On Tuesday morning, the vendor pulled three squawking, flapping chickens from a cage, tied each one's feet, and took them into the back of her stall at one of Hong Kong's "wet" markets.
I watched as she deftly pulled back each bird's head, slid a cleaver across its neck, drained its blood into a coffee-can size hole in a giant metal drum, and plunked the twitching creature into the hole. The third bird uttered a strangely human-sounding cry as the blade sliced its neck.
Next, the vendor plunged all three fowl into a barrel of scalding water and used a stick to stir them like a witch's brew.
Finally, she put them in the de-feathering machine. They rumbled around while their soggy feathers extruded from a slot near the bottom of the device.
Naked, flacid and grey, the slaughtered chickens were ready for the customer.
In this day and age, I can't understand why many people in Southeast Asia prefer this so-called "fresh" chicken over boneless, skinless, packaged, refrigerated breasts at the grocery store.
But even though I found this slaughter unappetizing, not to mention brutal, it was not an infection control nightmare. Nor was the market the kind of launching pad for deadly pandemic flu that I had expected to see. At least, the Hong Kong market wasn't.
Tomorrow, I'll explain why.