Chugrad McAndrews Photography – San Francisco Food, Advertising and Catalog Photography

Have you ever seen a full-grown cow be cut into many tiny pieces and prepped for consumption? This may be a challenging visual for some but it’s perfectly natural. I mean, if one chooses to be a meat-eater, one should intimately understand the process of acquiring meat, and arguably know the intricate details of butchering, preserving, and preparing meat. The children at the scene in Peru were very accustomed to seeing this process, but back in the U.S., my mother didn’t appreciate the task of trying to “explain” these photos to my nieces who are 6 and 8 years old. Admittedly, I was a bit squeamish to touch the beast myself and kept to my role as photographer, but my wife was right there getting her hands bloody with the rest of the 6-person dismantling team. This cow died from an over-inflated stomach that, within 2 hours, put so much pressure on her heart that it stopped ticking (you could say a “natural cause”). This is not uncommon on the ranch but is still a great economic burden when it happens. These cows are intended for milking only – for the production of cheese, which they sell, but when one dies, the whole crew has to switch gears and butcher it immediately to make the most use of all the animal parts, feed many families, and even sell some of what’s left over.