Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight
Details
Pachirat, Timothy, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (Yale University Press, 2011)
Comments
Exposes the violent labour that is concealed from public view yet absolutely integral to the meat industry and its killing of billions of animals in modern day slaughterhouses. - ANNIE POTTS
‘“Because, man, that’s killing”, he says, “that shit will fuck you up for real.”’ (p. 153) Timothy Pachirat spent six months working undercover in a modern industrial slaughterhouse for cattle, and in this remark his colleague tells him not to train to be a ‘knocker’, the person who operates the captive-bolt gun used to stun/kill cattle as they begin the process of going from living animal to edible foodstuff. Though hundreds of people work in the slaughterhouse in more than 120 distinct roles, only the 'knocker' is regarded by other workers as actually engaged in killing. This conviction allows other workers to distance themselves (morally, ethically) from the practice of routine killing (1 every 12 seconds), while the design of the slaughterhouse facilitates, reinforces and encourages this convenient creed. What goes for the internal design of one slaughterhouse also goes for the society at large -- a complicated set of legal, geographic, social, cultural and linguistic practices combine to systematically conceal the practices of commercial killing of animals within the contemporary food industry. Pachirat's book is consequently much more than an 'exposé' of the behind-the-scenes horrors of a slaughterhouse -- after all, what else could there be in such place but horrors? Instead Every Twelve Seconds is a study of the diverse mechanisms that are put in place and used to allow these local daily horror shows to remain unseen, even if, as Pachirat suggests, it is the very fact of their concealment that enables most of us to feel disgusted at what we find there by sparing us the kinds of experiences that might inure us to 'necessary' violence. In short, if there is only one book you want to read on contemporary animal slaughter, Pachirat's rich ethnographical study, with its careful sociological analysis and crisp, clear writing is the one to read. - SEÁN L'ESTRANGE
