and captions. They are fascinating and not disgusting. This is butchery � it is what it is, and I am sure the pig gave plenty of fine eating. There is a wonderful pig slaughtering and butchering scene at a farm in Ermanno Olmi"s 1978 film, "The Tree of the Wooden Clogs", which is a finely crafted film about 19th century Lombard peasants, well worth seeing in addition to the scene mentioned which shows the ritual of the slaughter.

Corrie

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:01:02 GMT

Hi FX. Thanks for handling this subject with respect. I also grew up in the country and my grandfather used to slaughter our own chickens and lambs. I think it is important to have an awareness of where our food comes from. I hate the rows of plastic trays in the supermarkets filled with skinless chicken breast, 20 drumsticks, chops, cubed meat so you don"t even have to "touch" it, "soup" bones, etc....what happened to the rest of the animal?!
My son has yet to see an animal slaughtered as we now live in the city with all its "conveniences". I long for the simpler life again even though it was "damn hard work"! :-) ahh the good ol" days hehe

Arissa

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:35:05 GMT

Hello,
I stumbled onto your blog site after searching for homemade macaroni. I was completely awestruck by your photographs and desriptive summary of your gastronomic adventures. I was perusing through and found this article which, by most standard is a gruesome reality of the butchering process. It must be said that this is also a cultural tradition and though not all of them are close to one"s beliefs, the people, country, and animal must all be respected. In the Philippines, lechon is somewhat of the same process and what I have experienced, it also builds the relationship between family feasts and learning that eating involves certain sacrifice. I have been known to say grace at the table for the food I eat, your article made me aware to so respectfully.

Mugurel

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:54:48 GMT

Hello Francois,

i am from Romania and saying this because even today people in my country are doing this in front of their apartments or houses. The number of families slaughtering a pig has diminished in the past years but it is still a common practice. It is the same with lambs for easter.

Your site is very interesting and I am now learning how to cook tandoori and chinese thanks to the informations and help from sites like yours..Althought videos would be amazing or even more step-by-step photos and exact quantities.

Thank you very much for your efforts...you have a great site

Junice

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:35:56 GMT

I am from Philippines, but I am here now in America yes i saw this how many times when I was growing-up. I check here online because this is my "topic" for my "Informative" speech I will do it tomorrow. So let see how this works. hehehe thank you for sharing.

amanda

Sun, 22 May 2011 00:59:48 GMT

The sick bastards ought to die. They should be almost starved, stabbed to death and set fire to in parafin doused straw Let them die in hell thats what I say. These people are nothing but savage animals themselves!

Haggis

Fri, 8 Apr 2011 06:32:44 GMT

In rural areas of Eastern Europe slaughtering the pig (or the Easter lamb) is a ritual with religious connotations, it is not done at random, it follows strict rules; in a no-supermarket and mostly no-fridge world, all parts of the pig used to be preserved so as to keep until the following year.

Ashley

Fri, 7 Jan 2011 01:33:43 GMT

I enjoyed your post. I think it is obvious that these people simply live a rural life. I have seen similar conditions just up the mountain from my husband"s family in southern Russia. How could anyone find fault with people who obviously work hard, take care of their family and can probably eat for months (or more) on one pig (and not complain that all they eat is pork!)

fx

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:40:30 GMT

I wonder if those bleeding hearts in the UK really knew how the tons of halal meat eaten every day is made, they might change their opinion about home pig killing.

fx

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:34:43 GMT

Kevin, thank you for these most learned remarks. Alas, I don"t think that science if the basis of individual attitudes towards meat-eating, it is often just a consequence of them, people use the science to justify the way they feel towards meat.

Kevin

Wed, 7 Jul 2010 21:41:15 GMT

I"m not a vegetarian, and I"ve personally slaughtered poultry.

But I would like to point out that Faraz"s reasoning about our eyes and canines proving that we are "born carnivores" is silly. Nearly all primate species have forward-facing eyes and canine teeth, even the ones that are strictly herbivorous. The eyes are easily explained; depth perception is important when you spend all day climbing in a tree. The canines are less clear but judging by the common sexual dimorphism of size (male canine teeth tend to be larger than females in most species) they are probably just tools for male competition. In apes they are indeed mostly used for threat display.

Furthermore, there is no known primate species past or present (including our nearest living relatives the great apes and all of our now-extinct hominid ancestors) which has or had a *primarily* carnivorous diet in nature. It"s true that many apes clearly *like* meat, just as they like sweet stuff, probably because they are calorie-dense foods and scavenging on the rare occasions when a windfall was discovered in the wild was good for survival.

