Local slaughterhouses come back to life (Washington Post)

From The Washington Post, March 17, 2010

Joe Cloud, photographed by Stephanie Gross, courtesy of The Washington Post

So began the hard work of turning the animals into meat. The process is usually hidden from view, so that all consumers see is a steak or chop in a shrink-wrapped package. But at True & Essential Meats, one of about a dozen small slaughterhouses in the state that work with local farms, even school classes have visited the kill floor.

Co-owner and manager Joe Cloud, a 52-year-old former landscape architect from Seattle who bought the plant in mid-2008, welcomes visitors so they can see what's at stake, for the eater and the eaten. "It is a slaughterhouse, but I'm not going to shrink from showing who we are and what we do," Cloud said. "The industry has walled it off and is in a defensive crouch. I want to be different."

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