Cherie Mercado views life of ‘matansero’ in Insider’s premiere
Where do steaks, chops or any of your favorite meats come from? “Insider” gives viewers a taste of a butcher’s life as Kapatid news anchor Cherie Mercado goes inside the meatpacking district this Thursday on TV5 and Aksyon TV.
Even after 16 years of doing human interest stories, covering environmental issues and tackling the various challenges of modern times, Cherie admits that looking into the ins and outs of Manila’s biggest slaughterhouse proved to be a challenge. “I knew what to expect [from this assignment], yet it still did not come up to what it was actually like. In the slaughterhouse, you hear hundreds of pigs wailing all at the same time. Some pigs cry louder than the others, especially when they seem to know that they’re about to face their end,” Cherie said.
For an animal lover like Cherie, seeing the pigs die before her eyes doubled the toughness of her slaughterhouse immersion. “I’m an animal lover and guilty of not doing more to protect animals, so this was extra tough for me. But I saw it in the perspective of the workers—the blood in their hands every night translates to earnings to feed their families and provide shelter for their children. It’s all a day’s work for the many matanseros(butchers) we met,” she continued.
Witness a different side of the seasoned journalist as she gets down and dirty to see what it takes to survive in this kind of business. Learn what a little sweat and a lot of blood can earn a typical butcher these days and find out whether slaughterhouses still follow the sanitation standards set by the government for the Filipino consumers.
Cherie’s Insider premieres this Thursday (February 2) 10:15pm after P.S. I Love You on TV5. There is also a one-hour Producer’s Cut at an earlier timeslot, 7:30pm on Aksyon TV (Channel 41 in Mega Manila, Channel 29 in Metro Cebu and Davao, Channel 1 on Cignal Digital TV and Channel 59 on Sky Cable).
