It’s 6:03 am. I steer the car through the wafts of fog in the Oberbergisches Land. The newsreader explains that in Germany every fifth pig born does not even reach the slaughterhouse. Their attitude makes them so sick that millions of animals are killed prematurely. The reason for this are also cheap prices in the trade.
A few minutes later I park in what feels like a dark void in front of a shop window that says “Landmetzgerei Gerlach”. In the backyard I knock on a silver steel door. She opens. Master butcher Thorsten Gerlach poses in the glistening light, short-sleeved, with an apron and a knife in his hand. I step into a room that is tiled white to the ceiling. A large deer and a wild boar are hanging on steel hooks. As the master explains to me later, the latter still has a fir branch in his mouth as a last bite as a sign of reverence and gratitude for life.
Gerlach swings the blade precisely. From a little distance, I silently watch the incredible dexterity of the 40-year-old. Within a few minutes he pulled the fur over the animals’ ears. Colleague Ingo rolls the raw meat on the ceiling hook to the next room for cutting. Thorsten grabs the steam jet. Not for the last time that day I disappear in a cloud of water mist. I shiver. I warm my fingers on a coffee cup.
Thorsten puts his left 4.5-finger hand in a kind of chain mail glove. The red deer is cut up on a board with surgically precise and quick cuts.
“How do you become a butcher?” I ask. Gerlach laughs and says: “Actually, I wanted to be a gardener. But my parents said, ‘No! You become a butcher! Pig is always eaten!’” At the age of ten, he sweeps the yard at the butcher’s across the street, helps with the slaughter, and allows himself to be introduced to the secrets of sausage making. Thorsten remains undeterred.
The derogatory statement of an 8th grade teacher that you only have to be “stupid, strong and watertight” for this job is countered by quality, knowledge, technology and tradition. “We still make sausage here the old-fashioned way.” I see, smell and taste that day: Being a country butcher is not for empty heads. “Quality sausage has something to do with education,” he adds energetically while kneading sausage dough and regrets that his profession is totally misunderstood.
Now he’s “baking the cake”. He tips large chunks of beef and pork into a motorized bowl, the cutter. To this he adds chunks of ice. These prevent the protein from clotting, keep the temperature low and ensure less water in the sausage. While the cutter makes a lot of noise, I hurry after the butcher into the next room. It smells like paprika, salt and pepper. Thorsten puts together the right spice mixture for the meat sausage with the scales. I don’t see a recipe book. He grins and says: “Trade secret. Making sausages is mental cinema!”
He has the mixing ratios for his more than 130 types of sausage in his head. The cutter devours the aromas, gurgling and smacking. Thorsten uses his strong arms to push the wobbly, creamy mass, which now looks more like pudding than meat, from the edge into the center of the machine. The knives hack greedily. Then some of the sausage meat ends up in moulds. “That makes meatloaf.” He juggles the larger part freehand across the room into the funnel of the sausage filling machine.
On the steel table next to it is a bucket with soaked natural casings. Thorsten skilfully pushes the wafer-thin and highly elastic intestine onto the outlet. He operates a lever with his foot. The sausage mass shoots into the casing. He quickly ties the ends together. He evenly lines up one sausage after the other. The 28 specimens then end up in a boiler at 71 degrees. He now has to document the measured core temperature in a notebook every hour.
He growls and comments my why question with a wave of his hand: “The EU administration still has to be busy.” Between silences, water vapor and hectic phone calls, I am met with a good deal of frustration. It is apparent madness. Instead of reprimanding and controlling the sausage factories more, instead of stopping the transport of animals over thousands of kilometers, EU administrative regulations are burying the sustainability of the local butchers.
From originally six butchers within a radius of ten kilometers, Gerlach is the last of its kind. The farmer who brings his animal to the slaughterhouse is no longer allowed to enter the slaughter room. “What a nonsense. He is with the cattle day and night and carries the same germs as his animal.” In the past, if a cow broke its leg in the barn or in the pasture, the butcher was called and put an end to the suffering on the spot.
