The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Beside the old pile Joel dumped a few yards of fresh woodchips, which Galen and I raked into a broad rectangular mound about the size of a double bed, leaving a slight depression in the middle. Into this dip we spilled the buckets of guts, forming a glistening, parti-colored stew. On top of this we added the pillowy piles of feathers, and finally the blood, which now had the consistency of house paint. By now Joel was back with another load of chips, which he proceeded to dump onto the top of the pile. Galen climbed up onto the mass of woodchips with his rake, and I followed him with mine. The top layer of woodchips was dry, but you could feel the viscera sliding around underfoot; it felt like walking on a mattress filled with Jell-O. We raked the pile level and got out of there. The compost pile repulsed me, but what did that say? Beyond the stench in my nostrils (which, believe me, was not so easy to get beyond), the pile offered an inescapable reminder of all that eating chicken involves—the killing, the bleeding, the evisceration. And no matter how well it is masked or how far it is hidden away, this death smell—and the reality that gives rise to it—shadows the eating of any meat, industrial, organic, or whatever, is part and parcel of even this grassy pastoral food chain whose beauty had so impressed me. I wondered whether my disgust didn’t cover a certain shame I was feeling about the morning’s work.