Officials in eastern Kansas won’t let artist Amber Hansen slaughter chickens in public anymore. She planned to install coops around Lawrence so the people can bond with the birds and see them more as more than livestock… and then watch the butchering. Yet, the horror show has been curbed for allegations of animal cruelty and bird code violations.
“If people choose to eat meat, it is an important process to witness,” says the butcheress.
“It is a process that takes place on a mass scale every day, and we aren’t really allowed to see it.” ‘Cause…
I give much respect to Amber Hanson. I've lived all over the place, and during my teenage years, I lived on a horse farm in rural Iowa, and my family and I kept a chicken coop. While they weren't organic, they were free-range, and clucked around the yard, eating worms and exercising as they pleased. All the while, it was my chore to collect the eggs from the hens, clean the shit out of the coop, and help, at the end of each summer, help my father slaughter the hens. He did the head-chopping, bleeding, cold-water-plucking and gutting and I merely stood watch and helped where needed. I was sad the chickens were killed by us, but, as someone who loves chicken sandwiches, I realized this was a matter of looking a meal in the face, watching it blink, and then killing it. This is meat and marrow of meat consumption.
A couple years ago I completed this chicken cycle on my birthday here in Brooklyn by buying (against NYC law) three live chickens from an around-the-corner live poultry place in Bushwick where I then lived. These birds clucked around for a few hours in my enclosed courtyard before people showed up and then, one by one, I captured a bird, carried it to the chopping block, and, with the help of a friend holding it steady, chopped its head off in one single axe swipe. Then, in very warm water I soaked the hens, pulled their feathers, opened then up and pulled out their guts, and then handed them off one by one to a friend who knows well how to prepare chicken over a Weber grill.
It may be unpleasant, but this is a simple exercise in honest meat-eating. It's a matter of a person being capable of looking one's chicken sandwich in the face. Note that this party was not well-attended, and in fact some people fled as soon as they arrived. And that bummed me out but it's fine: Some may be so empathetic to animals they cannot bare to witness their slaughter. And I truly salute that. So…become Vegetarians or Vegans. Otherwise, you are a hypocrite!