Remove innards from slaughtered animals and ready the meat for butchering.
What does an Animal Eviscerator do?
If you’re an Animal Eviscerator, you help feed people all over the world by turning livestock into food that’s safe, nutritious, and delicious. As the title “Animal Eviscerator” implies, you do that by way of evisceration, which is a fancy word for “disembowelment.”
Obviously, this isn’t one of those jobs that come bundled with sequins, spotlights, and prestige — like Actors, Singers or Dancers. It is, however, an important job, as the Animal Eviscerator plays a critical role in the food supply chain. It’s not pretty, but it’s vital: Before meat can be eaten, it must be separated from an animal’s carcass — and all the innards inside it. Essentially, it’s your job to do the separating.
Employed by a meat packing plant alongside Offal Separators, Meat Trimmers, Carcass Splitters, and other slaughterhouse staff, you remove the internal organs — including the intestines, bladder, glands, heart, lungs, kidneys, and spleen — from the carcasses of slaughtered cattle, hogs, and lambs. (Poultry, on the other hand, are usually eviscerated by a Poultry Eviscerator who specializes in fowl.) You do this using a several-step process that includes opening the body cavity of the carcass, cutting the membranes that hold the internal organs in place, then removing the organs and separating them on a conveyor belt for processing as either food or waste.
You’re not just the organ expert, however. Once the carcass is empty, you also remove bruises, blemishes, and damaged tissue. You then bisect it, sever its head, and wash it using a hose. If it’s true what they say — no guts, no glory — then you’re up to your eyeballs in “glory”!