Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘This is it,’ said one of the men.
‘Blimey,’ said the other. Their voices travelled boomingly.
‘Let’s throw some light on the subject,’ said the first man, and switched on a torch.
‘You certainly pack them in here, don’t you?’
‘We do our best.’ I took this man to be the owner. It was not Mr Nuttall, but I could remember my mother telling me that the farm had changed hands quite recently.
‘Feels warm enough in here to me, I must say.’
‘No, we need to keep it much warmer than this.’
‘When do you reckon it broke down, then?’
‘Some time last night.’
‘And your lighting’s gone as well, has it?’
‘No, no, it’s supposed to be dark. These birds are six weeks old, you see. They’d fight in these conditions if we gave them any light.’
‘Well, all I can do really is to check your circuit. More often than not you’ll find it’s the earthing system that’s at fault.’
‘Yes, but I only had a new one put in last year. Had a whole new system put in, you see, because the old one was completely useless. We had an absolute disaster one night. All the ventilators shut down. I came in in the morning and there were nine thousand dead birds on the floor. Nine bloody thousand. Took four of us all morning to clear them out. We were shovelling them out with a spade.’
‘Well, where can I get at it, anyway?’
‘At the back of the shed, near the big hopper.’
There was a short silence. Then the second man said: ‘Yes, but how do I get there?’
‘You walk it, of course. How do you think?’
‘I can’t get through there. There’s no room. Not with all these birds.’
‘They won’t hurt you.’
‘What about me hurting them?’
‘No, that’s all right. I mean, don’t tread on too many if you can help it. But there’s always a few dead ’uns in there anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘You must be bloody joking, mate.’
The second man turned and left the doorway. I could see the farmer pursuing him.
‘Where are you going?’
‘No way am I going to trample through a flock of bloody chickens just to check your circuit.’
‘Look, how else are you going to …’
The voices faded out of earshot. I climbed down from my perch on the canister and dusted off my clothing. As I made my way back to the fence at the edge of the wood I saw a van coming up the driveway and pulling to a halt. On the side of the van was a logo which said
PLUCKALOT CHICKENS – A DIVISION OF THE BRUNWIN GROUP.
The name at that time was not familiar to me.
∗
Dorothy was a great believer in research and development, and over the years the Brunwin Group built up a reputation for technological innovation, particularly in chicken farming. These were some of the problems she set out to solve:
I. AGGRESSION: Dorothy's broilers, just before going to the slaughter at seven weeks old (roughly one fiftieth of the way through their natural lifespan) were typically allotted a space of half a square foot per bird. Feather-pecking and cannibalism were common among birds held in such confinement.
SOLUTION: After experimenting with special red-tinted spectacles clipped on to the beak (so that, by neutralizing the colour, the bird would be prevented from pecking at the red combs of its fellows), Dorothy replaced these with blinkers which simply blocked off the vision to either side. When this also proved too cumbersome, she applied herself to finding the most effective method of de-beaking. At first it was done with a blow-torch, then with a soldering iron. Finally her designers came up with a small guillotine equipped with hot blades. It was reasonably efficient, except that if the blades were too hot they caused blisters in the mouth; also, since it was necessary to de-beak about fifteen birds a minute, perfect accuracy was not always possible and there were many cases of burned nostrils and facial mutilations. The damaged nerves of the beak stumps had a habit of growing back, turning in upon themselves and forming chronic pain-inducing neuromas. As a last resort, Dorothy arranged for soothing music to be piped into the battery cages and broiler-houses. Manuel and His Music of the Mountains was especially popular.
2. SECOND PERIOD EGG-PRODUCTION: For many years, the battery hens were sent to the slaughterhouse at the end of one laying period, after about fifteen months: but Dorothy believed it ought to be possible to hurry them through into a second year of laying.
SOLUTION: Force moulting. She discovered that she could hurry chickens through their moulting period, during which they did not lay eggs, by causing them severe shock through abrupt changes in the lighting pattern or a rigorous programme of food and water deprivation.
