MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES

According to Jimmy M. Skaggs,1 livestock growers in colonial days operated at the edge of the western movement, pasturing cattle on western grass and razorback hogs on forest vegetation. The industry moved across the Appalachian Mountains and into the Corn Belt, then onto the ranges of the Great Plains. As you will see in this paper, meatpacking developed after the Civil War from an industry of many small operators to a field dominated by a few large corporations.

According to Howard C. Hill, during the early days of American history, cattle and hogs were marketed in 2 ways. They were driven on foot in the fall to the eastern markets or were slaughtered and cured on the farm and then found their way to market down the Ohio River and the Mississippi River in the form of hams, slabs of bacon, and salt pork. Curing was considered a time saver and was sometimes performed during the trip down the river. In the West, slaughtering was done first by pioneers or by local butchers. In the author's opinion, not until 1818 "can it be considered as established as a distinct industry." During that year, the first slaughterhouses west of the mountains were opened in Cincinnati.2 During the year of 1833, 85,000 hogs were packed by 1838, the number was 182,000 five years later, it had grown to 250,000 and in 1848, it reached a total of 498,190. In 1844, there were 26 packinghouses in the city, ten years later the number had increased to 41. During this time, 1.7 million hogs were slaughtered annually in the Mississippi Valley.

According to the Encyclopedia of Environmental History, the meat processing industry in America originated during the 19th century when industrialization and urbanization increased the demand for meat. Butchering livestock was confined to farms and urban areas before the Industrial Revolution. After the Industrial Revolution, slaughterhouses were established to quickly and efficiently process larger amounts of meat. During the 1840's, slaughterhouses and stockyards were major features of New York City. Concerns about pollution led to relocation outside the settlement. As the population on the island of Manhattan increased, slaughtering of livestock was moved northward. By the 1830's, slaughterhouses and processing plants were located near 42nd Street.3
City residents did not like the driving of livestock through the crowded streets, the dumping of offal, and the stench of the slaughterhouses. Local opposition to meat processing plants and transportation improvements combined to shift the industry to the west.
By the 1840's, Cincinnati, Ohio had become the center of the meat processing industry. Most of the plants were located neat the Ohio River. This waterway provided a means to transport the processed goods and also became a dumping ground for disassembled parts. This practice declined after the plants began to use rendered lards to produce glue, hides, fertilizers, and hair was used to make shaving brushes.4

Chicago replaced Cincinnati's prominence in the meat processing and packing when the city's Union Stockyards were established in 1865. Livestock was shipped to the stockyard from surrounding areas, auctioned off and slaughtered nearby. After 1879, the Midwest became the center of meat processing due to the emergence of refrigerated rail cars. 5
Howard C. Hill cited the construction of the Michigan-Illinois canal and the building of the Galena and Chicago railway that were completed in 1848 as the chief factors in initiating the emergence of the Chicago meat packing industry. It provided an outlet through Chicago for the products of rich regions of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin these transportation facilities provided an "important source of the trade of St. Louis and New Orleans." 6 The completion of the railway connections with the Atlantic seaboard opened the door for the shipment of products to the east as a faster rate than was possible by river transportation.

Howard C. Hill thought that the most important reason for the dominance of Chicago as the center of the meat packing industry during this period was the fact hat new means of transportation "demonstrated for the first time the unique advantages of the location of the city."7 He thought that Chicago was the natural "focal point" for richness of natural resources in the world.

The rapidly growing increase in population made pasturing animals in rural areas before they were driven to market more difficult. These conditions and the impossibility of having fresh meat except through the slaughter of animals near where they were killed explained the "lack of concentration" of the packing business during the early 19th century. 8
Another innovation that created the meat packing industry as we know it today was the refrigerator car. According to Mary Yeager Kujovich, the refrigerator car intensified competition in the meat packing industry. Unlike the farmer-packers of the early 19th century who "slaughtered, pickled, smoked, and sold their meat directly to the consumers, western packers utilized transportation links to expand their markets."9 By the 1860's, cured meats were being shipped by rail to eastern wholesalers during the winter. Even after the Civil War, nature was considered the packer's icebox. Cooling is necessary to prevent spoilage of meats, because of this; cure meats were only shipped in the winter, while fresh meats were distributed locally. 10

Gustavus Swift was the first businessman to capitalize on the use of refrigerator cars. He was a newcomer to Chicago and had limited capital and always looked for ways to compete more effectively with the more well established livestock dealers such as Nelson Morris, Philip Armour and George Hammond. Swift wanted to cut the costs of bring meats to the eastern market. He wanted to end "the waste of buying cattle which had been passed through the hands of too many middle men and against which too many charges had accumulated."11

In 1878, Swift, along with engineer Andrew J. Chase developed an effective insulated refrigerator car. This car could carry dressed beef and lower transportation costs and allow for larger shipments. These cars could also haul other perishable products such as fruit, vegetables and poultry.

