My Time with Sweeny Todd

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no post in 3 weeks. I was uninspired (read lazy). Anyway, we're starting to hit crunch time for my next exam, so I'll probably post more than usual. LOL Anyway, on to the reason for tonight's scribblings.

First, a little background. EU (European Union) veterinary schools require their students to take quite a few modules on veterinary public health. I think more of them go into the meat inspection field than anywhere else. When Britain became part of the EU, the amount of public medicine and VPH that had to be taught increased. Thus I am stuck with the crap course of PMVPH to cover these bases. It runs throughout your first 4 years (3 in my case), as well as having its own week long rotation in final year. It involves lots of bits and pieces that would make a hell of a lot more sense pooled together than broken up, but I digress....

When you hit 4th year, the last bit of the PMVPH course you learn is meat hygiene. This involves numerous lectures from a nearly 200 page coursebook as well as several pratical sessions. Lucky for us, the guy who ran the meat hygiene course QUIT right after Christmas, leaving us with NO lecturer and a ton of material we were still responsible for. The school's response to this was to have 4 ONE HOUR lectures in ONE DAY to cover all said material. Let me tell you how much fun that was...I saw so many pictures of condemnable meat, I never want to eat food again. And the stories we heard about infractions at slaughterhouses...shudder...

The best part, though, are the practicals. The first one was held in the post-mortem room (NOT my favourite place in the vet school), and I got stuck with Sweeny Todd for an instructor. He spent the entire hour long class waving around a gigantic knife, hacking away at cow and sheep innards, and mumbling about pneumonia or something. This was until he picked up the pluck (trachea, lungs, and heart) from a sheep and began swinging it around. I was waiting for him to swing it around his head like in the hammer toss and chuck it at the other instructor! It also happened to be Burns' Night, where the traditional food is haggis. I liked haggis before then....It'll be a while before I'm able to eat it again. :P I generally have a pretty strong constitution when it comes to this sort of thing, but I walked out of that class feeling decidedly nauseous. I made sure to go with the other instructor the next time we were in there! The other two practicals have involved meat and milk "safety".

We are also forced to spend a week in a slaughterhouse with a state veterinary surgeon as part of our internship weeks, no matter that NONE of us is interested in becoming a meat inspector. If I'm lucky, my placement will only really require a day or two and sign me off for the week. I'm thinking it's going to be chicken and pasta for a loooong time after this is all over.....BLECCCH!!! Enjoy your dinners. ;-)