3. MALE CHICKS: Males born into an egg-laying flock are not genetically bred to fatten up for human consumption, and have, consequently, no economic value. Clearly they must be destroyed – on the day of birth, if possible – but how?
SOLUTION: For a while Dorothy experimented with a special mill which was capable of mincing 1,000 chicks to pulp every two minutes. The resulting mush could be used either for feed or manure. However, the mills were expensive to install. Decompression through oxygen withdrawal was one possible alternative, as was gassing with chloroform or carbon dioxide. But nothing could really be cheaper, it was finally decided, than good old-fashioned suffocation. The simplest method was to pack thousands of chicks on top of each other and tie them together in sacks. The birds would either suffocate slowly or be crushed to death.
4. STUNNING PRIOR TO SLAUGHTER: Before settling for the standard method of a water bath charged with low-level electric current, Dorothy had tried to patent a form of small gas chamber through which the chickens would pass before being hoisted on to the conveyor belt. It was found, however, that the frantic flapping of wings inside the chamber was causing a loss of roughly ½lb of gas per bird, and so the system was rejected on economic grounds.
Dorothy had always found that cost-effective methods of slaughter were hard to come by. The electrical stunning equipment installed in her abattoirs was both expensive and slow (if used with care, that is). In this respect, at least, she was something of a traditionalist, and privately believed that there was really nothing to beat a well-aimed blow with a poleaxe for stunning pigs and cattle. She also continued to provide specialist services for ritual slaughter, even though many Jews and Moslems had begun to oppose the practice: the market was still there, she argued, and had to be catered for. It was in the business of slaughter, all the same, that she felt her competitors continued to run at a slight advantage, mainly because this was the area which had been most glaringly neglected by George before she assumed overall management. She was amazed to discover that he had almost no personal experience of killing: she once found him weeping openly as he struggled to finish off a cow which was sick with mastitis. His sledgehammer, aimed at the centre of the skull, had gone wide of the mark and crashed through the animal’s eye. As it thrashed around in agony, George had just stood there, quivering and numb. It was left to Dorothy to fetch a clamp, secure the bloody, squealing creature by the nostrils and knock it dead with one almighty swing of the hammer. ‘Men!’ she had muttered, in a scornful tone of voice, and had gone inside to change her clothes before settling down for a pre-dinner gin and tonic.
∗
One evening when I was about twenty-four, I went to see a programme of French films presented by the university film society. The first to be shown was
Le Sang des Bêtes,
Georges Franju’s short documentary about a Parisian slaughterhouse. By the time it was over, the theatre was half empty.
It was the usual film society audience: hardened connoisseurs of the horror film, in many cases, for whom it was fashionable to admire low-budget movies about American teenagers being dismembered by psychopaths, or science-fiction nightmares full of bloodthirsty special effects. What was it about this film, then, so gentle and melancholy in some respects, that caused women to scream with revulsion, and men to rush for the exits?
I have never seen it since, but many of the details have stayed with me. The beautiful white carthorse keeling over as a spike is plunged into its neck, bringing forth fountains of blood; calves juddering after their throats have been cut, the violent jerking of their heads sending pans of hot blood crashing over and skimming across the floor; rows of headless sheep, their legs still kicking furiously; cows having long steel spikes banged through their skulls into their brains. And then, by way of counterpoint, the girl’s voice introducing us to the sad suburbs of Paris –
les terrains vagues, jardins des enfants pauvres … à la limite de la vie des camions et des trains …
The workmen singing Trenet’s ‘La Mer’ as they chop up the bodies –
‘ses blancs moutons, avec les anges si pures’ … A
flock of sheep, bleating like hostages as they are led to the slaughterhouse by the decoy,
le traître,
who knows the way and knows that his own life will be spared:
les autres suivent comme des hommes …
The workmen whistling, laughing and joking
avec le simple bonne humeur des tueurs,
wielding their hammers, knives, axes and cleavers
sans colère, sans haine …
without anger, without hate.
