Tricky Wondalund…

You know your life is kinda topsy turvy, possessing little more than a semblance of structure when after one random phone call, two even more random discussions that I find myself on a flight to Thailand to visit a chicken farm. A distressed chicken farm no less. For those lesser beings that don’t know any better (like me…), the world of chicken farming is extremely high-tech. Chickens are not kept in high-rise cages, that is so 1970s. Some millions of eggs are brought to a hatchery, incubated and chicks are then placed into longhouses to freely run around for 6 weeks, before heading into the slaughterhouse. It’s a free buffet meal “All you can eat” for 6 weeks. Lights are kept on for as long as 24 hours a day to encourage the chickens to keep eating. Sounds like my life! Sounds like a good life too. Feeding is completely mechanical, and water pipes are dropped down to varying heights to allow the chickens to suck water nipples. It’s all very surreal.

Sunset along Bang San Beach with some really fresh seafood

None as surreal as the further processing of chicken. I stand around a cold room (in my biological warfare-ready suit and balaclava), watching an entire assembly line of professional chicken cutters fillet breast meat into nice squares to make chicken katsu pieces for the Japanese market. The chicken pieces are weighed, checked for consistency, floured, dipped into egg, floured, breaded and checked again, before it all moves along the assembly line and dropped into oil and fried. And fried again.

Life with a chicken company is no joke. Due to health and safety reasons, many of the staff live on-site. Housing is provided. Imagine this is the extent of your life. Chopping chicken, working at a factory hours from nowhere, and well, having to wash your hands 36 times a day. I find out that some 20% of the staff are married to each other. Seriously, that’s real company pride. And kinda cultish. That of the poulet cult. That’s pretty mad. And scary…but I already said that.

This is when I realize, I am such a big city girl. The idea of not having options around food, restaurants (I ate at the same restaurant everyday) and with no starbucks in sight, is kinda scary.

But hey, moo moo and I are happy because we manage to book ourselves into the only 5-star hotel on Bang San beach (which is nowhere near the chicken factory), but I can’t complain. Making financial models by the beach is pretty fun. And moo moo gets to pose out.

Moo moo relaxing while i work!

This is the million dollar shot – I actually had 17 varieties of fried chicken for lunch. Yes…17!!! i definitely have sworn off KFC for life!

Talk about having a one-dimensional lunch menu

If you want to invest in the chicken business, you got to get serious about your chicken. The factory turns out more than 500 chicken recipes, across the entire steam, roasted and fried spectrum. Behind this all – an entire infrastructure of R&D and science that goes into your crappy 7-11 Taquitos. Madness.

The thing about learning how one’s food gets made is that one comes to realization on the ins and outs, and in particular, the issues on death and killing one’s meat for food. That the nice neat cuts of meat at Whole Foods doesnt miraculously appear as such, that some Thai person stood around on a long assembly line, cutting, cleaning and weighing, in a room that smelt less than nice. makes on almost want to turn vegan.

At least, I now know more about something, which can’t be said about the other facets of my life