Our modern technological society has given us unnaturally unlimited access to these foods, and due to our leftover cravings for protein, fat, sugar, and salt we eat way more of all these things than is good for us. A chimp would happily eat meat and candy all day too if somebody would deliver it; but just because the chimp likes it doesn"t make it a healthy diet.

Sarah Haynes

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:15:05 GMT

We live in northern Spain- Galicia which is the bt above portugal. Pig killing is called the "matanza" most people who live or have a house in the country have their own pig to keep, this is also true of Portugal, France, Italy- lots of European countries still do this, unfortunately in the UK we cant, which is wrong as it is a lot less stressful for the animal not to be trucked to the abatoir and herded in in large groups. Also every part of the animal is used,out neighbours make every thing from chorizo to Serrano ham and everything inbetween.People in Spain keep rabbits for the same reason, also true of the Portuguese, Italians etc, so thank you for showing this as people who buy their meat in supermarkets are so far removed from where it comes from,at the end of the day an animal died to be on your table, give it some respect.

Jeff Stanley

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 02:33:25 GMT

I am glad for the detail shown in the slaughter of a pig. I am an animal lover and love them most when cooked! Just kidding, I like dogs and cats but would not eat them. However, that is a preference based on my western up bringing. I would not condemn someone else for partaking. In fact, if I am ever in "Rome" , I might do as the "Hindu" and join in.

Milan Popovic

Sat, 1 May 2010 06:35:41 GMT

Hello there,
thanks for sharing these pictures and writing an article about it.
My grandfather was a butcher and he used to dry meat for other people too, so I"ve been around meat my whole life. :)
We usually slaughter pigs in fall, so the meat could be dry for winter and upcoming holidays.
I come from Serbian part of Bosnia, and here, and in Serbia as well, pigs are slaughtered almost the same way.
With a slight difference: Serbs cut the hole in the pig"s throat and let the animal bleed out.
I have watched it since I was little, so I don"t mind seeing "blood"n"guts" at all. :)
After that, it"s the same thing: take intestines out, cut the carcass, cut the meat into pieces to be dried, small pieces go into sausages, but the main parts are, what we Serbs say "peka" and "slanina".
"Peka" is red meat, and "slanina" is bacon. Bacon can be white and with strips of red meat.
All the meat is then marinated in salt and garlic for 14-21 days (depending on the size of the pieces) and then washed off and put above smoke to dry for 7 or so days.
All of it tastes great, and it"s all natural, homemade.
Nothing can beat the salty taste of this meat, especially with Serbian homemade cheese, red peppers and drink "rakija". Bon appetite! :D

dooflotchie

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 05:34:22 GMT

"In my Swiss canton of Valais, people used to say Dans le cochon, tout est bon, "in a pig you can eat everything"."

:-)
Reminds me of what my grandmother (we"re American) once said:
"We ate everything but the squeal."

fx

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:13:36 GMT

This is one of the contradictions of our century - we love animals and consider them as beings not entirely dissimilar to us (pigs being the equals of politicians for instance), and yet we kill them to eat them.

Mike G

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:03:03 GMT

Fascinating, I enjoy eating meat and while it will remain in my diet I have questioned why it is such a staple many times. I think I would like to do this in person to really understand the gravity of my actions.

Horatiu

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:03:50 GMT

Hy, just wanted to add a few info on the whole thing. Setting aside the slaughtering as it is (and I"ve seen it up close a number of times) I would like to address the "but is something that was done all over Europe only 50 years ago" issue. The difference here (I"m Romanian, so this about Romania - can"t thing of a big difference with Moldavia) is that 50 years ago we underwent a terrific transformation - from capitalist to communist. This is important because one of the first things introduced by communism was collective agriculture(large surfaces of land, previously privately owned, livestock and machinery all were forcefully taken by the state and assembled as large farms were the previous owners were expected to continue their activities sharing most of the results with the state). As this happened only a small number of animals, and land, were permitted per household in rural Romania. In some sort this put forth a sort of rural resistance if the terms is permitted, where people would still use traditional methods ( this doesn"t restrict to animal slaughtering - you should look into the household industry of producing prune liqueur) in their daily lives as a way of opposing mass, modern agriculture promoted by the state. Later in the 80"s when famine was quite common in the big cities of Romania, having relatives in the country side was the only way to ensure a proper meal. There are numerous urban legends about this phenomenon. Pig slaughtering is all the most important since a great deal of Romanian cuisine involves pig, and this is even more accentuated around Christmas. After the fall of communism, products obtained from family pig slaughterings still retained their value, and with the introduction of supermarket mentality these products have become even more sought after. So you see, this is still going on here, even though it no longer happens in Western Europe, part for it"s immediate value in meat products and partly as a cultural event. There is big tourism growing on this ( the traditional, unspoiled rural way of life in some parts of Romania) and since adhering to the UE there has been an increasing support behind "closed doors" for these practices as older people living in the countryside see UE regulations as a second coming of communism(this may sound a bit harsh but you should travel there and talk to them). I would very much like to see both coexisting, part for moving on to the 21st century and part for my personal delight in this type of "slow-food" branded products!

