When an anthropology MA sells meat at an abattoir
“Complaints and mistakes flood in every morning before dawn. But I choose to switch off my phone and bury myself in sleep: they aren’t severe enough to make clients stop working with us or to drive the slaughterhouse into bankruptcy. They simply appear like clockwork every day, keeping the wheels of our daily lives turning as usual.”
On paper, the slaughterhouse was state-of-the-art: spanning over a hundred mu with an investment exceeding a hundred million yuan, it featured trading areas for cattle, sheep, and live poultry, as well as inspection and quarantine zones. It also boasted modern production workshops integrating slaughtering, pre-cooling, aging, carcass splitting, and cold storage.
However, the moment I stepped off the car upon my first visit, the pungent stench of cow dung yanked me out of my imagined world. While the slaughterhouse possessed production lines with top-tier technical standards for the industry, I soon discovered that in actual operation, it clearly lacked the management capability and the team required to handle such high-volume production and sales. Moreover, because the customers were scattered across too many different regions, the logistics were often plagued by trivial issues.
At times, I was amazed by how inefficient my aunt’s working methods seemed; she would insist on spending an entire day travelling hundreds of kilometres for matters that could clearly have been resolved online. Yet, I was frequently humbled by the intricate web of interpersonal manipulation and deceit, forced to realise that my aunt had long since developed a capacity for flexibility and adaptability that was beyond imagination.
In our lexicon, there are many words to describe this ability from different perspectives: calculation, shrewdness, cunning, guile… Whenever I held a differing view of this skill, it was actually a reflection of myself—nineteen years of structured schooling being shattered into pieces by the raw experience of daily life.
I. Getting to Know a Cow
First, I had to understand how a cow is broken down into different cuts: after a live cow is skinned and the head, tail, limbs, and viscera are removed, it is split down the middle into a standard half-carcass. It is then boned and divided into seven primary sections: rump/leg, loin, belly, brisket, rib, shoulder/neck, and forequarter. These seven sections are further subdivided; for instance, the rump can be split into the tenderloin, the ‘cucumber strip’, and the shank. The sirloin and fillet steaks most common in Western restaurants are, in fact, the rump cap (striploin) and the tenderloin.
Fresh beef sales at the plant are primarily divided into two types: bulk wholesale and retail cuts. The smallest unit for bulk is a half-cow, averaging 24 yuan per jin. Retail cuts are priced specifically by part, with prices varying—for example, brisket is 24 yuan per jin, while rump cap is 37 yuan per jin.
Shank (especially the ‘money shank’) is generally the most expensive retail cut, usually bought by consumers for braising. Rump cap and tenderloin follow in price and are often used for searing, shabu-shabu, or grilling. Bull penis is the most prized of all, as there is only one per bull. Some meat vendors told me that their customers often have to notify them several days in advance to ensure they can get some.
My aunt’s slaughterhouse primarily serves local supermarkets and retail meat vendors, and occasionally participates in bidding for government or school catering supply projects. These clients share a common trait—they take meat in large quantities, making order processing relatively straightforward.
But even with large clients, production issues frequently arise because the yield of specific cuts per cow is fixed: each cow produces only two rump caps—a small quantity that commands a high price. If only ten cows are slaughtered one night and eight are sold as whole units, only four rump caps from the remaining two cows are available for retail sale.
If three customers that night all want two additional rump caps each, it is inevitable that one customer’s request will go unmet. In such a case, who do you leave out?
II. Coveted Rump Caps, Difficult Customers
As a result, during our first collaboration, I nearly lost the order. That day, he asked me to order one whole cow plus one extra rump cap. I was thrilled; it was my first successful order. As soon as he sent the order, I passed it to the production workshop. I even decided to drive to the workshop at 10 p.m. to wait there and personally handle the meat allocation, weighing, and shipping. However, while I was on my way, the workshop suddenly informed me that there were no extra rump caps left for the night. After I relayed this to Boss Wang, before my car had even come to a complete stop, I received a furious phone call from him: “You’re telling me now that there’s no rump cap? What am I supposed to give my customers tomorrow?”
I was equally frustrated. The workshop allocates meat based on the order in which requests are received; Boss Wang’s order was likely too far down the list, and by the time they reached it, the rump caps were gone. After I explained this, Boss Wang remained angry and flatly stated that he didn’t want the whole cow either and would find another plant. I panicked, feeling completely lost, and stammered the news to the workshop manager. The manager, however, seemed entirely indifferent and instead comforted me: “It’s fine, if he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it. He’s not a ‘high-quality customer’ anyway. He knows as well as anyone that rump caps are in high demand and hard to secure.” At the time, I didn’t understand what a “high-quality customer” was; I simply felt that clients should not be treated differently based on the size of their orders.
