ASK FLUFFIESAREFOOD
Volume 2 Number 11
Happy Friday, Fluffherders! It’s May 8, 2082, and time for another edition of Ask FluffiesAreFood, the advice column that seeks to answer questions of fluffherders and fluffy eaters everywhere! If you have a question, just ask here!
Our first question today comes from ILuv2EnfBabbehs, who asks about what happens to expired foals-in-a-can:
Dear FluffiesAreFood,
I was delighted when foals-in-a-can came back. I know these are intended for meat-grade live foals, but I can’t help buying a couple and then using the foals for masturbation toys. I really like to (THIS PORTION OF THE LETTER HAS BEEN EXCISED TO PREVENT READERS FROM DIGGING THEIR EYES OUT WITH MELON BALLERS)
But it got me wondering, what happens to foals after the cans expire? Can you inform us?
Well ILuv2EnfBabbehs, foals-in-a-can are nothing new. Where once they were a way to dispense cheap pets, today they are a way for everyday personal meat fluffherders to supplement their herds with inexpensive meat-grade foals. The foals can be harvested immediately or grown into adults to harvest. Foals with holiday-appropriate colors are especially favored for events like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Reunificaiton Day. And while I do find your hobbies a bit unusual, there’s nothing against it in the laws of the reunited USA, Mexico, Canada or Texas. (Of course, in the Confederacy, sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage or not intended for procreation is a felony punishable by forced sterilization and twenty years’ hard labor.)
Foals-in-a-can that pass their recommended shelf life are repurposed now the same way they were in the first decade of the 21st Century. First, the old foal is removed from the can. The milk and waste pouches are removed and incinerated as medical waste. The can is washed to remove blood, necrotic tissue, and waste matter, and then is steam cleaned to disinfect. The can is fitted with a new milk pouch. A new waste pouch is attached to a new foal using a lightweight adhesive. Finally the new foal and waste pouch are fitted to the cleaned can. The whole process takes about ten minutes from start to finish.
But what happens to the old (or to use industry terms, “graduated”) foal from the foal-in-a-can?
Well, in the past, graduated foals were not recovered in time to be salvageable. So, almost all graduated foals were pulped for fertilizer. This turned out to be extremely traumatic for human workers, as the foals’ childlike screams and pleas for mercy led to many employees developing acute psychosis. So this job was fully automated less than a year into the foal-in-a-can craze.
Today, graduated foals are treated much more humanely and economically. Foals graduate well before most of them will become sick or injured, and so most graduated foals are raised to adulthood and then harvested. Foals that are dead, sick, or severely damaged, are pulped. Unlike in the past, these foals are typically too weak to scream or protest, and so humans with hearing protection can work safely alongside robots.
Interestingly, note that “foal-in-a-can” is a protected marketing term - by treaty and acts of various legislatures, “foal-in-a-can” MUST refer to a live foal in a can or cylinder with attached waste and feed pouches. This is to distinguish foal-in-a-can from whole canned foals, a meat product that was popular in the 2040s and 2050s. In order to remain compliant, foal-in-a-can manufacturers had to reduce their shelf life by a week, which increased costs but with the benefit of almost 90% reduction in dead foals.
Ask FluffiesAreFood is a service of the Fluffherders’ Association of America. If you have a question about raising, slaughtering, or eating of fluffies, you may comment here.