ABATTOIR, a place in which the slaughter of animals for human food is concentrated, and in which subsidiary activities associated therewith are carried on. The term is not quite synony mous with the equivalent English word slaughter-house, which is applied indiscriminately to small private establishments in indi vidual occupation, and to the more comprehensive buildings pro vided to meet the needs of a community, or of special branches of the meat industry. The latter include meat packing, the oversea trade in frozen and chilled meat, and the large scale curing of bacon and ham. The industrial abattoir differs in detail of arrangement and equipment from its municipal or communal equivalent. Well organized and intensive team work through which the animal passes rapidly from the slaughtering pen to the cooling room as a finished dressed carcase is an essential feature in the management of the industrial abattoir. This requirement is there fore kept in view in the arrangement of the buildings as well as in the equipment with which they are furnished. The communal abattoir on the other hand must meet the needs of many individual traders, and provision must be made for individual rather than for team work.
The public or communal abattoir is an important factor in the interests of public health. The slaughter of animals for human food is classified as an offensive trade in all public health legisla tion and it has been so classified for centuries. No matter what the conditions under which the trade is conducted, objectionable features are inseparably associated with it. The aim and purpose of an abattoir is to reduce these to a negligible minimum by the provision of a building properly constructed and equipped in which the best hygienic conditions can be maintained. Further, by con centrating the slaughter of animals for human food, the system atic examination of all carcases is rendered practicable and the rejection of those which are diseased and unsound is ensured. Incidentally, the public abattoir possesses an economic value : it affords opportunity for the profitable treatment of blood, tallow, condemned carcases and other residues.
In the provision of public abattoirs, England is remarkably behind her continental neigh bours and her own colonies. There are approximately 20,000 pri vate slaughter-houses in England and Wales and probably less than ioo public abattoirs. (Report of Departmental Commission on Meat Inspection, Ministry of Health, 1921.) In every country in which the abattoir system has been developed, experience has proved that no progress could be made until the law gave power not only to erect public abattoirs but also simultaneously to close slaughter-houses in private occupation. In the latter respect the law of England and Wales is defective. Local authorities have hesitated to exercise the power to erect public abattoirs which was conferred on them in 1848, since it is obvious that no useful pur pose would be served by their establishment unless it was reason ably clear that the butchers would use the abattoirs when pro vided. The continued existence of many private slaughter-houses in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other large English cities which have public abattoirs is evidence of the difficulty of concentrating slaughter in the public establishment when its use is dependent on voluntary agreement between meat traders and the local sanitary authorities.
Scotland has been more progressive. In 1862 the General Police and Improvement Act empowered the commissioners of burghs to erect and maintain abattoirs and on so doing to prohibit the slaughter of cattle in the burgh or within two miles of its bound ary elsewhere than in the abattoir which had been provided. With the single exception of Aberdeen, all the large towns in Scotland and the majority of the smaller burghs have provided public abattoirs and abolished private slaughter-houses.
During the greater part of the 19th century France led the way in the development of the public abattoir system. In the last quarter of the century, however, outbreaks of meat food poisoning, trichinosis and other diseases of man which were largely attributable to defective meat inspection stimulated Germany to activity and led to remarkable developments and improvements in the design and arrangement of abattoirs. Holland, Belgium and most other European coun tries followed suit. General laws were passed permitting or making compulsory the provision of abattoirs with the result that in these countries the public abattoir has almost entirely superseded and displaced the slaughter-house in individual occupation. Almost coincidently with these developments in Europe, the large indus trial abattoirs of the meat packing trade of the U.S.A. made their appearance, and later, when experiment had proved that the trans port of frozen meat by sea to Europe was practicable and much more economical than the shipment of live cattle, the export slaughter-houses of South America, Australia and New Zealand came into existence. They were constructed on the scientific and hygienic principles, which marked the latter half of the i9th cen tury.
The Paris abattoirs which were completed in 1818 provided a model for the design and arrangement of public slaughter-houses during a period of nearly 7o years. Many abattoirs planned on the Paris model continue in daily use in Scotland and on the con tinent of Europe. As time has progressed hygienic improvements have, of necessity, been introduced to bring them into line with modern requirements. This old type of abattoir comprises a series of booths arranged side by side and completely partitioned off one from another. Each booth is, in effect, the equivalent of a small individual slaughter-house. It is provided in the rear with appropriate lairage for the accommodation of animals awaiting slaughter. Sanitary and other necessary services are shared in common by the occupants of the individual booths. In com parison with the modern abattoir this arrangement is less eco nomical and much less hygienic.
first departure from the Paris model was made by Germany during the years 1875-80, and to the German architects and hygienists is due credit for the design of the modern abattoir. Their conception of the plan of an abattoir seems to have been prompted by two main motives. The first was reduction of labour, and resulted in the introduction of mechanical equipment and of overhead transporter rails to facilitate the handling and movement of carcases, etc. Incidentally, it con tributed to the second and more important aim which was hygienic. Individual interests were subordinated as far as was nec essary to secure the main object of safeguarding the public health. Separate booths were abolished and replaced by an open slaughter hall in which the whole of the work of the abattoir could be main tained under continuous supervision and control. Rooms were set apart for the reception of stomachs and intestines in order that the floor of the slaughter-hall should cease to be polluted with their contents, and healthy carcases should no longer be exposed to the risk of contamination with these materials to the prejudice and danger of the consumer. The open hall facilitated the work of meat inspection and contributed to a higher degree of efficiency. Refrigerators were introduced to ensure safe storage and preservation of meat irrespective of climatic conditions.
