A student from the Alberta College of Art and Design shocked his classmates with a live demonstration about where food comes from on Thursday.

The student brought a live chicken into the cafeteria at noon and proceeded to kill it and process it for eating.

The whole event was apparently part of a school project.

Reaction from students was mixed but school administration is taking the incident seriously.

"A bunch of people were crying and stuff, then other people were like 'this is super cool'. I don't know, it doesn't happen very often where you see that stuff," said Morgan Fraser.

“There were some people that took offence, quite a lot of offence with their ideologies and whatnot,” said Damian Espionsa, “ All of a sudden the Dean shows up, security shows up, police shows up.”

“Personally I’m disgusted with the way the performance piece was done. I think as a protest or any sort of concept, it was vulgar and disgusting and I think whatever concept he had behind it was fairly transparent to that fact that he was doing it mainly for shock value,” said student Christopher Donovan.

Espionsa says he was just there documenting the demonstration and thinks things were blown a bit out of proportion.

“He butchered a chicken as you normally would. He works in a kitchen so he did it really nicely and he’s going to freeze it and he’s going to cook it later on,” said Espionsa.

Espionsa says he understands why some might be concerned about the health issues around killing a live animal in the school’s cafeteria but says the students pitched in afterwards to sterilize and clean up the area.

The artist, Miguel, said he wanted to show the process of how food gets to the table. "I just want to put it out there that that is the process it takes for that chicken to get to your table."

Alberta College of Art and Design officials say they have councillors available for students who may be upset by what they saw and will meet in the coming days to discuss whether any action will be taken against the student.

Police have questioned the man but no charges are expected.

(With files from Bill Macfarlane)