Think of this before carving into your holiday roast!
A cow escaped from a slaughterhouse in this city Wednesday, killing a bystander, damaging vehicles and leading police on chase before being destroyed.
Employees of the city owned-slaughterhouse on the southeastern corner of San Luis Rio Colorado said the drama began around noon when the cow jumped over the railing of pen used to restrain it.
They are prey animals, and herbivores, but they’re also big and heavy and have more than enough power to kill a human.
Still not a “Gun Death” and those who tout that flawed metric will continue to eat beef without a thought of “Common Sense Regulation”.
We had that happen once when I was a kid. Due to the miss-handling of a young idiot employee at the slaughter house, a steer that we had brought to be butchered escaped from the loading chute and ran amok in the parking lot. The only one in much danger in our case was the idiot if my father had gotten ahold of him.
The slaughter house offered to keep the steer in a pen for a week to let the meat rest before killing it*, and supposedly did so, but after the first steak we ended up taking all the meat back to get ground into hamburger because of how tough it was. Damage was done… that young idiot got off really easy. If it had been me acting like that I would have got a beating for sure.
s
* for those city folk, it is pretty common to keep a calf (steer) confined somewhat for a few days (sometimes more) so that they don’t over exert themselves before slaughtering them. Just like you, exertion causes chemicals to build up in the muscle (meat). In the case of an animal, this will cause the meat to be tough. This would probably hold true for you too… but you are stinky and nobody would want to eat you anyway (j/k).
toughness is from muscle fibers strengthening from the strain of exercise, and I suspect it would take more than a week for the meat to be tender again.
What you will get from a mad dash and excitement is lactic acidosis, which will make the meat taste crappy. That will clear up inside of 48 hours of the animal rests.
Ha! That’s why I read blogs written by people who are smarter than me!
Thanks Weerd, I only had the explanation I got from my father when I was a kid. Now I know.
s
Yep, that’s the sensation you get after HARD work where your muscles BURN. The burning sensation is an actual burning by acid released by your muscles burning carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen.
The burn also causes the muscles to grow thicker, making you stronger, but also tougher if you were to be eaten. And of course the acid tastes like any other, bitter and tart, which contrasts with the taste of the beef.
I’ve heard bear meat is REALLY good if you can drop the bear in its tracks. Unfortunately bear are rugged animals so that’s a hard trick to do, so all the bear meat I’ve ever eaten is bitter and gamy.
I’ve read that if you leave bear meat sitting very long at all before processing that it will taste bad. Like the clock is ticking the minute you pull the trigger. This was from an article about a place that provides the meat processing for bear hunters (if I recall correctly). I don’t recall it having an explanation as to why that is though.
s
We had a bull jump a 7 ft corral at the slaughterhouse, long before my time. Grandad tried to warn them, to no avail, that he was a jumper. Legend has it that he ran up and down the creek bottom, eluding all attempts at recovery, until late the next summer. Finally, the processor’s dad shot the dang thing. He figured he’d rather haul it out of the creek bottom like a three ton deer than chase it anymore.
I tell ya who had stones, though… The guy that first decided he would tame, and eventually milk, the precursor to the modern cow. You know, back when they had even worse attitudes and bigass horns.
Slaughterhouses were one of the businesses that usually had no problem getting a LEO signature for a Thompson SMG purchase.
If someone screws up and lets the herd inside know what is happening, safe extraction of employees can be … difficult.
See… this is why we need more bovine safety laws… and an immediate ban on high-capacity assault cows…
Dann in Ohio