I"ve been a fan of this site for more than a year now and look forward to any new article!

fx

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:47:30 GMT

Faraz, this is a highly interesting argument for meat eating which I had never encountered. Of course some will argue that we humans have the opportunity to elevate ourselves above what nature made us, but such arguments can always be made. We could also find, I suppose, a similar line of reasoning when inspecting teeth.

Faraz

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:48:51 GMT

Very good article! Being born into the Muslim faith (but a practicing atheist and a true carnivore), I have seen other animals (cow, goat, lamb, camel, sheep) being fattened up all year and then slaughtered in the name of a religious sacrifice during my younger years. I never emotionally could accept the killings and found them disconcerting to say the least; I do believe however that this is the most sustainable way of killing and eating any kind of meat. As for people making comments that humans should be vegetarians....I have these two scientific facts for them:

1. Humans, like ALL other predators (EVERY SINGLE ONE) on planet earth, have their eyes located right in front of their heads. This allows predators eyes to do triangulation, to accurately judge distance of their prey from their heads, while the prey is running. Predators by definition prey upon other animals that "run". They do not prey upon vegetables, since vegetables do not flee upon attack. If predators did prey upon vegetables, then they would not need eyes in the front of their heads, since no real-time or accurate triangulation would be required. Therefore, by deductive reasoning, since our eyes are located in front of our heads, we must be predators and hence we MUST be meat eaters. You will notice, by complementary evolution, ALL prey animals (EVERY SINGLE ONE) on planet earth, tend have their eyes on the sides of their heads (generally they are also vegetarians). This allows them a near 180 deg view from each eye, giving them 2 x 180deg = near 360 deg view, so as to enable them to spot predators all around them...think birds, fish (not sharks though), goats etc.

2. Humans, like predators have K9 teeth...like dogs, lions, wolves, bears...meat eaters.

We humans are meat eaters and we are born to love the taste of meat through evolution....Case closed.

eduardo

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:55:03 GMT

Hola!! Que linda la carneada casera!! En mi familia siempre se conservo la tradicion de carnear dos cerdos todos los a�os, desde la epoca de mis abuelos en la pampa
y despues en la provincia de buenos aires donde viv� siempre con mi familia.
Yo soy la tercera generacion que sigue esta tradicion, y en este momento estoy preparando tres capones para el invierno que viene, El que tenga lugar para hacer un corral de engorde, con piso de madera y un buen techo(el cerdo tiene que estar bien!!) que no desaproveche la oportunidad. SON MANJARES los productos que te da el cerdo!! Ademas los comprados ni se les parecen a los caseros, hoy en dia para achicar tiempos se utiliza mucho la quimica Y eso no es bueno!!
Saludos a todos los compa�eros de carneadas!!!! Y QUE ESTA CULTURA NO SE TERMINE NUNCA!! CHAU Y MUCHA SUERTE.

fx

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:05:37 GMT

This is a really cool rule - squeaming about the pig, no bacon for you! I think this should convince many city folks to accept the fact that their food comes from dead animals or turn vegetarian for good.

Romana

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:42:33 GMT

This is exactly how my family does pigs, bulls, lambs, etc. In the courtyard and it is a family affair. If you were squeamish, you were not allowed to eat of the animal. Which taught you a lesson for next time - this is where your food comes from! Here in the USA there are still places that sell animals and you are allowed to butcher them onsite using your tools and methods. This is the best meat, supermarkets cant even touch the flavour. And the Romanian/Moldovan haggis is awesome!

The Mad Russian

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:56:24 GMT

We are slaughtering our yearly three pigs this Sunday. Big family event. I am first generation American who values his old world heritage. You cannot buy such quality pork in a store. Overall, it is no money saving deal raising only three pigs, and feeding them well. However, the quality of the meat outweighs the costs. We rise them in a 16x20 foot pen and they are treated like royalty.
I make my own cured jowl bacon, salumi, sausages, scrapple, etc.

Roel Halbersma

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:22:45 GMT

I love seeing this, this reminds me of stories i heard from older people here in Holland
Pigs used to be slaughtered and processed like this till ca 50 years ago.
It mostly happend in november and december , the butcher came to peoples homes and did his job there, no bullshit of pigs travelling a thousand miles stacked in a truck , just fast and old fashioned, and nothing got wasted, every bit of the pig was used, even the bones.

