Gone to market

Pig No. 9251 becomes prime pork in home and restaurant kitchens

May 28 is hog-killing day.

The pig that we've followed for 10 months to understand where our food comes from is headed to a family-owned packing plant in Matkins, north of Burlington.

We chose a pig because North Carolina is home to the world's largest pork-processing plant, Smithfield Packing Company's operation in Tar Heel. But our pig was going to Matkins.

Matkins Meats Inc. was started by Jerry Matkins' father, Leonard, in 1956. It is the opposite in scale to Smithfield, but Jerry Matkins hopes to become the go-to meat packer for farmers, like Eliza MacLean, who sell their meat at local farmers markets.

On this day, Matkins staff will kill three pigs for MacLean. Smithfield kills between 28,000 and 32,000 pigs each day.

MacLean's business partner, Charles Sydnor, backs up the trailer to the barn where the hog that has become known as the N&O pig and two others are waiting. Sydnor herds them toward the trailer.

"OK, dilly bobs," Sydnor says. "Come on, piggy wiggleys."

With a loud crack, the N&O pig charges a metal gate trying to get away. Sydnor chastises him: "You got to ... get up there."

Within minutes, the pigs are safely in the trailer and MacLean drives down the road toward the Matkins plant. Along the way, MacLean explains how the pigs will be killed. It will be a bullet to the head from a .22 rifle.

"I like that," she says. "That's what they actually do on a farm."

MacLean's farm and Matkins Meats are certified by the Animal Welfare Institute. The nonprofit aims "to reduce the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by people." The group inspects not only farms for how the animals are raised but the packing plants to see how the animals are slaughtered. It also prohibits hog lagoons.

MacLean says Matkins employee Larry Herring has been shooting pigs for decades and is a very steady shot. "The pigs don't know it's coming," she says.

If the animals get agitated, their adrenaline spikes and their muscles are flushed with lactic acid, which MacLean says produces leaky, pale meat -- not what she wants to sell to her customers.

A half-hour later, MacLean pulls the truck into the Matkins parking lot. Men wearing blood-spattered white smocks direct her as she backs up the trailer.

The three pigs are released into a chute that guides them into the building and directly into what is called a "knocking box." The knocking box is a tall concrete box with an entrance from the outside, a gate across the front and stairs running up the side of it.

At the top of the stairs, two rifles are mounted on the wall. The floor is streaked with blood. This is the animals' first step onto the kill floor.

"Bye N&O pig, love you," MacLean calls before driving away.

The kill floor has concrete walls and floor. An overhead stainless steel track moves dead pigs from the kill floor into the coolers. The workers wear hats, yellow plastic aprons and chains around their waists for honing steels and metal scabbards for their knives.

Herring pulls a rifle off the wall and loads it. He leans over the side of the knocking box and brings the muzzle inches from a pig's head.

Blam!

Down goes the first pig.

Herring can't get a clean shot at the second pig, so he walks around to the front of the knocking box.

Blam!

He shoots the N&O pig straight on through the front gate. Then he walks back up the stairs and shoots the third pig. Blood pours out of the wounds and the animals twitch on the floor.

Herring wraps a chain around the right back leg of the N&O pig and lifts him off the floor. He slices the jugular vein and then he cuts off its head.