The site of an abattoir should be care fully chosen. Plenty of light, proper ventilation and the free cir culation of air round the buildings are primary essentials. An open situation is, therefore, desirable, but the close proximity of human habitations should always be avoided. Sewage effluents contain much solid matter and the site should permit of drainage with a good fall to secure free and continuous flow of the liquid dis charges. Easily accessible railway facilities are of inestimable value in the interests of live stock and of the public, to remove from the streets an undesirable traffic which contributes to con gestion. For the same reason live stock markets and the public abattoir whenever practicable should occupy adjoining sites. As a rule these conditions can be secured better and more economically on the outskirts of a town than near its centres of shopping or industry. The general arrangement of the different buildings contributes to the smooth and easy working of an abattoir. Re ception of the living animals in the rear buildings and discharge of dressed carcases from the front saves cross currents of traffic and ensures regular circulation as the work proceeds. Hides, stomachs, etc., are passed in the same direction to the apartments in which they are dealt with. Where practicable, it is a conven ient and suitable arrangement to provide the appropriate receiving rooms on a lower level and to pass hides and stomachs to them by means of chutes. In the larger abattoirs separate halls are pro vided for the slaughter of cattle, sheep and pigs, but even in relatively small establishments, the differences of procedure make the provision of separate accommodation for the slaughter, scald ing and dressing of pigs desirable. The slaughter-hall in the modern abattoir is a plain open apartment plotted out in stances but without divisions or partitions of any kind. Hand winches enable the heaviest carcases to be raised during the process of dressing, and then transferred easily to trolleys on overhead rails.
It has already been stated that the fundamental difference between the public abattoir and the indus trial abattoir associated with the export of meat, etc., is that the former must provide for individual work and the latter for team work. Whereas the slaughter-hall of the public abattoir is plotted out in stances, each of which is allotted to an individual butcher or a small gang of three or four workers who carry out the work of slaughter and dressing of the animal carcases, the whole of the slaughter-hall of the industrial abattoir is for all practical purposes the equivalent of one large slaughtering and dressing stance. Definite stations are fixed on the stance and to each is assigned a member of a team of workers who thus constitute a chain ex tending from the slaughtering pen at one end to the cooling room for finished carcases at the other. In the preparation of the car case a specific piece of work is allotted to each worker, who per forms it with the rapidity of experience and a high degree of skill. The living animal is received into the slaughtering pen and is stunned. The weight of the falling body automatically releases a simple mechanical device by means of which the carcase is ejected from the pen on to the bleeding floor. Thence it is hoisted to an overhead rail, suspended from which it is passed rapidly from sta tion to station along the chain of workers. The hide and internal organs, as each is removed, are passed through apertures in a side wall or by means of chutes into rooms specifically provided for their reception and handling. At fixed points meat inspectors meet each carcase as it passes along and, in combination, they carry out a complete systematic examination for the detection of disease. Diseased carcases are marked to be side-tracked from the main route which leads to the cooling rooms, and later they are sub jected to more detailed examination and judgment. Diseased viscera are similarly side-tracked for destruction. By means of this team work carcases are passed from the slaughtering pen to the cooling room at the rate of 6o to 120 per hour according to the skill of the workers and the kind of animal handled.
The subsidiary trades of the slaughter-house, to which refer ence has already been made, play an important role in the indus trial abattoir. Properly conducted, they contribute in an appreci able measure to the financial success of the undertaking.
The refrigerator constitutes a vital part of the export abattoir. The nature of the trade makes ample accommodation necessary. The carcases, having been allowed to hang till the natural body heat has been dissipated, are introduced into the freezing chambers where they are gradually completely frozen and held till ready for shipment. In the still frozen condition they are transferred rapidly and direct into the freezing chambers of the hold of the ship by which they are to be transported. During recent years material developments have taken place in the "chilled" meat trade. Meat which has been maintained in the exporting abattoir and on board ship at a temperature just above freezing point commands a better market and is preferred by the consuming public to meat which has been frozen. But time limits the possibilities of the oversea transport of chilled as against frozen meat. Experience has demonstrated that, to be successful, chilled meat must reach its market within six weeks of the date of slaughter, a fact which, unfortunately, prevents some of the British colonies from par ticipating in this trade in the home market. (A. G.)