P.S we have a local delicacy thats made from the pigs head, its called headcheese, just scraped and minched flesh, i love it when drinking a beer , and having it sliced into blocks with some mustard :)

fx

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:45:14 GMT

Yes pig cheeks and pig jowls are fantastic. Not sure what they did with the head (a friend took these pictures).

kookie in london

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:51:34 GMT

Great article. I have always wanted to be present for a pig slaughter, these pictures provide a great insight. Wish I could have tried some of the delicious looking meat! Interesting that they didn"t seem to do much with the head? I recently cooked with pig cheeks, they were fab. I was hoping to see how they are removed.

A. D.

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:30:25 GMT

I am Romanian from Banat, and I have seen many pig slaughters. When I was a child, I have done my job by providing hot water to wash the intestines. Lighted myself the straws to burn off the bristles. Scraped them too. They are gentle creatures and they deserve our respect.
It is tough, but so is life.
Later, I ground thousands of kilos of fresh pig meat for sausages. We love and respect them pigs, give them names too.
I did not and I will not kill, but once the animal is dead, I see no problem in cutting it to pieces. I had my hands greasy with pork fat many times.
Why do you think they are slaughtered before Christmas (actually, before winter solstice)? They are a symbol of death and rebirth. Still meaningful in rural Europe. Too bad many of the city dwellers forgot their origins.
I will preserve the ancient customs, even if I"ll have to kill them myself (which I will not like/enjoy).

greg

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:58:39 GMT

Great article, my family has 4 acres in Georgia and we now have chickens, rabbits and our one pig, which being from Chicago I never thought would happen! The pig is getting pretty large and we are looking through the net to find the best way to slaughter and butcher the pig. Yours so far is the only web site that warns of the bile, which is important and your pictures are very good. I thing we will use a 22 and then cut his throat as quickly as possible and then use the boil method.

Luz Mery

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:38:29 GMT

Hola Me gusto mucho tus comidas,las fotos un poco brutales,pero al final tiene su recompensa.Y aqui les muestras a muchos que el cerdo nada se desaprovecha todo se come.Lo digo por que aqui en suiza todo lo tiran.Bueno un saludo

Lizzie

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:05:29 GMT

First, your website, cooking and photos are amazing! I am astonished one person can do all of this!

I appreciate this photo essay, and the value of honesty that you are demonstrating. I would like to add that if we are concerned at all about how an animal feels, during life and during death, really the only thing that matters is an animal"s suffering. This may seem like a circular statement, but I"m reading lots of comments that use words such as "respect" and "tradition". To me those are clearly alibis, intended to justify and buffer us from the pain of slaughter. If we want to eat meat, it"s not things like "cultural tradition" that should convince us it"s ok. The thinking should be based on asking the question- have we done everything we can to reduce the animal"s misery? So actually, though it"s obviously not "traditional" in any sense (including the sentimental sense), stunning an animal before killing it would be a tremendous improvement over simply stabbing it outright. (Despite other horrific living conditions for cattle killed for food in the US, at least they are legally required to be stunned before slaughter.) likewise, I think most of us would agree that a clean shot to the head is preferable than being knifed in the heart, which is clearly much much better than being skewered in the anus with a hot rod, to burn from the inside out (as a commenter describe commonly occurs in sections of India.)

Then, after the slaughter occurs, nothing matters to the animal anymore. Not our impressive efficiency in "using every part of the animal", not the fact that we made an especially artful sauce with its body parts, nothing. Those details have to do with our feelings, but certainly not the animal"s.

Julius

Mon, 25 May 2009 04:24:43 GMT

Great article! I think that anyone who barks about "barbaric" and "dark ages" needs to get off of their high horse. I eat meat and I feel like it would be pretty thoughtless and disgraceful of me not to recognize the work done to get that meat for me. I think that there"s nothing more hypocritical than eating meat every day while shuddering at pictures of the kinds of things that farmers see every day, and then getting all preachy about it. It is emblematic of the isolation of our modern times.

(going off on a tangent) And Vinny, if you think that we are more "civilized" or even more "humane" than our distant ancestors, think again. They were just as smart as us. They weren"t reliant on electricity, but technology that they understood. They weren"t more barbaric than us. They lived in a world where life was harder, less certain, and therefore more precious. The "Dark Ages" gave us Vikings and famine, yet that pales in comparison to the 20th century, which gave us World War I, Hitler, Stalin, and the atom bomb, along with countless other persecutions and human rights violations. I"d say that modern urbanized man also needs to get off his high horse too. (end of tangent)

Anyway great article!

