Master butcher Karsten Schelhas recently visited New Westminster Secondary School to show cooking students the finer points of how to chop up half a pig from snout to tail.
The students gathered around Schelhas as he told them, in his European accent, how to best butcher the pig.
"You have to use everything," he said, slicing through a thick piece of pink pork flesh.
"You use as much of the animal as you can," he said, but added, "you kill humanely."
Schelhas, a fourth-generation butcher, was demonstrating his techniques to a group of NWSS students in the school's professional cook level 1 ACE-IT program.
The program enables students to take time during their school schedule to focus on a trade - such as cooking - with credit counting towards their certification training should they choose to pursue it after high school. ACE-IT (which stands for accelerated credit entry to industry training) programs are developed and offered as partnerships between school districts and post-secondary institutions.
Cooking students - including 17-year-old Hunter Blackburn - will continue their studies this summer at Vancouver Community College.
Blackburn was among the group of students watching Schelhas' butchering display.
Blackburn has toiled in kitchens since he was just 12 years old. He started in the dish pit at a friend's family restaurant and moved up the ranks to the point where today he works in the kitchen at the Boathouse Restaurant in New West.
"It's pretty awesome," he said. "I'm one of the youngest people that works there."
After Blackburn graduates from the cooking program later this year, he plans to look for a job at an upscale Vancouver restaurant and "just kinda learn as much as I can."
Blackburn, who's already travelled extensively with his family, plans to one day move to Europe, where he'll "travel for a while (and) just get lost."
With the ACE-IT program training under his belt, he will have a good chance of finding a European kitchen to disappear in.
NWSS students can also take advantage of other trades training opportunities in carpentry, plumbing, auto-body refinishing, baking, metal fabrication, millwright, motorcycle and power equipment tech, painting and roofing.
