In the HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein's own slaughterhouse, around 50 cattle are slaughtered and butchered annually by our two butchers, Hubert Huber and Stefan Fuchs, as part of research projects, in addition to pigs, sheep, and goats. The meat is cooked in the school kitchen for students and staff, sold to regional butchers, or given to employees in meat packages.
The short transport distances from the barn to the slaughter room and the careful work of our butchers ensure a low-stress slaughtering process.
As head of the cattle fattening and meat quality department, and also as a mother, I am convinced that showing the slaughtering process is both reasonable and important. Here, a short text and some pictures provide an insight into the slaughtering process at our facility.
The evening before slaughter, the cattle receive very little feed. Slaughter takes place the following morning or early afternoon. The cattle are transported by farm truck to our slaughterhouse, located just a few meters from the barn. There, the animals are stunned with a captive bolt pistol and bled out. Skinning and evisceration then follow. Several parameters are recorded for each animal during the slaughter process. After approximately 45 minutes, the carcass halves are moved to the pre-cooling room.
Seven days after slaughter, the right side of the carcass is cut into its individual cuts. Samples are taken from the three cuts – ribeye, sirloin, and chuck – for meat quality tests (tenderness, color, intramuscular fat, meat components, juice loss, etc.) in our meat laboratory.
