Blood, knives and carcasses surround Tommy Estevez on a daily basis.
Despite the gruesome surroundings, he casually talks and jokes with his “family” of student workers about relationships, daily life and meat.
It takes a unique individual like Estevez to deal with the realities of meat production from slaughter to freezer while teaching the artful skill of slicing meat.
Estevez has worked for the past 10 years as a butcher and co-manager of UF’s Meat Processing Center after retiring from 23 years in Publix’s meat department.
The meat processing center slaughters cows and pigs to sell in their retail store on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., where people from all over Gainesville come to buy meat.
The center conducts meat research and gives professors animal parts that they request to use as teaching tools.
About 15 pigs are killed every week or two, compared with 30,000 a day in mass production, according to Estevez.
The kill floor has about nine stations for pigs from slaughter to freezer.
Even though the work can get gruesome, joking on the kill floor or in the cutting room is not uncommon because, according to Estevez, you just have to have fun and enjoy life.
