Girl on the Block

by Jessica Wragg

  Will, however, I was sad to say goodbye to, and I was sorry that things weren’t ending on great terms. He had been good to me over my two years at the company, recognized when I needed help, and acted as an ear for me to off-load onto. His wonderful and boisterous wife had even given me some of her old clothes for a trip I took to Spain shortly before I left the company. The last time I saw him was in summer of 2018, at a party in the East End for Tabasco’s 150th birthday. We exchanged a few words, and I apologized for my part in turning our friendship sour. He offered me tickets to the annual meat festival that September, but I never took him up on it. Will, Simon, Ollie, and I in one place—that would have been tempting fate.

  I left them all behind and never looked back. Every few months I hear from Harry and Emily and we promise we’ll go for drinks, but nothing ever materializes. I wish them all the best of luck.

  I’ve been at the Ginger Pig as their online operations manager for almost a year and a half now. I’ve built, helped to code, and managed the launch of their new website and online business, and I’ve loved every second. There’s a team of eight of us currently doing the jobs of forty people, but we are busy and we are happy. I’ve come to understand that stress is something that’s self-imposed and that there are ways to manage it. Although it has taken time, learning to work hard in a high-pressure environment without making myself miserable is a valuable life skill.

  Today work begins at seven in the morning and ends between five and six. I help out in the shops when I’m needed, especially around Christmastime, but I don’t do a lot of butchery these days. I’m fine with that. Ten years have taught me that I can put my knowledge to use elsewhere. I can sit at a desk and still use my knife skills in my head when I’m calculating carcasses for our online business and ensuring that we’re making the most profit that we possibly can.

  The meat industry is, and probably always will be, a tough business. It’s fast-paced, it’s always changing, and in most cases, it isn’t very profitable. Business closures are frequent, particularly in rural areas. Since 1971, more than one thousand small abattoirs across the UK have closed, and after the horsemeat scandal and the mad cow outbreak ending in the early 2000s, multiple wholesalers have closed their doors after tighter regulations. It takes a great deal of resilience to be successful. Because times are changing, and they are changing fast.

  Veganism, in the US alone, has increased by 600 percent from 2015 to 2018. In the UK this increase is 350 percent. Australia has the third fastest growing vegan market in the world, and new dietary guidelines released by the Chinese government in 2017 recommend that the country’s population of 1.3 billion decrease their meat intake by 50 percent over the next decade. More and more companies pop up and exist exclusively to produce vegan “meat” that looks, tastes, and feels in your mouth like the real thing. One might argue that being a vegan who eats imitation meat is a bit hypocritical. But regardless, sales of meat-like vegan products stood at 2 billion dollars in the US and 572 million pounds in the UK in 2017.

  Perhaps the biggest blow of all came in October 2018, when the UN released a climate change study that is sure to affect the meat industry. According to this study, we have twelve years to prevent global warming from raising the planet’s temperature by 34°F (1.5°C), which would lead to catastrophic rises in sea levels, drought, and extreme heat. Shortly after this UN study came out, another study by the Guardian newspaper was released identifying drastic reduction in meat consumption as essential in preventing this temperature rise. On a global scale, the meat industry generates one fifth of all greenhouse gases, with livestock responsible for almost 10 percent of CO2 emissions. Farming livestock is also responsible for a whopping 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions, which scientists have proven to be more than three hundred times worse for global warming than carbon dioxide.

  In 2017 the World Health Organization classified red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans and stated that there is sufficient evidence to claim that processed meat (bacon, ham, and sausages that contain nitrates) causes cancer. Although the results of various studies done in the past on red meat and its contribution to poor human health have been debated, over recent years a surefire link between meat that comes from factory farms and obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and low immunity has been identified.

  In the meat industry, we can’t afford to ignore these statistics, studies, and purchasing trends.

  I understand the viewpoint, both in terms of animal cruelty and the environment (I’m not sold on the health argument—red meat eaten in moderation provides essential nutrients that are difficult to find elsewhere). Going meat free at least a few days a week may be the only way to save the planet that we’re living on. As the world’s population increases, estimated to reach 11.2 billion by 2100, we simply cannot keep up with the same demand for meat consumption that we have now, and we will run out of farming space soon enough thanks to an all-time high of deforestation levels. If each person in the world ate one less burger per week (as per a study by Earth Day), they themselves would save the equivalent of 320 miles of gas. A commitment to Meat Free Mondays is purported to save each individual worldwide more than three thousand liters of water per week.

  Consumers come first, and they create demand (or lack thereof). In the meat industry, we need to learn to pay attention. In 2014 alone, more than 570,000 tons of fresh meat went to waste in the UK thanks to overproduction, and worldwide that number amounted to around twelve billion animals. Yet the industry still produces. Beef production in the US has held steady since the 1970s at just over twenty billion pounds per year. Chicken production in the last thirty years has skyrocketed, from nearly fifty billion pounds produced to more than one hundred billion. We know that people worldwide are eating less meat. Why isn’t the industry listening? Because none of this is regulated. There’s no legislation capping the number of factory-farmed animals that our countries produce each year or how many steaks we eat a week if we want to. Yes, there are recommendations, but until solid laws are put into place to restrict the farming and processing sectors and to begin to change the way that they operate, none of this will change.

