Cadavere squisito

They were often forced by the owners to adulterate the meat so it could be sold after it had begun to rot. When he worked at his father’s processing plant, one employee told him: “What we sell is dead, it’s rotting and apparently people don’t want to accept that.”

Between sips of mate, the man told him the secrets to adulterating meat so it looks fresh and doesn’t smell: “For packaged meat, we use carbon monoxide, the meat on display needs a lot of cold, bleach, sodium bicarbonate, vinegar and seasoning, a lot of pepper.” People always confessed things to him. He thinks it’s because he’s a good listener and isn’t interested in talking about himself. The employee explained that his boss would make up for losses by buying meat that had been confiscated by the FSA, carcasses full of worms, and that he’d have to work the meat and then put it on sale. He explained that “working the meat” meant leaving it in the fridge for a long time so the cold would get rid of the smell. He said that his boss forced him to sell diseased meat covered in yellow spots, which he’d had to remove. The employee wanted to leave, to get a job at the Cypress Processing Plant since it had such a good reputation. He just wanted to do honest work so he could support his family. He couldn’t take the smell of bleach, the stench of rotting chicken made him vomit, he’d never felt so sick and miserable. And he couldn’t look the customers in the eye, the women who were trying to make ends meet, and asked for whatever was cheapest to make breaded milanesas for their children. If his boss wasn’t there, he gave them whatever was freshest; otherwise he had to sell them the rotten meat, and afterwards he couldn’t sleep because of the guilt. This job was consuming him little by little. The employee told him all this and he talked to his father, who decided to stop selling meat to the butcher shop and hire the man to come and work for him.

His father is a person of integrity, that’s why he went crazy.