Meat Pulp

America's Meat Grinders and Packers Corporation has brought you Meat Pulp for over fifty years. As the flagship product of our line, this perfect-for-spreading condiment paste has saved tons of meat waste and millions of meals. Safe, sanitary, and quality-assured, for you, the kids, and Grandma; everyone loves Meat Pulp!

The AMG&P factory of Gloom, Alabama is not different from any such meat packing factory in the world. Ten acres or so of parking lot serve the endless stream of Freightliners and Peterbilts towing Great Dane refrigerated trailers and Viking rolling stockyards. One massive building holds the main factory floor, divided into the Packing (first floor) and Processing (second floor) zones. Several buildings, not quite so large but made of the same rolled steel, hold administrative offices, storage units, and the recreational facilities promised in management - but not factory worker - contracts. The main building squats in the center of the graded property, ringed first by a hundred feet of asphalt paving, then by a chain-link fence cut through at the main entrance by a swinging gate. To the left of the gate, conveniently located for the drivers of the endless caravan of trucks, a watchman sits in a little booth, checking loads and empty trucks in, empty trucks and loads out.

On the east and west ends of the building are two banks of loading docks, elevated so that a trailer backed carefully into its bay becomes, for an hour or two, an extension of the factory floor. On the east end is Receiving; on the west, Shipping. The trucks on the east end drop off chicken, pig, and cow carcasses (the products of another factory, a few counties away, which strips the easy, large cuts of meat from the bones) bottled solvents, flavoring components, machine parts, packaging materials (cans, paper in narrow rolls, ink, glue) and all the other materials required. On the west end, trucks are loaded with twenty tons each - not often more or less - of small, half-pound or one-pound cans, 48 to a case. This is the pride and glory of Gloom, Alabama, the product which puts her on the map (but only the maps which hang in dispatching offices across the southeast) - Meat Pulp, in a can.

From the receiving docks, the refrigerated leftovers of the butcher's trade are forklifted to the section of the factory reserved for the great steel boilers. There, the former creatures are placed in water with salt; the meat, bone and connective tissue left to soften in the heat. Today, Henry Otis fell into the boiler, having leaned in just a bit too far, checking something or other. Even the forklift driver did not notice; he slammed the green button, mounted close by the tank, just as he did dozens of times a day, with a closed fist; the lid closes and locks and the agitator engages. The lid, like the walls of the pressure-boiler, is four-inch-thick steel, and the agitator blades are mounted to a six-inch-diameter steel cam. After a mechanically-timed interval, the water is drained off and bottled for shipment to another factory (which makes soups), and the solid matter is automatically conveyed to the sorting line.

There, visible bones are picked out by a line of old women, whose conversation has been ongoing since 1943, when the first and oldest of the crew was employed to replace her husband, who had been drafted. Soon, the section was all-female; they talk about family, politics, friends, anything, but mostly family. Their minds are occupied by things of real importance; their hands, by now, do the work unaided. The average tenure of a bone-picker on this line is twenty-three years. This is a twenty-four hour factory; half the line finishes their shift and is replaced every four hours. It is never silent, and yet the conversation seems never to change. No-one noticed the strange bones in this load. Odd animals had made it into the vats before.

The bones are set aside; they will be shipped a county over to be dried and ground into bone-meal for fertilizer. The mass left behind moves on to the next section; the press. This river of grease and tissue solids falls into a hopper, the bottom of which is fashioned of a series of meshes, each narrower than the one above it, spaced a few inches apart. Specially-made blades mounted between the meshes spin, forcing the meat through the meshes in turn, flicking aside anything which refuses to go through - bits of bone and gristle constantly strike the columnar outer wall of the machine, giving it its nickname among the factory workers - The Rattler. Now, the pulp is almost the familiar tableside meat product so well-beloved by Americans, Meat Pulp. Already, it's perfect for spreading on toast or biscuits.

Now it pours into another vat, this one mounted to a conveyor alongside identical aluminum vats. Ten gallons at a time move down the line; salt, sugar, spice extracts, and other flavorings, along with binders and thickeners, are poured in at this station, mixed in by that machine; to ensure that the familiar, comforting flavor of Meat Pulp is always just a can-key away, each vat is tasted and adjusted by one of a select crew of old men; no-one but them and the manager who hires them knows just how they do it. From the mixer line and the QA station, the vats roll down to the first floor of the factory.

Here, before the slurry sets, it is poured through a bank of nozzles into the comforting soft-rectangle cans. No label is affixed as yet. Even still, anyone knows the shape of a can of all-American Meat Pulp. Air bubbles are shaken out as the conveyor passes across a vibrating table, and the lids are affixed and sealed on at the next station. The familiar easy-pull ring is already in place. The cans are checked for a good seal, and roll down to the labeling and boxing zone at the other end of the factory.

A large printing operation is here. Rolls of paper and bottles of ink are loaded in; the label printed needs no description; you know it well. Blank paper is unspooled, printed, blown dry, and re-spooled on new tubes; these are removed from the printer and loaded into the can labeler, which plays out just enough paper to wrap around and overlap on a rectangular can, applies glue, and, with a snap, spins the label into place and cuts it from the roll. The cans are then printed with the factory's identifying code and a date six months from now - BEST BY AUG 15, 1972. Now dressed for their appearance on store shelves, the cans are packed, four across, four deep, three high, into cases printed AMG&P; the cases are stacked on pallets, of which not an inch of space is wasted; and the pallets are loaded onto waiting dry-van trailers, scheduled for delivery to warehouses, distribution centers, and grocery stores across the Southeast.

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Since Henry Otis was not present for the second half of his shift, and did not clock out properly or provide proof of emergency medical care to his direct manager, his pay for the first half was docked. Since he did not return the next day, or for the two days following, his pay for the first week of the two-week pay period was docked. His wife received a complimentary case of Pulp in lieu of his last paycheck; attached was a letter informing her of this, and also notifying her that her husband had been, therefore, canned. She cracked a can, and cursed him for running out on her.