  Small-scale, independent farmers who are producing the kind of meat (free-range, rare breed) that we want to be eating are those in the industry who are most directly in touch with consumer demand. In cases of overproduction and large-scale waste, wholesalers and processing plants still find ways to operate cheaply and make a profit. This almost always leads customers away from purchasing responsibly sourced meat, which costs more, toward cheap meat that comes from factory farms.

  There is a ray of hope here, however, thanks to the introduction of the Paris Agreement, a UN framework designed to reduce global warming worldwide, signed in April 2016. Under the Paris Agreement, meat and fish wholesalers that were estimated to be responsible for almost 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions were required to report their global impact to the UN. In 2018, three out of four of the major producers whose global revenues amount to more than three hundred billion dollars annually had failed to do so. These companies included the Australian Agricultural Company, which currently owns the largest cattle herd on earth, and Sanderson Farms of the US, which processes ten million chickens weekly.

  It’s clear that the meat industry has to take responsibility. Given the current state of things, it’s no wonder that so many have turned to veganism, and that those of us who still choose to eat meat are doing so in the least impactful way that we can. If you choose to remain a carnivore, your best course of action is to buy from independent, small-scale producers, to eat meat less often, and to buy from retailers who can tell you exactly where your meat came from. Stop giving your money to large producers who won’t take responsibility for their role in global warming and damaging our health.

  This might sound a bit insane. A butcher who doesn’t want you to eat lots of meat? But it is time for all of us to face the facts when it comes to our future and the future of the planet. Butchers,
farmers, and wholesalers must listen to viewpoints that we haven’t considered before, and we must examine our practices with brutal honesty in order to find some way of fitting into this new world that is continuing to change rapidly. We simply cannot keep our blinders on. We have to change and adapt.

  MY WEEKENDS ARE BLISSFUL THESE DAYS. SATURDAY NIGHTS ARE usually spent with Hattie, drinking and laughing and staying out until all hours in the morning. With us is Ben, my boyfriend of two years.

  We met on Tinder in early 2017 and initially hated each other. I was rude and sarcastic; he thought I was an awful person, and at the time I knew that I was. Fast-forward five months, just before I left Ollie and Simon for the Ginger Pig, and we got back in touch. The rest, as they say, is history. There is no dramatic story, no heartbreak or hurt, just me and him.

  He is the opposite of the men in my past. He is kind, he is understanding, and he taught me what a real relationship means. It is openness, it is trust, and it is allowing yourself to love someone with all of your being. He has taught me more about myself than I ever knew, and I am happier than I have been in my entire life. I haven’t needed therapy in over a year. It helps that he loves my cooking, too.

  The three of us will stagger around town in search of a late-night haunt where we can dance the night away. We favor the small, cobbled streets of Soho, with their glowing yellow lights and wooden-fronted pubs, or the Italian outdoor mercato close to my very first flat in Borough—a new development to help gentrify what was once a rough area.

  We make new friends, groups of boys and girls who are lubricated by booze and want to talk to us about our lives. My job is a topic I try to avoid, especially in this new world of health and climate change. But occasionally someone will pick up on it, and then we are two people slumped against the front window of Two Floors on Kingly Street, debating the pros and cons of eating meat.

  Sunday mornings are spent on the wonderfully plump lounge sofa, plonked directly in front of our television in the house that Hattie and I now share. We are both in comfortable leggings and loose jumpers, while our third flatmate scurries around in sportswear ready to start the day with yoga. That’s not for us. We catch up on Netflix, our heads pounding, the living room scattered with remnants of the night before. A shoe lies beneath the coffee table, Hattie’s bag is hooked over the door of the booze cupboard, and my keys are nowhere to be found until one of us reaches down behind the cushions and pulls on something metal.

  In the fridge is a chicken—plump, yellow skin and small quills still adhering after the plucking of feathers. It’s just one bird, but it weighs almost three kilograms. I brought it back from the Ginger Pig on Friday night, weighing down my backpack to the point where I had to put it down for some respite on the rush-hour underground train.

  The farmers who raised this bird did so for twice what its life would have been in a factory farm. This chicken spent one hundred days or more grazing pasture on a country estate up in the midlands of England, eating as nature intended, running up and down the country lanes from field to field between dusk and dawn. It was killed on-site, dry plucked to ensure no bacteria growth (whereas most supermarket birds are plunged in hot water to help loosen the feathers), and hung with the guts in to increase the flavor of the already delicious dark meat.

  Still hungover, with a slight pounding in my head and a growling stomach, I rub the skin of the bird with butter, lift up the flap of its neck and push butter inside, put a lemon in the cavity between its hefty legs, and toss sea salt over the breasts. She goes into the oven to brown for twenty minutes, and comes out sizzling, slightly swollen from the hot fat within the meat, before she must roast for three hours at a low temperature to tenderize those thick muscles.

