Bytea question

Hopefully a quick question.

If I store a file into a bytea field, is there anyway for postgres to read the contents of the file?

Here is my scenario:

Receive text file
insert file into bytea field
insert trigger fires
  - read file contents
  - post contents into production tables

Is this at all possible, or am I going to need to store the original file and store/pass the file contents?


Thanks,

Chris