Painting 1946, Francis Bacon
"If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising I wasn't there instead of the animal" --Francis Bacon
“The key question we have,” projected Nancy Carolin, President of Beef Producers of America (BOPA), “is will it change the taste of the meat?” Affirming murmurs echoed through the conference center as she returned to her seat.
“It will,” answered a commanding voice from the podium. Terrence Grummer, the scientist behind the chemical in question, raised his arms to silence the outcry that erupted after his answer. “It will enhance the flavor of the meat, not detract from it.”
This conference (“Meat Me in America”) in Tulsa, OK, would permanently alter the lives of every American—and eventually every person on the planet—but very few of them knew or cared about the introduction of the new chemical, Dx32h, or “dexir”, in American meat processing. It was a miracle drug, part antibiotic, part vitamin-laced elixir, designed to improve the quality and taste of the product. As “The Food Movement” advanced, introducing newer, more palatable competition—free-range hens; organic beef; acorn-fed ham—the larger industrial counterparts were suffering. Dexir was designed to allow them to sell meats equally tasty to the organic/hand-fed/hand-massaged product for half the price.
Needless to say Dexir was a hit. All the meat served at the conference was Dexir-infused, but there were also blind tasting stations scattered throughout the room so the representatives could see for themselves the astonishing effects. Of course, there were also stations explaining, with daunting charts and thick booklets of scientific evidence, how the drug worked, but those stations went mostly unvisited in favor of the widely popular “Foie-Gras” and “Veal Cutlet” posts.
Basically, using incomprehensibly complex science, Dexir affected the neuro-receptors of both the animals it was used on and those who consumed it. It employed the brain as well as the usual suspects—the stomach, liver, intestines—in the digestive process. The difficulty in explanation was far outweighed by the extremity of its effectiveness—factory-produced, low quality pork treated with Dexir was rendered as delicious as that snobby Spanish Jamón ibérico. It was the fairy godmother of the meat processing industry and the unwitting angel of death for the rest of us.
Dexir was not extensively tested on humans. They used dogs, rats and pigs, mostly, to test the effects it had on the brain, digestive system and body as a whole. In that way, the attendees of “Meat Me in America” were the first human guinea pigs of the Dexir experiment. One of these guinea pigs was chemical engineer, John Temmor, hailing from Jupiter Island, Florida. He would go on to murder his family in his sleep ten days after the conference. Another attendee was Marianne Dupre, of Ridgewood, New Jersey who, an evening just over a week after “Meat Me”, killed 13 motel guests and herself. In fact, all of the instigators of that night-time violence were somehow connected to thefirst batch of Dexir consumers. However, by the time those dots were connected, most of America was riding the Dexir train unbeknownst: it was widely introduced into the majority of meat producing plants just three days after “Meat Me in America”.
TO BE CONTINUED
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