Eat More Haggis

fx

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:56:18 GMT

Lana, in which country did you grow up?

lana

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:36:17 GMT

I was raised on a farm , my parents still slaughtere animals like this , =))

john parker

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:31:33 GMT

this is more about the comments than the article i have live on a farm all my lifein ohio we do this same stuff on a monthly basies i am glad that there are some people here in this world that unstanded some what of what we do and why we do it now please keep spreading the word so the other people will let people like me live as i was riased and trained by my father and grandfather to do thank

fx

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:24:03 GMT

Thanks!

Alex Cooper

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:05:04 GMT

Interesting. Not offensive. Actually informative.

fx

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:06:59 GMT

Thanks a lot flying Rosa, I have to try this now!

fx

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:10:13 GMT

Crofter, how do you feed your pigs?

fx

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:36:33 GMT

Thanks for your insight Curt!

Curt

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:50:31 GMT

I grew up on a farm and when I was a kid we slaughtered hogs and cows every year. I am well aware of where the meat on my table comes from. I think that if more people were raised with this understanding they would be much better off and not so "shocked" with stories such as this. The animals that we slaughtered were treated with great respect, and none of the animal was waisted. As my Grandmother used to say about the hogs, "We use everything but the squeel."

crofter

Wed, 4 Mar 2009 10:09:17 GMT

Nice article, i have recently over the past 3 years been slaughtering my own pigs, i love the way the hairs are dealt with, we hang the pig up and shave it with boiling water which is extremely hard work & very bad for you knifes. i must say that i did not eat pig until i had my own & i feel that being close to the animal ( not emotionally but living with, looking after, killing & processing) you are going to eat is an important part of being a omnivore, or it should be.

fx

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:15:36 GMT

Thanks Duke, in which country did you grow up?

Duke

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:58:49 GMT

Interesting indeed. I grew up witnessing and participating in the slaughter of many pigs during my youth. It was just part of growing up when I was young. I am 47 now. I do miss it. Only because it brought all my family and neighbors together and we all shared in the experience. My grandfather on my mothers side had his own piggery for years. My fathers father didn"t but his family always bought pigs and slaughtered their own whenever there was a graduation party, baby party, wedding etc, etc, etc,. We knew the people who raised and fed these animals so we were never afraid to eat the meat. But these days who knows what the put into our food. Anyway I enjoyed viewing your site, it brought back lots of memories. Thanks.

Rosa

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:53:33 GMT

Hello FX - I stumbled upon your website while browsing for flying/pilots. But that"s another story for another time.

Anyway, I am Asian (Filipino-Chinese) and witnessed a pig slaughter when I visited relatives in the Philippine Islands. It was for the town fiesta (celebration). They did not torch the pig hair off, but instead used scalding water on the dead pig to remove the hair. Yes, I was freaked out at first, but then I do enjoy meat and decided it was educational - witnessing the process of how meat gets to the supermarkets and my table!

They used the pork meat to cook many traditional dishes like:
Adobo, chunks of pork in garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaf, whole black peppercorns - I think this is the country"s national dish;
Crispy Pata, deep-fried pig"s leg, crispy and delicious;
Hamonado, pork sweetened in pineapple sauce and plated on top of pineapple slices;
Afritada, a tomato-based stew with potatoes, carrots, garlic, red pepper -one of the dishes inherited from the Spaniards who ruled the Philippines for 300+ years (the country was discovered by Magellan who named it after Philip II of Spain);
Sinigang, pork simmered in tamarind stew, with bokchoy.

As for pig blood:
It was used in a dish called DINUGUAN (dee-noo-goo-ahn) which comes from the Filipino word for blood ("dugo"). Filipinos euphemistically call the dish "Chocolate Meat" in English, to make it more savory to the squeamish.
The dish uses pork meat, innards and pig"s blood with garlic, chili and vinegar - resulting in a rich, dark, thick gravy stew. One eats it with round, bite-sized Filipino rice cakes called Puto. Or on top of rice.
My husband (westernized, white Anglo-Saxon) seemed to enjoy his first few bites (hey, it"s "Chocoloate meat!") until he was told it had pig"s blood.
It"s an acquired taste...

Oh, the highlight was Lechon, a WHOLE roasted baby pig (cooked on a spit for many hours, while one of the workers kept basting a butter/fat concoction on the pig skin to keep it moist), then placed in a position of honor at the center of the table. The pig skin pulls off easily and is so crunchy and yummy.

Thank you for your wonderful, inspiring blog. I have now spent several hours browsing and have bookmarked. Lots of great ideas for gastronomic expeditions.