I Went to an Illegal Pig-Killing Party

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

I’m standing in a blood-filled garage holding a pig’s foot. Behind me hangs the foot’s owner—an enormous 550-pound swine—being lovingly dismantled by an assortment of Czech men with lots of facial hair. It is 10 AM and I’m already drunk.

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I pick up a knife and begin to shave the trotter free of bristles as instructed, when a beaming man who strongly resembles Bob Hoskins suddenly slaps a piece of bread in my hand—bread generously topped by something that looks exactly like vomit.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Brain!” he roars, his brother arriving on cue with a tray loaded with plum brandy. Brain bruschetta in one hand, pig’s trotter in the other, the two brothers gawp at me, waiting for me to eat. I bite in, swill it down with the shot one of them has handed me, and let out a girly teenage cough. The men chuckle, give me a patronizing slap on the shoulder, and hastily return to slice up the carcass.

I’m in a small village in the Moravian part of the Czech Republic, celebrating zabíjačka. Loosely translated as “pig slaughter,” this rural tradition sees families and friends come together in a boozy, carnival atmosphere to butcher, cut up, and prepare every single part of the pig for consumption. Face, trotters, elbows, the lot. Held any time between December and March, its original purpose was so that villagers could stock up on meat for the winter. But with mini-marts now parked conveniently on every corner, these days it’s more about getting your family and friends together to eat a shedload of meat, while also getting really, really wasted.

Bizarrely, the event is technically illegal. As of January 2012, the EU decided that a pig-slaughter party wasn’t very ethical and stamped a £10,000 ($15,000) fine on anyone caught holding one (yet foie gras remains totally OK). The Czechs, in typical Czech fashion, responded in the best way possible: by completely ignoring Brussels and carrying on exactly as before.

“Zabíjačka is not some barbaric act,” Mr. Sehnalik insists. “It is a bedrock of Czech culture and very much part of rural life. The killing is completely humane, and if the EU board had actually seen zabíjačka with their own eyes, they’d all be embarrassed about such a stupid ruling. I honestly don’t know anyone who has taken any notice.”

Today’s festivities begin at 7 AM on a snow-covered farmyard, and despite it being only 15° F, a gaggle of men in chunky pullovers are waiting anxiously for the pig to emerge. And then he does.

Led out by the butcher—a huge Brendan Gleeson figure of a man—the pig is positioned in the middle of the yard and everyone takes up their positions. Then in seconds, it’s all over. The butcher shoots the pig in the head with a stun gun, the men dive on him like an onrushing rugby pack, and the butcher slits the pig’s throat. Swift, painless, professional.

Delving his hands into the pig’s neck, the butcher then scoops its warm blood into a bucket, and an unlucky brother-in-law is given the grim task of stirring it with his bare hands to stop it congealing (to make blood soup with later). Then it’s a quick shower and a shave for the pig, and a few shots of slivovice (the plum brandy) for the boys, before the animal is strung up in the garage to disassemble.

Once inside, every man, woman and child mucks in with the various tasks—chopping the head up with an axe, pulling out the intestines (the lining is used for sausages), slicing the meat off the carcass, mopping the blood off the floor, mincing the innards, and scrambling the eggs for the brain toast. I’m given the much more difficult task of entertaining a three-year-old girl, which mostly involves trying to stop her from seeing the Tupperware box full of discarded body parts. Once the pig has been completely de-bristled—my foot shaving is just a small contribution—the various edible organs are thrown into a vat of water and boiled. And next? More beers and slivovice, of course.

With the organs all nicely boiled, the revelers gather round a table for a quick, meaty snack ( ovar), and as their honored guest, I’m treated to a generous nibble tray of liver, kidney, pancreas, and heart. Beautiful. As I wash down the last of the porky treats with my eighth shot of slivovice, I’m praying that the pig’s liver I ate will start soaking up the alcohol mine normally would.

The next few hours, I watch all the preparations with a mixture of disgust and wonderment, and am especially fascinated by the making of the sausages ( jitrnice). All the meat offcuts (knuckle and face) and offal (tongue, heart, and liver) are mixed together with a load of fat. After being boiled up into some kind of weird meaty broth, the resulting sludge is shoved into bits of intestine lining, which looks a bit like sewage being thumbed into a condom.

In the next room, I find blood soup being prepared in a child’s bathtub. This soup ( prdelačka)—pig’s blood mixed with groats—isn’t my preferred choice, but in the absence of any tinned Heinz, and not wanting to offend my hosts, I tuck in. It tastes like a Bloody Mary with some Cheerios dropped in, but it’s strangely good. Beer in hand, I watch the final zabíjačka product being prepared—a kind of gelatine-filled meatloaf (tlacinka) shoved in a cylindrical bag.

“It needs to be cooled for a few days,” Eva Mensikova, our host’s daughter, tells me. “Then you cut it up into slices and eat it with a bit of vinegar. Washed down with a glass of Czech beer, it’s delicious.”

With no time to ponder this culinary tip, I’m told to join the rest of the gang for the party to “really start.” I’ve already had 12 shots of brandy and five beers; this is worrying information.

The uncle’s 80-proof homemade brew immediately comes out, and everyone laughs as he fills up a half-pint glass. I’m terrified he will make me drink it, but luckily he just dispenses a shot’s worth into my cup and skips on to the next person. As Mr. Sehnalik starts up a sing-along of old Czech folk on guitar, I’m handed a final soak-up-the-alcohol snack ( skvarky)—a piece of bread smeared with lard and bits of fatty bacon. It looks pretty vile, but it’s not—it’s like a packet of Mr. Porky’s melted on toast, and it tastes amazing.

As the two brothers serenade me at midnight with a Czech rendition of “Let It Be,” I decide that now is the time to make my exit. My eyes are red, my stomach is burning, and my legs can barely function. With drunken farewells despatched, the experienced zabíjačka crowd watch the awkward British man stumble out with a mixture of pride and amusement.

I am half-man, half-pig, but I’ve just about survived. It’s been the most surreal degustation of my life, but one that I’m looking forward to repeating all over again next year.