So fast food workers want 15$ an hour?

[Eli]

Close enough. Actually its http://www.kalkan.com/Waltham.aspx

One of the cleanest food processing places I have ever seen, by far. The amount of beef that passes thru the place every day is amazing. They had us on very restricted hours we could work there, mostly at night, and the In and Out trucks would start arriving every night around midnight and last one would leave around 4:00 am, and they hauled beef from Ventura to San Diego.
But it was the perfect operation. Beef processing from steaks and roasts to the by products processed into canned dog and cat food , all under one roof, in minutes. Sides of beef came in one refer rail, and NOTHING left the plant as waste. Nothing.

That doesn't gross me out. It makes sense.


Sent from my Bat Cave

[HB Vic]

That doesn't gross me out. It makes sense.


Sent from my Bat Cave

I am completely grossed out and won't eat there again

[Tishimself]

There is only one beef kill left in LA. Shamrock meats. The rest gets trucked in. And Shamrock is just a little operation over in Vernon. I used to shove carloads of fat screaming hogs past it to farmer John who is the only pork kill left in town. They truck the ladies in now. AS for Kal Kan, you may be surprised to learn that my grandfather started that company and sold it. He was offered a 50% partnership with some guy who wanted to start a restaurant chain, I believe the guys name was Denny. True story.


P.S. He turned it down. Otherwise, I would be in a 41 DCB

[Wendi]

There is only one beef kill left in LA. Shamrock meats. The rest gets trucked in. And Shamrock is just a little operation over in Vernon. I used to shove carloads of fat screaming hogs past it to farmer John who is the only pork kill left in town. They truck the ladies in now. AS for Kal Kan, you may be surprised to learn that my grandfather started that company and sold it. He was offered a 50% partnership with some guy who wanted to start a restaurant chain, I believe the guys name was Denny. True story.

WMC built a lot of machinery for Farmer John and had to go there to install. He saw the kill in action. My friend works in Vernon and says you can smell the blood/kill in the air. YUCK

[Tishimself]

WMC built a lot of machinery for Farmer John and had to go there to install. He saw the kill in action. My friend works in Vernon and says you can smell the blood/kill in the air. YUCK

When we shoved the cars in there, we had a little makeshift shelter we would sit in while the "pigboys" as we called them (employees of Farmer John who would unload the hogs from the cars) would unload the cars for us. We had a large 50 gallon drum for building a fire in to keep warm and we kept a 25' length of rebar up there with us to prod any of the hogs that did not want to go, as the longer they took, the longer we had to wait to go home, seeing as this was our go home move for the day. So naturally we wanted to encourage the hogs to get off the cars quickly. For those hogs that still didn't get with the program, we took the rebar and stuck it in the fire for five minutes, that usually got them hopping. But the worst was when even that didn't work. One of those poor pigboy bastards had to crawl into the car and chase it out. Through all that pig crap. To this day, that was the worst thing I ever saw on this job. So one day I went in looking for the restroom, and asked some focker where it was, and he pointed me to a hallway and to go down some steps...I did and ended up right on the kill floor. (They did this to all strangers and to us rails, it was a joke they played on us) Took me years and years to get to the point that I could eat pork again. Still don't really. As for the smell, that's Bandini, the rendering plant nearby. They take all the carcasses and render (incinerate) them to turn them into fertilizer. When I started working in 1990 in East LA yard for the UP off Washington Blvd., the smell made me vomit. There was a shower in the locker room and I would shower after the shift and still could not get it off me...over time I learned to shower repeatedly after working a yard job there...yeah, the smell is that gross and disgusting.

[Bobby V]

WMC built a lot of machinery for Farmer John and had to go there to install. He saw the kill in action. My friend works in Vernon and says you can smell the blood/kill in the air. YUCK

Thats not the only thing that smells in Vernon. My company is doing work at Exide batteries and I was there today for a few hours. The worst place I worked was / is a place in Chino that I seen the cows going in one door and being slaughtered out the other door. I think it was called Westmoreland.

[gn7]

Thats not the only thing that smells in Vernon. My company is doing work at Exide batteries and I was there today for a few hours. The worst place I worked was / is a place in Chino that I seen the cows going in one door and being slaughtered out the other door. I think it was called Westmoreland.

I have worked at dairy farms, slaughtering houses, and virtually every refinery in So Cal which has its share of some bad smells including hydrogen sulfide, but hands down the very worse was the card board recycling plant in Fontana. I dreaded every time I ever had to go to that place. You would think it would be bad, but it is horrible.
The sulfuric acid/rotten egg smell at the Exide facility is bad, but it doesn't compare to the card board recycler in Fontana.

But for a well rounded array of foul oders, Vernon has them beat, and its much better now than it was 20-25 years ago.

[HB Vic]

I have worked at dairy farms, slaughtering houses, and virtually every refinery in So Cal, and hands down the very worse was the card board recycling plant in Fontana. I dreaded every time I ever had to go to that place. You would think it would be bad, but it is horrible.

Yeah but have you ever worked at an egg ranch like Hickmans in Tonopah Az? In the summer?

[Wendi]

I am completely grossed out and won't eat there again

Liar liar hasselhoff

[2manymustangs]

On a slight tangent, while we are on the supply chain of the discussion... I saw a documentary about a migrating lettuce farm out west in your area, that moves the ENTIRE operation (farm/processing/warehouse) seasonally from south to north and back as the growing seasons change... The plant was amazing and every bit of the product is either processed OR recycled... When they finished cleaning up before moving it was just one HUGE empty building, everything moves to the new location...

In the field the grooming/picking is totally automated, the processing is automated and the scraps/trimmings are processed and go to McDonalds and a few other chains for their sandwiches... It was fascinating to me (I used to work in high speed automation design)...

I don't recall the name of the farm but here is a small sample of the field machinery used, the cost of the lettuce to FF chains had better be small since they are basically getting the scraps/trimmings...

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/201...robot-farming/