Swift initially approached the railroads to ask for help building these cars. The railroads were not interested because they thought that the cars would bee too expensive and would create problems for the livestock marketers and rate makers.12
Swift went to Detroit and persuaded the owners of the Michigan Car Company to build only ten cars. After the cars were constructed, Swift found a company called Grand Trunk to carry to product. The Swift-Grand Trunk alliance decided that the New England market was the most likely area for the countries shipments of dressed beef.13
Swift then bought ice-harvesting rights in the Great Lakes in order to provide ice for cooling his beef and loading iceboxes of his cars to Chicago. Ice stations were created along the routes of his refrigerator cars all the way to the east coast. His refrigerator cars could transport highly perishable dressed beef directly from a central packing plant in Chicago to branch plants in larger cities and towns throughout the East.
By the 1890's, a vertically integrated enterprise emerged whose "high volume and low cost production assured good meat at low prices a permanent place on the market."14 By this time, other packers followed his lead and had similar companies and refrigerator cars.
Another aspect of the meat packing industry that works in concert with technological advances is the worker that makes the production of meat possible. Leslie F. Orear wrote about the meatpacking workers in the Chicago Stockyards. On the South Side of Chicago, from 39th Street to 47th Street was the largest livestock market and meat-processing center in the world. Approximately 1-mile square, it served the nation's meat packing companies. Nearly 50,000 people worked in the area. The plants were an "intricate network of hundreds of inter-connected building in which the hogs, cattle and sheep were slaughtered and "disassembled" into cuts of meats." 15
The working conditions were harsh and unpleasant. There was the blood and steam of the kill floor and in the coolers it was damp and cold. The loading docks were fast paced and hectic. There were hazards everywhere such as injury from sharp knives and crushed bones from machinery.

The Armour and Company plant has the capacity to kill 1,200 hogs every hour. During the winter peak season, the moving chains that hoisted the killed hogs would run for 16 hours six days a week. Product would move from one processing level to a lower one by chute. Electric tractors pulled small truckloads of product from one building to the next for further processing or for shipment.

The workers in these plants were from various ethnic backgrounds. According to Leslie F. Orear, Polish and Lithuanian workers worked on the killing floor with black workers. The livestock handlers were generally Irish. African-Americans usually did not work in the mechanical trades and Mexicans would work in the freezers or hide cellars. 16 The living quarters were also segregated for example, the Irish lived east of the Yards in what was known as Canaryville and the Poles lived to the west Back of the Yards. The houses the workers lived in depended on coal or kerosene stoves for heating.
About 20 percent of the plant workforce were women. They were hired only for specific jobs, which were designated by company policy for women only. These jobs were packaging sliced bacon, preparing casings and linking sausage, packaging lard and smoked meats, or cleaning the guts slaughtered animals. Hourly pay rates for women were ten cents less than men's.

The packinghouse workers often organized labor unions, which were thwarted by the packing companies. This was the case in 1886 under the Knights of Labor. During 1917, the Stock Yards Labor Council created by the Chicago Federation of Labor met were successful. The government awarded wage increases and other improvements in working conditions demanded by the unions. These concessions were made due to the need for a supply of meat uninterrupted by labor disputes. Unfortunately, after the war, the meat packers no longer agreed to accept the conditions. In 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, which encouraged collective bargaining. The law provided that an employer "must bargain in good faith with labor organizations, if authorized by a majority of employees."17 The employers were forbidden to intimidate or punish any employee for engaging in union activity. The American Federation of Labor created the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1936. These events led to an improvement in living conditions for meat packing workers nationwide.
I have mentioned the environmental degradation caused by meat packing practices. I will now discuss this topic in greater detail. According to Vaclav Smil, beef cattle are the largest producer of feces and urine, followed by poultry and pigs.18 Annual global production of animal manures now amounts to more than 2 billion tons of dry matter. This manure was a valuable resource in all pre-industrial agriculture and were applied to fields to improve soil fertility. Today, separation of large-scale livestock production from field agriculture makes it impossible to recycle the manure produced in mega-farming facilities. The Nitrogen contained in the manure can volatize and cause the bad orders associated with large-scale operations. The Nitrogen in the manure can also be converted to nitrates by bacteria, excess nitrates causes eutrophication and acidification of terrestrial ecosystems. Vaclav Smil defines eutrophication as the "enrichment of waters with plant nutrients." 19 Eutrophication is caused by leaching of nitrates from fertilizers and animal manures. Terrestrial eutrophication may lead to short term increases in productivity of forest and grasslands. It can also cause changes in the composition of dominant species and to a loss of biodiversity, as plants that can survive in high levels of nutrient survive better than other species that cannot.
Meat production also produces a large amount of "greenhouse" gases. Enteric fermentation in bovines produces a great deal of methane, which causes greater levels of global warming compared to carbon dioxide. Denitrification of nitrates releases nitrous oxide, which is also a greenhouse gas.