That night, Boss Wang did order after all. After he hung up, I sent him a WeChat message explaining the reasons in detail and offering a sincere apology. Shortly after, he called back and said he would still take the whole cow; since it was our first collaboration, he didn’t want to make things too difficult for me, and he would source the rump cap elsewhere.
Slaughtering usually begins around eight or nine in the evening and continues until one in the morning. The earlier a customer places their order, the more likely their needs will be met. The customers understand this, but reality often prevents it—meat vendors like Boss Wang are often suppliers for many local restaurants, and those restaurant owners might only tell them what cuts they need for the next day around eight or nine p.m. Boss Wang then comes to us. As the timeline is pushed back, professional friction increases. After all, a slaughterhouse will never slaughter an extra cow just to provide a customer with a single rump cap.
When conflicts arise, sometimes the customer compromises, as Boss Wang did by ordering extra rump caps from elsewhere. Other times, the pressure is kicked back to the slaughterhouse staff. One night, Boss Wang ordered an extra rump cap very early, and I immediately informed the inventory coordinator. Yet, by evening, the coordinator told me there were no rump caps for Boss Wang. My world turned dark—based on the order sequence in the WeChat group, it was impossible for Boss Wang to have been missed. I rushed to the workshop only to find that another salesperson’s client had bought up all the remaining rump caps for the night. Why was the sequence ignored this time? I argued my case, but to no avail, so I called my aunt to complain. A moment later, that salesperson came over and said, “Oh, fine, you can have one,” in a tone that suggested they were doing me a favour, which left me bewildered. Soon after, my aunt messaged me, telling me not to be so rigid; the work is exhausting, but one must learn to respond flexibly.
The rule of sequential allocation was established by them and they were the ones demanding it be implemented, so why did I become the one being “rigid” the moment it mattered? Why were the needs of large customers prioritised while the needs of small customers could be brushed off with a laugh? This bothered me for a long time, until a sales crisis made me understand the true meaning of a “high-quality customer”: one night, the slaughterhouse had about twenty surplus rump caps and desperately needed buyers late at night. The general manager messaged the group urging everyone to find a way. I asked around, but the retail vendors were unwilling to risk taking an extra rump cap on short notice, fearing it would end up as dead stock. My aunt, however, made a few calls and sold more than half—most were taken by customers who normally had a high demand for rump caps. Their customer base was vast and their daily sales volume high, meaning they could absorb a few extra pieces without issue.
Different customers have different risk tolerances. It was then that I realised what “don’t be so rigid” meant: do not burn bridges in a clumsy manner; leave a way out so that both buyer and seller can face each other again in the future. After that, whenever a customer placed an order for specific cuts, I never dared to agree immediately; I only gave my word after confirming with the workshop.
III. Switching off my phone before bed
Take Boss Wang, for example; his butcher shop’s main selling point was that the cattle were home-raised and home-slaughtered—fresh and without any water injection. He frequently boasted to me that many of his customers came to him specifically for this reason. Consequently, when we first started working together, he told me that deliveries should be made at the motorway junction around four in the morning—he didn’t want his competitors to know that, despite his claims of self-slaughtering, he was actually sourcing meat from a commercial slaughterhouse. The town wasn’t large, and he feared his rivals would tip off the locals.
This highlights a tension within the fresh meat industry. Consumers prefer butchers like Boss Wang, yet private slaughtering is difficult to regulate. If a proprietor lacks a conscience, food safety issues such as water-injected or drugged beef frequently arise. In 2021, Sichuan Province revised the latest ‘Regulations on the Management of Pig Slaughtering’, explicitly stating that the slaughter of cattle and sheep should follow these guidelines. This pushed for centralised, designated slaughtering and mandated quarantine certificates, prohibiting any unit or individual from slaughtering cattle in non-designated locations for sale, with a particular focus on cracking down on illegal and unregulated slaughter. Livestock slaughtered by farmers were only permitted for personal consumption and could not enter the market.
As a result, Boss Wang had to maintain the facade of home-raising and home-slaughtering while quietly sourcing stock from us. Market supervision isn’t strictly enforced every single day, which gave him some leeway. Occasionally, if he had slaughtered a couple of cows himself but found himself short of specific cuts, he would place an order with me; other times, he’d simply be too exhausted from the work and would turn to me for a break. The slaughterhouse provides a quarantine certificate for every order. With these certificates in hand, he was able to navigate market inspections with ease—even if the dates didn’t align perfectly, they were never too far off.
The problem was that nearly ten customers in Z County were sourcing from our slaughterhouse simultaneously. By the time we had loaded the trucks and were ready to depart, it was already past three in the morning, meaning we wouldn’t reach Z County until nearly five. Boss Wang demanded delivery at the motorway junction around four; another owner insisted the goods be delivered to his shop before five; one was at the East Gate market, another at the West Gate… Once a customer received their order, the process of unloading, verifying the weight, and signing off took another ten minutes or so. These fragmented demands were, in reality, irreconcilable.
