Kikiriki Live Poultry on Linden and Myrtle. — Photo by Scarlett Lindeman

Hold your breath. The warm smell of musty feathers and wet chicken feces that waft out of some local storefronts can be an assault to the senses. But for many Bushwick residents the stink is a minor nuisance to suffer for access to the freshest meat — from an animal they select.

Dotted throughout the city are live animal abattoirs, called viveros in Spanish, which sell chickens and other poultry, rabbits, and occasionally larger livestock. Animals are chosen live, and then killed on site for later home consumption. The New York Times reports that there are approximately 90 live-poultry shops in the metropolitan area, a quantity that has doubled since the mid-1990s. The demand for live chicken marts is fueled by the immigrant population — Latin American, Asian, African, and Muslim communities with a tradition of preferring live animals over pre-packaged pieces. For many cultures, choosing a spry chicken with bright eyes over listless, balding counterparts is common sense; individual slaughter over mass processing allows for sacred dietary rules, like halal, to be more closely observed.

 
Duo Bao Live Poultry
(El Pollo Mas Bueno)
39 St. Nicholas Avenue
718-386-4646

Kikiriki Live Poultry
334 Linden Street
718-386-5373
 
Bunnies await their doom. Click for more photos.

Inside Duo Bao Live Poultry (the signage still reads El Pollo Mas Bueno) on St. Nicholas Avenue and Starr Street, fluffy bantam chickens rest in cages above speckled guinea hens; below, white rabbits clump into soft piles. Standard brown and white chickens squabble while an occasional escapee clucks around the facility. Patrons select their bird or bunny from the floor-to-ceiling stack of metal cages; the animals are weighed, then taken to the back where they are dispatched, gutted, de-feathered, and left whole or cut into pieces according to preference.

Patrick Chang, owner of Duo Bao, says state regulation only permits certain staff to enter the processing area — behind closed doors, chickens are killed with a slit to the throat, drained of blood, and then dipped into hot water to loosen their feathers. They then spend time in a contraption called “rubber fingers” which strips the body of all plumage. It takes twenty minutes from start to finish, for $1.50 to $1.80 a pound.

Chang is tired of chicken. “Chicken? Not anymore. You think a beer factory worker likes to drink his own beer?” He suggests the duck. It is not great for roasting, he offers, but does well in soup.

The multi-colored sign with two chickens boxing at the vivero on Linden Street and Myrtle Avenue looks more like the façade of a carnival ride than a slaughterhouse. Kikiriki — "cock-a-doodle-doo" in Spanish — has a clean waiting room with chairs and a glassed-in window for putting in your order. Next door, workers in yellow rubber aprons hold chickens upside-down in one hand while writing tickets with the other, cigarettes dangling from their lips.

Mary Suarez was picking up her second chicken of the week at Kikiriki. Getting poultry from a vivero "is more natural," she said. "My family doesn’t like to buy from the supermarket. And this tastes better.”

Bob Bellerue, a local musician, just started going to viveros this month.

“I was intrigued about getting a really fresh chicken, in terms of taste," said Bellerue, "and also, not having something processed so far away and then shipped here, something a little closer to home.”

The chickens are raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and shipped to a distributor who then divvies them out to the viveros. The animals are by no means organic, but the killing process and personal selection shortens the industrial chain by a link or two. The cages in Bushwick’s viveros allow for some movement and most of the animals appear healthy and lively. There are occasional sickly looking birds; a few dead ones have even collapsed onto the floor of their cages.

The aroma and appearance of viveros can be off-putting to those foreign to the experience. Supermarkets have removed the unappetizing sights, sounds, and smells of slaughter, cloaking the unsavory aspects of meat production in Styrofoam and Saran Wrap. But for those who choose to eat meat, sending a live animal to slaughter may bring a better understanding of the reality of food production. As you take your chicken home, this reality can be felt in the warmth radiating off of its body.

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