I could not forget this film, and over the next few weeks, during bored moments in the university library, I would look through catalogues of film books and magazines to see if anything had been written about it: hoping, perhaps, that the poleaxe of academic criticism would deal a death blow to the images which continued to twitch horribly in my memory. It didn’t happen that way: for instead, after a good deal of searching I came upon a long and brilliant essay by a writer who seemed to have unlocked the secret of its dreadful truthfulness. When I finished reading it I opened my exercise book and copied down these words:
It’s a reminder that what is inevitable may also be spiritually unendurable, that what is justifiable may be atrocious … that, like our Mad Mother Nature, our Mad Father Society is an organization of deaths as well as of lives …
∗
‘So,’ said Henry, ‘what’s new down on the farm?’
‘The usual,’ said Dorothy. ‘Business isn’t bad, although it would be a lot better if we didn’t have to spend half our time fending off the environmental cranks. These are rather good, aren’t they?’
‘These’ were the fresh quail’s eggs, wrapped in roasted green and red peppers, which constituted their hors d’oeuvre. Henry and Dorothy were having supper together in a private dining room at the Heartland Club.
‘That was partly what I wanted to talk to you about,’ Dorothy continued. ‘We’ve been getting some scare stories from the States. You’ve heard of a drug called sulphadimidine?’
‘Can’t say I have. What does it do?’
‘Well, as far as pig farming’s concerned, it’s invaluable. Absolutely invaluable. As you know, we’ve made enormous advances in production levels over the last twenty years, but there have been one or two adverse side-effects. Respiratory diseases, for one thing: but sulphadimidine can help with some of the worst of these, you see.’
‘So where’s the problem?’
‘Oh, the Americans have been testing it on rats and they reckon it causes cancer. Now apparently they’re going to legislate.’
‘Hm. And are there other drugs you can use?’
‘Nothing as effective. I mean, we could probably cut down on these diseases by stocking less intensively, but …’
‘Oh, but that’s absurd. There’s no point interfering with anything which helps you to stay competitive. I’ll have a word with the minister about it. I’m sure he’ll see your point of view. Tests on rats don’t prove anything, anyway. And besides, we have a long and honourable history of ignoring the recommendations of our independent advisers.’
The main course consisted of glazed loin of pork, with garlic potatoes. The meat (like the quail’s eggs) was Dorothy’s own: her chauffeur had brought it down in an ice-box in the back of the car that afternoon, and she had given the chef detailed instructions on how to prepare it. She kept a small herd of free-range porkers in an enclosure at the back of the farmhouse, for her personal use. Like Hilary (who never watched her own television programmes), Dorothy had no intention of ever consuming the products which she was happy to foist upon an uncomplaining public.
‘These environmentalists get up our nose just as much as yours,’ said Henry, tucking in with gusto. ‘They’ve wrecked the veal trade, for instance.’
This was true: Britain’s largest retail producers of veal had recently scrapped their narrow crates and gone back to straw-yards. In response to public pressure, the managing director had admitted that the intensive system had been ‘morally repugnant’.
‘Well, I shall carry on using crates,’ said Dorothy. ‘We can still export them, after all. Besides, there’s so much stupid sentimentality about veal calves. They really are the most filthy creatures. If you don’t give them anything to drink for a few days, do you know what they do? They start drinking their own urine.’
Henry shook his head incredulously over the vagaries of the animal kingdom, and refilled their glasses of Sauterne. Meanwhile Dorothy was cutting the fat off her meat and carefully pushing it to one side of the plate. ‘We’ve got to watch out for the lobbyists, anyway. I’ve a suspicion they’re going to get more and more vocal.’
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ said Henry. ‘The newspapers are never going to run stories about anything as boring as food production, and even if they did, the public wouldn’t be interested, because they’re stupid. You know that as well as I do. On top of which, most of the data’s protected by the Official Secrets Act. Absurd, but true. And anyway, whenever one of these boffins in white coats starts popping up with some crackpot report, what’s to stop you getting your own people to produce a set of figures which prove the exact opposite?’