Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/842307
64 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.17 e pigs hang upside down. Hocks hooked into a gambrel trolley, carcasses swaying as the line turns. e near-300-pounders roll in one after the other, still bleeding from the caves cut in their throats. Blood rains and pools on the floor. At JBS — better known among locals as "Swift" — the huge fabrication unit, aka "the kill floor," is alive with dead pigs. Already, the pigs have been herded in groups through the barns and electrically stunned "senseless," as the plant bosses put it, which really means: shocked dead. ey've been through the scald tub with its 138-degree water loosening pores to remove hair. Now someone trims a pig's nails from its hooves, and this could be like a day at the salon except a huge hy- draulic-powered brisket saw is about to cut into its chest, split its front in half, its guts about to be removed. e guts — like strange, shining flowers. Purple and pink and bulbous and folded into bins that move down the line under the watch of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors who search for abscesses, abnormalities. Red recycling-like bins line the ground underneath where the dead pigs roll. ey're half-filled with the fallen scraps of insides. A full head sits in one, detached from the inch-wide flap of skin it was hanging from. Its eyes are wide and humanlike. A worker puts another pig head on a peg. A man scrapes off the cheeks; another saves ears to be cooked for your dog's delight. Workers dislodge the eyeballs, to be used for research at the Uni- versity of Louisville. A "porter" (janitor) shovels fallen, non-edible products into what looks like a dustpan. Every day, the company loses a couple thousand dollars because of fallen meat. e constant buzz of this grand ma- chine. Workers wear earplugs to tune out the churning cacophony. Pieces of innards smack white smocks. Tight and elastic blue "gators" — plastic protectors for pants — skirt from the knees to prevent pig junk from flying into rubber- or steel-toed boots. ere is a rainbow of hardhats: e orange hats (trainers) look after the gold hats (new hires), who might stand beside the purple hats (between 45 days and a year on the job) or the white