Grandma – where does meat come from?

Picture your local supermarket’s butchery department - Plastic wrapped black trays of perfectly uniform, perfectly bone-free pieces of meat. All date stamped, weighed and priced. Sanitized, clean and so easy to forget that the meat tray you have in your hand actually contains meat from an animal that someone has killed.

Everyone knows butchers have large sharp knives and it is their job to present us with perfect meat. Naked chickens take on a surreal aura when they packed side by side in a sparkly white freezer. Not a talon or beady eye in sight.

In Malaysia outdoor butcher shops are the norm. Men hack, saw and cut. The bits are laid out in large chunks – thighs, shoulders, heads and offal. Blood, guts and sawn bones shimmer in troprical humidity. The owner waives a plastic bag at the hovering flies.

Pyramids of chicken feet point irreverently . Lolling grey-green tongues glisten in the sun. Chickens, sans head and feet lie naked as corpses. The butcher uses a blowtorch to singe off tiny down feathers before dismembering a hanging carcass. Legs, hooves, heads – dead eyes and stiff black bristles.

The stench of death makes me gag. I can’t take my eyes from the puddles of thick red blood so bright they almost speak. Not a plastic wrapped black polystyrene tray to be seen.