“Today, the animal has to be euthanized by the doctor and then goes into the trash,” he says, commenting on the economic nonsense. He adds smugly: “In return, poorly paid assistants work 14 hours at a time in sausage factories like Wilke’s.”
He thinks it is understandable that the exploited have no eye for quality and hygiene. Here he sees the duty of the customer, who “as a king must show more responsibility”. But unfortunately he behaves royally for only 48 hours after every scandal. Two days after the outrage, he puts the cheap mass meat, the cheapest sausage on his plate again.”
I ask: is this legal? “Yes, they all work within the legal requirements. So it is allowed to stretch sausage with seaweed powder. A kilogram of sausage would cost me 6 cents to produce. However, I take pork. This costs 4 euros. But I owe that to my conscience and to my customers!” He sees a way out of the dilemma “cheap, cheaper, cheapest” only in reducing subsidies in agriculture.
He grabs the water hose again. The machines are cleaned. I joke into the noise: actually a job for the apprentice, isn’t it? Thorsten raises his eyebrows. He’s been looking for five years. He groans in resignation. “They all know their rights, but if I hand them a broom to sweep up the straw, they stay away the next day.”
I shiver. 2 degrees. We’re standing in the cold room, the parking lot for three sides of beef. These hang here for three weeks. During maturation, drying lowers the pH value. This makes the meat tasty and aromatic. Thorsten lets me feel. The meat has a different consistency. He explains: “On the left is a cow that I slaughtered as wage labor for a farmer. I would not have bought these. The right half of the cow comes from a happy cow. I selected them on site.”
I breathe on my hands. But before I can ask my astonished question, the second foreman sticks his head into the oversized refrigerator: the sausage filling machine has broken down. The electrician has to come. Thorsten grabs his smartphone. The electrician asks: did it get wet? Thorsten laughs out loud: This is a butcher’s shop!
The side of the beef is carriaged to the next room hanging on a silver hook in the manner of a suspension railway. Dismantling the bull saves Thorsten the gym. Gerlach cuts up the “lucky piece of cattle”. He sees if an animal has had a good life. To do this, he rattles off courtyards and stables in ten kilometers of the area in the afternoons. He is convinced: only a happy animal tastes good! Wild from a gate in New Zealand he considers superfluous. The regionality only gives a certain amount. His food recommendation is: “Eat meat a maximum of 2-3 times a week, but quality!”
A spice salesman stands in the door. A trailer with nine red deer to be cut up for commission work is unloaded. The electrician eliminated the short circuit. The shop needs supplies of schnitzels. I fill up the coffee cup, warm my hands on the ceramic. Thorsten comes down the stairs with fresh rolls. He fishes a meat sausage out of the steaming cauldron.
My lips experience a taste explosion. This is repeated in the evening with my son: “Dad, the sausage is sooooo delicious!” Craftsmanship makes the difference. I can also study, smell and taste this during the next work step. Wild salami wafts out of the sausage filling machine, which is now humming again. Real handwork without colorings, without artificial aromas, because “it should taste like it is”.
In addition, the foreman explains to me that quality sausage does not remain color stable, but turns gray. Warm steam fogs mountain salami in a cauldron. After smoking, the sausage is dried. The process takes eight weeks. The process could be accelerated with quick binders and desiccants, but this is not the claim of the sausage maker.
“If the salami isn’t ripe yet, the customer sometimes has to wait three weeks for a quality product,” says the foreman, while filling the noisy cutter with nuts. The next salami will. Then we taste the venison bratwurst. Taste Symphony, the Second. You don’t become a vegetarian here.
Then it’s time to clean again. Meticulously. The moisture is now creeping out of every zipper. It’s already early afternoon. After making sausages, Thorsten ends up behind the counter in the shop or relaxes on the raised hide. There, waiting for the next buck, he comes to himself. He enjoys this stillness and has not forgotten how to be amazed. “Instead of shooting, I sometimes just let a sow or a deer run for the sheer joy of creation.”
This article was written by Rüdiger Jope
*The post “You can taste happy animals”: Thorsten is the last country butcher in his region” is published by Family.de. Contact the person responsible here.
