BY ROGER WATSON
There used to be a slaughterhouse in the village where I was brought up in the northeast of Scotland. During my childhood, the slaughterhouse was a modest wooden hut. We spent a lot of time playing near the slaughterhouse as the road was quiet and we could run our carts (makeshift erections of pram wheels and a few planks) down the sloped road. There was the added attraction of a ‘sweetie shop’ – a newsagent – where we stocked up on Mars Bars, Milky Ways and other confectionery which means I now have more amalgam in my mouth than actual teeth.
The old slaughterhouse was a place of fascination. Cows walked in one end and, after a few loud bangs, came out the other end as sides of beef. There was no doubt in our minds about where the Sunday roast came from and how the cattle were dispatched. There was a hole in the wall where some friends used to peek in and witness the gory spectacle of the stunning followed by exsanguination. I never had the courage.
I have no idea who ran the slaughterhouse or where the cattle came from. I imagine, given it did not operate every day, that it was used on an ad hoc basis by local farmers to provide our two local butchers.
At some point the old slaughterhouse was demolished, and in its place, a huge modern building was erected with a large AMMCO sign on the wall. This was the new slaughterhouse built for a much larger throughput of livestock. When the new slaughterhouse started operating, a steady flow of cattle trucks arrived and, as before, they walked in one end and came out the other as sides of beef to be loaded on to large, refrigerated lorries.
I was interested in finding out if AMMCO, the Aberdeen Meat Marketing Company, still existed and it was in the records of Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives that I located the Plans for a slaughterhouse at Tillybrake Road dating from 1968. I was raised in Banchory, a small village with a population of 2000 on Royal Deeside. It has grown considerably since. In those days it was part of Kincardineshire, capital Stonehaven, a county that no longer exists and is now part of Aberdeenshire.
Companies House records indicate that Aberdeen Meat Marketing Limited, as it was later called, was dissolved in 2014. The company no longer exists and there is no longer a slaughterhouse in Banchory.
The new slaughterhouse – and it was always referred to as such rather than the fancy French euphemism ‘abbatoir’ – operated long hours. Possibly it functioned around the clock. There was hardly a point in the day when, if you were nearby, you could not hear the familiar yet grim soundtrack of the regular rhythm of the humane killer’s thumps sending yet more cows to their fate of mince, beefburgers and brisket. Remarkably, nobody ever seemed remotely bothered by the noise and having the grisly trade of the slaughtermen and butchers on their doorstep.
It also seems remarkable that the slaughterhouse, while not exactly in the centre of the village, was well within the village boundaries. The bangs emanating from the old slaughterhouse were undoubtedly the result of explosive cartridges being used to fire a retractable or captive bolt into the cow’s brain to stun it. The new slaughterhouse was, presumably, using compressed air-driven retractable bolt guns. Most cattle are dispatched these days using this method of stunning prior to exsanguination.
This stream of consciousness about the fate of beef cattle (probably all cattle), not to mention pigs, sheep and fowl was prompted by the thought that those of us who eat meat are very detached from the realities that put the meat on our plate and into our pies and sausages. Nursing in the late 60’s in Glasgow one saw a lot of claret but nothing compared to what the slaughtermen of then or now bathe in on a daily basis.
Whilst it is a myth that cattle know when they are being transported to slaughter, it seems well established that they display anxiety immediately beforehand, probably stimulated by the sight and sound of those that have preceded them. Slaughtering cannot be a pleasant occupation and it takes its toll on the mental health of those who work in the trade. I have never witnessed it and have no desire to. But, without dwelling on the gory details, next time I bite into a filet mignon or carve the Sunday roast, I’ll spare a thought for the man* behind the process, the unspoken reality of the journey from field to fork.
*the UK’s first female ‘abbatoir apprentice’ only qualified in 2022.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.