  We all chip in: Ben, Hattie, and I together in the kitchen, whisking the batter of Yorkshire puddings and throwing them into the hot oven to watch them rise like golden brown clouds. We boil potatoes, coat them in flour, and place them in the bottom of the roasting pan with the chicken to crisp up in the fat from the bird. There’s also creamed spinach with nutmeg, stuffing patted down into a metal tray, and glazed carrots that char and turn a little at the edges under the heat. The fat from the chicken and the neck bone that came from the same bird is mixed with gravy granules and boiled until thick. We remove the neck bone, and although we shouldn’t, we toss it through the open kitchen window into our garden for our neighbor’s neglected dogs.

  Once everything is ready, our Sunday roast feels like happy chaos. Every element comes out of the oven at once, to be placed on the crowded countertop where we struggle for space. The bird, at the center of it all with its bronzed skin, is carved. We share one of its large breasts between the three of us, and Ben will have the wing. We sit in splendor around our large coffee table, two of us on the sofa and the other two on the floor cross-legged, leaning over to scoop the steaming comfort food from our plates.

  When it’s all over, we nap for an hour, and then dishes in the dishwasher and pans left to soak until the morning, we’ll go our separate ways. Ben and I will watch another horror film in my room, and Hattie’s light will be off at nine in order to get a good sleep before another week of her terribly demanding job. The leftovers from the bird are put into the fridge. Monday it will be made into a curry, meat from the legs mixed into a homemade sauce with coconut milk and massaman paste. Tuesday it’s sandwiches, and Wednesday the last will be devoured with a little pasta and mushroom cream sauce.

  Thursdays and Fridays we don’t eat any meat at all. It’s avocado on toast for Hattie and me, maybe with an egg if we’re feeling particularly hungry. That bird feeds us for three days, and so it should at three kilos and a price of over thirty pounds. Eating this way isn’t difficult. We don’t even crave meat on our off days. Going out for dinner is simple now; not only do we have more money than we did before eating one large chicken for three days, but we can eat with a clean conscience and we can eat well.

  THE MOST COMMON QUESTION I’M ASKED IS “WHY DID YOU WANT TO become a butcher?” My answer is “I didn’t.” At sixteen years old, I was more focused on boys and drinking and parties than I was on my future. I never imagined that my Saturday job would lead me to something a whole lot bigger ten years later or that I’d have reason to share my story with the world. I’ve thought about throwing in the towel a few times, but the truth is, I’m hooked. Every single day presents a new challenge. How many people do you know whose workday revolves around a delivery of sausages or a visit to an abattoir?

  There is still so much that needs to change in the meat industry. We’re a work in progress, and I am proud to be a part of that. It’s hard to know what butchery will look like in ten or twenty years, but now more than ever we need young passionate people from all backgrounds to learn that craft and to join in the conversation about where the industry is headed.

  Above all, we must listen.

  I was thinking recently about what it’s like to be on a career path that doesn’t have a certain future, in an industry on the brink of change. In the next five years, maybe even sooner, I hope for legislation, an end to factory farming and a return to traditional farming, rearing animals in smaller numbers and on natural feed. I hope that consumers will come to see that picking something up from a supermarket counter for an agreeable price is bad for them and for the environment. I hope that more women will come to see butchery as a viable and rewarding career, pick up a knife, and get behind the block. I hope that a new generation of butchers will find a place for themselves, make their voices heard, and find solutions to the challenges we’re faced with. I hope more than anything that we survive and continue to find new ways to thrive.

  A Field Guide to Rare and Native Breeds

  ANGUS Of which the best-known sub-breed is the Black Angus. The Angus cattle have huge numbers in the US at the moment, with the majority of beef cattle registered under this breed name. Although not technically a rare breed, pureblood Angus cattle are known for their intensely marbled meat, which usually
flourishes with grass-feeding over grain.

  BELTED GALLOWAY A breed of cattle derived from Scotland and seeing a resurgence in numbers in the last ten years, thanks to the fantastic quality of beef it produces. The cattle themselves are black, with a white “belt” around their middles, and fairly petite in stature. The breed reaches maturity slowly, leaving plenty of time for the beef to develop a beautiful marbling and fat cover to help the dry-aging process.

  SHORTHORN A British breed of cattle with a thick and speckled coat that began as a dual-purpose cattle, producing good beef and good milk simultaneously, before being crossbred to enhance each characteristic separately. Shorthorn have beautifully marbled and good-proportioned muscles for the beef, and in the time it takes them to reach maturity develop a creamy yellow fat covering when grass-fed.

  LONGHORN Longhorn cattle are large in stature and look somewhat ancient in appearance. Their shaggy coat and, you guessed it, long and pointed horns can be tricky during the farming process, so many cattle bred for beef have their horns removed to prevent injury. Truly free-range longhorns, though, keep their horns until just before slaughter, as the cattle themselves are gentle in nature. The beef produced by these cows is large in the eye and the fat cover tends to be less than other breeds, but the cattle lay down a fantastic intermuscular marbling instead.

  LINCOLN RED A protected breed in the UK, the Lincoln Red was one of the first recorded cattle breeds in texts dating back to the seventeenth century. Now the breed boasts lean meat beneath a red coat with good fat covering, known for its succulence and flavor.