FOOD ACTS.
Meat-packing may ap propriately be considered under three heads, namely, preparation and disposal of fresh (un salted) meats; curing and preservation of meats by salting, smoking and the like, as is usually practised with hog hams, bacon, etc., and pres ervation of meats by hermetically sealing in tin cans, glass jars, etc., including the final sterili zation necessary to complete the process.
Fresh preparation and disposal of fresh meats is perhaps the most important branch of the packing industry and in its development is the newest. Fresh meat has been, of course, an article of commerce from the earliest times ; but it is only within recent years that the art of refrigeration has been per fected to an extent enabling fresh meat to be shipped thousands of miles and its condition and quality so conserved that it is more desirable and palatable after arrival at destination than when first slaughtered. Fresh beef, particularly. is much more juicy and tender if well refriger ated and kept two weeks or more after slaugh ter. Fresh meats will keep best if held in a temperature slightly above the freezing point, but in practice a temperature of 35° F. gives good results, except for long shipments such as from United States ports to Europe, in which cases approximately the freezing point should be maintained; and it may here be observed that lean meat freezes at about PA° lower tem perature than water.
Freezing is slightly injurious to the palatable quality of fresh meat, but by freezing hard and holding at a temperature of 10° F. it may be kept without taint for many months. When beeves are in good supply and cheap, the choice cuts, such as ribs and loins, are frozen and held in large quantities until the winter and spring season, when they usually meet with a more favorable market. Fresh pork and mutton are sometimes frozen and carried from season of surplus to season of scarcity, but the volume of this trade in the United States is not great, comparatively. This carrying from the season of over-supply to the season of under-supply by means of freezing has a doubly beneficial effect on the market, increasing the demand for live stock during time of glut, and increasing the supply during the time of scarcity.
The dressed carcasses are, immediately after slaughter, still being suspended from the trol ley hooks on which the latter part of the dressing operation is done, run into refrigerated rooms and chilled, usually for two days. The cattle carcasses, and usually the hog carcasses, are split through the back bone into usides.* After chill ing, the sides are cut, the beef usually into quarters and the pork into smaller pieces. The quarters of beef are shipped hanging on hooks in refrigerator cars, and the smaller pieces intended for sale fresh are usually boxed and shipped also in refrigerator cars. Mutton and lamb are shipped in the same way, usually in whole car casses. The refrigerator cars used depend upon ice for their temperatures, and the most success ful cars use the ice crushed and with from 6 to 12 per cent of rock salt intermingled.
The development of the fresh meat branch of the packing industry received its first important impulse from George H. Hammond, who, in the summer of 1869, began at Hammond, Ind. (a suburb of Chicago), the business of shipping fresh beef in refrigerator cars to Boston. The first year the business was not successful, but it was courageously continued, the difficulties were gradually overcome, and the second year found it more satisfactory, and the volume amounted to about 600 quarters per week. During the fol lowing two years this volume was doubled and it continued to grow moderately until, in 18F, Gustavus F. Swift established at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, a similar business. Under the stimulus of this competition the trade in creased rapidly, consignments were made to other cities in New England and New York other houses entered the trade, and by 1885 it became apparent that this new method of slaugh tering cattle near their native pastures and ship ping the fresh meat was destined to supersede. largely, the older method of shipping them on the hoof and slaughtering near the place of consumption. To-day a large portion of the fresh beef used in the principal cities east of Chicago, and out of the cattle raising belt, arrives at destination in refrigerator cars. What is true of fresh beef is true also of fresh mut ton and pork.