Then came the headaches. At four in the morning, while the delivery truck was on the road, I would have just returned home, washed up, and climbed into bed. Exhausted as I was, the thought of the incoming barrage of messages kept me awake. Around five o’clock, give or take, the WeChat notifications or the phone would start ringing.
“It’s nearly five! Why isn’t the delivery here yet? I’m losing my mind!”
“I asked for two extra flank cuts, so why is there only one? How am I supposed to explain this to my customers today!”
“I said the whole cow should be around 350 jin, but you’ve dragged over 400! How am I supposed to sell all this in this heat? Absolute chaos, honestly.”
At first, I replied to every single one promptly, soothing the customers’ frustrations before immediately relaying the feedback to the production floor. But after dealing with this for a while, I learned to switch off my phone before going to sleep, leaving only an 8 a.m. alarm. Only after managing a few hours of sleep would I wake up, bleary-eyed, to face dozens of messages and missed calls.
It wasn’t that I was being irresponsible; rather, I realised that for the customers, the production floor, and myself, these issues were merely trivial parts of the daily grind. They weren’t severe enough to make customers stop working with us, nor would they bankrupt the slaughterhouse. They simply appeared like clockwork every day, keeping our lives spinning as usual. This routine eroded the perceived severity of the problems and dulled our senses.
IV. Leaving the Slaughterhouse, Continuing to Eat Meat
Before my internship at the slaughterhouse, I was a recently graduated Master’s student in anthropology. Through experiences similar to Timothy’s, I arrived at the same realisation.
Standing every day in a slaughterhouse that had been cleaned, you wouldn’t see a trace of blood. However, smells do not lie; the rank, pungent odour of blood and excrement mingled together is omnipresent in that space. Sometimes, when I encountered workers during the day, I felt their scent was overpowering—Timothy’s book explains similar details: workers responsible for cutting beef tripe get sprayed with its contents, and they still smell foul even after bathing. This reminded me of the “class smell” in the South Korean film *Parasite*.
As for me, returning home in the middle of the night, the clothes I changed out of carried a heavy scent of blood. I didn’t notice it while in the workshop, as I had become one with those smells, but several times when I went to do the laundry after a shower, the sudden scent made me want to gag.
Had it not been for the invitation from a relative, I, like most people, might never have encountered the slaughter industry in my life. This fixed, rhythmic, massive industrial slaughter remains hidden from the sight of most people. So, when my aunt invited me, I was excited; I felt it was a rare opportunity to understand an industry that is intimately connected to almost everyone, yet remains unknown to the public.
However, being immersed in this industry—actually participating in and understanding the operation of different stages—was utterly exhausting. The near-constant reversal of day and night left me with dark circles under my eyes that haven’t faded to this day. The first time I watched a cow being slaughtered, a silent heifer struck a chord in me—she seemed resigned to her fate. I wondered if she was “the chosen one” who, upon breaking her chains, would go on a rampage and kill everyone in the yard. Later, when taking customers on tours of the slaughterhouse, I only wanted to quickly finish explaining that this was the hoisting area, that was the aging area, that every cow was slaughtered live, and that no water or drugs were injected—and then go home to sleep. I was simply too tired; aside from that heifer, I cannot remember the appearance of any other cow that was slaughtered.
At that time, I had become as numb as the workers Timothy described. I hadn’t even picked up a knife, yet the reversed working hours alone had exhausted me. Moreover, every link in this industry is grueling: raising the cattle, slaughtering, butchering, and selling. These are jobs my peers would never consider. I remember having dinner with Boss Wang once; when I happened to mention I was a postgraduate, he asked in utter confusion, “You’ve got a Master’s, so what on earth are you doing selling meat?” I told him a relative had asked me to join. He nodded thoughtfully. “Having someone to show you the ropes is good, then. Work hard; this business is still very lucrative.” I thought to myself: once I’ve learned enough, I’m leaving. Not even ten million would make me stay.
My desire to leave wasn’t because of a tender heart, but because I was tired and wanted to distance myself from the killing. When “progress” depends on concealment rather than the elimination of violence, morality becomes nothing more than an illusion of complicity. For instance, I thought that after seeing the slaughter, I would become a staunch vegetarian; yet, after seeing it so often, buying fresh, high-quality meat directly from the slaughterhouse became my first choice for gifts—after all, it was much cheaper than buying elsewhere, and I could personally ensure the quality. I could even distinguish the quality of meat when dining out, occasionally complaining to the staff: “This definitely isn’t fresh-cut beef; it doesn’t even curl up when it hits the pan.”
Editor: Auntie Xiong