My ambition was to become a chef and to learn how to run hotels and restaurants. My first introduction to veganism was during what was then called Domestic Science classes that I took at my secondary school. The teacher described vegans as people who were strict vegetarians, eschewing all dairy products. They were frequently nudists, she said — an assertion that I have not cared to explore. This introduction to veganism made no impression on me. I continued to cook and eat meat and dairy products.
In 1971 I began attending a three-year course in French cuisine and hotel and restaurant management at Westminster College in Vincent Square, London.
During the summer vacations I was expected to work in the profession. The lecturers helped the students to get jobs through their contacts. In the 1972 summer, I worked in the pastry kitchen at Le Caprice, an haute cuisine French restaurant that is near the Cafe Royal on Regent Street in central London.
One of my most disturbing memories from this experience was watching a chef cook Rainbow Trout. He grabbed a live fish from a nearby tank, whacked her against the side of the stove and threw the stunned fish into a hot frying pan. The name, Rainbow Trout, comes from the distinctive colors the fish became as she was seared alive in hot butter. Another unsettling image I recall from Le Caprice is of the pastry chef, who at the beginning of his shift took off his underpants, washed them in the pastry sink and hung them on the oven rail to dry. Unencumbered under his chef’s uniform, he created delicious pastries which were served upstairs to rich and important people in the ornate restaurant. Drunk by the end of the day, he would put on his clean underpants and go home. My experience at Le Caprice — a glamorous restaurant upstairs which was contrasted with the squalor below stairs — fueled my anger about the inequalities inherent in such a class-based society as Britain’s. Interestingly, 32-years later, I happened across a copy of The Guardian during a trip to London which reported on the discovery of a porter found dead two floors below the grand entrance to the Cafe Royal. He secretly lived behind the dumpsters in the bowels of the building. It is sadly true: The more things change, the more they remain the same. (Alphonse Karr 1808-1890, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”)
When it came to making a decision about how to spend the summer of 1973, I decided against working in another restaurant or hotel. I assumed that this is what I would be doing for the rest of my life. Friends, who were at other colleges and universities, took summer jobs at a nearby chicken processing plant. It paid well. It would be only for 10 weeks. And I wanted to buy my first used car. So, why not work where chickens are slaughtered? I cooked and ate them without thinking about it.
The plant was in Aldershot, Hampshire, and, I believe, has subsequently closed down. A sign on entering Aldershot, which is a 30-minute drive from Camberley, proudly declares itself to be “Home of the British Army.” I recall from an early age, when my parents would occasionally take me and Wendy shopping at Aldershot’s open-air market, that such boasting of military nationalism sickened me.
I worked on the post-slaughter part of the production line. The workers at the front end had to start work one half-hour earlier than the rest of us because it took that amount of time to hang a live chicken on the conveyor belt, kill her, complete the evisceration and run the body through the scalding tank to remove the feathers and “sanitize” the carcass. I stood on the production line with dead chickens approaching me every minute. The birds were neatly folded in preparation for the freezing process. Someone up the line placed a weight label on her breast. My job, for eight hours a day, was to place the carcass in a plastic bag (keeping the weight label in position) while squeezing out the air and twisting the bag and sealing it by running it through a sticky tape machine. Thus, the chicken was ready for freezing as I placed it on a large cart that was wheeled into a walk-in freezer. The smell of thousands of live birds, fresh from the factory farm and their death hung like a pall over the plant and its surrounding area.
Every now and then, we made bags of giblets. Do you really think the chicken neck in your frozen chicken was from the very same bird you ate? There is something bizarre and macabre about a giblet bag production line where the workers are stationed with trays of chicken necks, kidneys, livers and bags of bile to the side. Countless bags of giblets are assembled like cars and so many things that we now use. This mindless labor soon turns to mischievousness when the supervisor’s back is turned. Two necks in one plastic bag. Why not? No neck for this chicken? Who cares! Lots of liver. Lovely. Giblet bags become Christmas crackers as they are pulled apart and explode over us. War is declared. We squeeze bags of bile aiming the juices at each other. Green stains mar our white overalls. The air turns rancid. All good clean fun!
Even though I spent 10 weeks in the summer of 1973 working on the post-slaughter section of the production line, I could never bring myself to watch the birds as they were killed. I also could not buy the oven-ready chickens who were offered for sale at a reduced rate as an employee benefit every Friday afternoon. But I continued to eat chicken bought elsewhere and took vicarious and naive comfort in doing so believing that I was not responsible for their death. Clearly, I was uncomfortable with working at the chicken processing plant. Otherwise I would have willingly bought the staff discounted chickens and taken them home to eat. When I was honest with myself I knew I was responsible for something that I did not approve. My thoughts and feelings were confused and contradictory.
There was now no turning back on a journey of discovery into the disturbing side to human nature and what we do to animals. If, when I was young boy watching Kate Ward pushing her wooden cart full of dogs with even more dogs in tow awakened a feeling of compassion for animals, my experience of working in a chicken processing plant when I was 18 exposed me to the shocking truth of institutional animal exploitation. I began to ask myself how was it possible that people like Kate Ward devoted her life to rescuing dogs but I was willing to work on a production line transforming live chickens into food? I prided myself on my progressive political views, including opposition to war and violence. But how could I justify my willingness to spend one summer working in a chicken processing plant where violence was the norm? My nascent confused, concern for animals started to clash with my choice of a career that included cooking chickens. What’s more, I was scared to confront the reality about myself.
