Meet the Therapist Who's the Only Female Slaughterer in the UK

As a child, I'd always be first at the barbecue when my dad was grilling sausages. I'd stuff them into chubby white rolls absolutely sodden with ketchup and sidle off to eat them alone, like a dog who'd found a rogue hot dog under the table. As a teenager, I'd get into fierce arguments with my mum when I'd stand practically inside the fridge, picking at the carcass of whatever we'd had for Sunday lunch. As an adult, though, my appetite for flesh has changed. I still eat—and love—meat. Only, I eat far less than I used to. My attitudes have shifted. Eating lots of meat doesn't feel good for my guts or wallet, but more than that, I feel so disconnected sometimes with the entire process of farming and slaughtering that sometimes I feel a bit iffy eating beef in a Vietnamese restaurant, for example, with no knowledge of its journey into my bowl of pho.

Ruth Tudor, a slaughterer and a psychologist, runs The Meat Course at Trealy Farm in Wales, which aims to help people connect with the reality of farming animals for meat. On each course, visitors spend time with the animals before they die, then one—a sheep, usually—is slaughtered by Ruth. Later on, they then cook and eat the entire animal at dinner. Having never seen a slaughter myself, but with increased fascination surrounding the process, I rang Ruth for a chat.

Hi Ruth. You came to my attention via a rather illustrious introduction by Ben Reade at The Nordic Food Lab. Is it true you're the only licensed female slaughterer in Britain? Unless you're working in an abattoir [slaughterhouse] and on the payroll, no one can have a slaughtering license. It's better to describe me as someone who has learned to slaughter in an abattoir and is now slaughtering animals on courses so that people can engage with meat. Because I've done something quite unusual, while I'm not exactly breaking the law, I'm not completely inside it either.

When I first learned that you were both a slaughterer and a psychotherapist I said, "That's quite a unique selling point." But actually, when you are dealing with people's reactions in the way you do, it makes perfect sense. It does. What happens in the therapeutic state is very intimate and ideally what you are doing is building trust so people can be very open, raw, and honest. This is what we try and do on the courses.

Why did you become interested in the slaughter? I'm not comfortable with the packaging, distance, and disguising of food. I wanted to help bring people into contact with food and obviously have an interest in human perception, so it seemed quite naturally. It probably comes under the ecopsychology banner—the plight to make people recognize that in their blood is the soil of the food of what they have eaten.

What would you say the main goals of your course attendees are? People are coming to us to consciously challenge themselves. They're coming with curiosity about the slaughtering process, and, more often than not, to try and become more connected with the idea that a death has to happen in order for them to eat meat.

Do the people who come to you want to feel more at ease with their food? Yes. Someone might know on a surface level that grass-fed beef is better for the environment, but aren't sure about the rest of the picture. We usually have a vegetarian on the course, too, who wants to be more at ease with their reasons for not eating meat.

I have never seen a slaughter. Mostly because I'm scared of my reaction. That is extremely common. Most people aren't most shocked by what they see—they're shocked by their level of apprehension beforehand.

It's hard to quantify consciously wanting to watch something die, even if you have good intentions, right? What makes it more hard is that, in the morning when people arrive for the course, we go to the shed where all the animals are laid. Our animals are never normally housed, but we do it for the course. We invite people to go and sit with the pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, goats and rabbits and people begin to connect and relate to the animals. This is when the idea that one of those sheep is going to be slaughtered becomes very real. There is usually some crying, a lot of debate, and then we proceed to the slaughter.

How do most people react? It varies. Mostly it's a collective kind of relief, like, "Oh, thank god that's over." There's a tremendous sense of bonding because everyone has agreed to be privy to the death. We are all complicit. Some people actually ask to film the process.

Do you let them? I always say yes, that people have to make their own choices about what's right. I have never known anyone to do anything with the film afterwards, though, which I think is interesting.

I can understand wanting to film it, to an extent. We are generally disconnected with blood, snot, poo, all those things. They're hard to manage in our society. I have a different experience because of my unusual upbringing. My mother was a midwife and my father a farmer and a vet, and all our elderly relatives came to our house to die. My grandmother died in my bed. I nursed my mother until she died, so, you know, I've seen a lot of death. I see it as a gift, though; people are so fearful of death, but have no idea what they're fearful of. Often, when we slaughter the sheep, people say they couldn't believe how much blood there was or how far it spurted. It really does travel a long way when you cut the artery.

What was it like the first time you slaughtered an animal in the abattoir? I was terrified. I'd seen it done a lot through my childhood, so wasn't worried about seeing it—it was more about what could go wrong. I was surrounded by men watching me very closely, too, because I'm a woman. Unless they're the vet, you just don't see women in abattoirs. After that I did a few on my own, with my own animals, to build up my confidence.

Does an increased respect for the act come with increased confidence? Absolutely. I don't do it when the radio is on or while chatting to anyone. I'm very tuned into the fact that this animal is going to lose its life now. That's it.

What was your experience of British abattoirs like? I never saw an animal in distress. There are some really good abattoirs out there. I did see human distress, people working in very difficult conditions, and some racism, which was unpleasant. It's not such an attractive job—it's not that well paid and not a great thing to talk about down the pub. The abattoir I was in was very small—each person was doing the whole process.

Is that unusual now? Yes, it's more like a production line now. I think there's something lost there for the people who were doing it, and quite possibly for the animals, although it's hard to gauge because it's so quiet. Abattoirs are very, very quiet.

How do you think an average abattoir worker's relationship with eating meat is affected? Well, mine changed because now I will not eat any meat without knowledge of its journey. Honestly, though, I think abattoir workers eat really badly. There's no connection. You actually find this a lot with farmers, too.