Another aspect of meat production that is closely linked to environmental degradation is the health implications of meat production and consumption. I believe that environmental degradation is linked to health implication because the conditions that create environmental degradation also cause health hazards. According to Vaclav Smil, meatpacking is still one of the country's most dangerous occupations. In the year 2000, 25 percent of all employees in meatpacking plants had a nonfatal injury or job related illness. These injuries are related to the fact that modern slaughterhouses process as many as 400 cattle per hour and workers can make up to 10,000 repetitive knife cuts every day. 20

According to the journal 'Environmental History', zoonotic transmission of mad cow disease or BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) is a disease that was brought on by both human practices and politics.21 This disease was spread widely among British cattle in the 1980's. In a limited number of cases, the disease also was contracted by humans and cats. BSE most likely originated in cattle feed enriched with material from sheep carrying scrapie, a closely related neurodegenerative disease.
Since the 18th century, livestock farmers have experimented with improving the nutrition of cattle feed. They found that cattle that were given protein derived from animals combined with plant matter increased their size. This suspected disease producing food source in concert with the British government's apathy towards regulation caused the disease to become an epizoonotic episode. The British citizens were even urged to show patriotism by continuing to eat British burgers. Although American politicians recently have noticed a single case, they want to protect the beef industry by using the national border to distinguish among cattle suffering from the same affliction.22 These outbreaks of BSE, cattle plague or foot and mouth disease, repeatedly have caused economic disaster.

According to James M. MacDonald et. al. livestock slaughter and meat processing industries are going through important changes. Market structures are shifting, and federal government has proposed a set of new inspection procedures aimed at food safety. There are four major regulations that have been set by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture. The first requirement is standard sanitation operating procedures that require the development of a plan to meet sanitation requirements and daily monitoring records. The second requirement is antimicrobial treatments in slaughtering plants for the first time to be applied to carcasses prior to chilling. The third requirement is time and temperature requirements that would be required to maintain carcasses and raw meat at a specified temperature during handling, holding and shipping. The last requirement is microbiological testing for target pathogens in all plants.23
The economics of the meat industry is a very important part of the American economy. According to Michael Ryan in a paper written in 1909, the meat output during 1909 was worth $1.2 billion dollars and the largest meat packing plants reported their annual sales to be $7 million dollars. He felt that the market was only going to improve because "agriculturists are better off now than they ever have been in the country."24 Abundant crops from 1900 to 1909 coupled with a demand for farm products at profitable prices made meat production very profitable.

According to Richard Perren, in 1870 exported meat to Great Britain only accounted for 10 percent of total consumption; by 1914 exportation of meat to Great Britain increased to 40 percent. By 1909 to 1913, the consumption of meat was 131 lb. per year. This was because the chilled beef that arrived after 1880 from North America was better quality than South American, Australian or New Zealand beef. The difference in quality were attributed to cooler climate in America, the economic circumstances of the countries where the meat was produced and the improved methods of preservation and transportation in the United States.25 After 1914, the export trade to Great Britain declined due to conditions in the United States rather than to competition from other sources within the British market. The increasing population of the United States and rising incomes in the country meant that domestic beef demand also increased. This absorbed nearly all the beef production in the United States. The rise in the price of beef in Britain meant that it was no longer worthwhile for the American firms to ship cattle or beef to the United Kingdom.26

According to Richard J. Arnould in 1916 the "Big Five"(Swift, Armour, Morris, Wilson and Cudahy) slaughtered 82.2 percent of the cattle being slaughtered by interstate firms, 76.6 percent of the calves, 86.4 percent of the sheep and 61.2 percent of the hogs. Swift and Armour conducted more than 50 percent of the slaughtering in every category except hogs, where they accounted for 43.1 percent of the hogs slaughtered. 27 I the intrastate slaughters are accounted for, 600 firms controlled less than 25 percent of the American cattle killed. The Big Five owned 89 percent of the branch houses in 1916 and 90.2 percent of the car routes.28 Based on these figures, the meat packing industry moved from a local atomistic structure to a near monopoly to a tight oligopolistic by the time of the judicial Consent Decree in 1920. This rise in power and dominance of the Big Five in the period from 1880 to 1920 "can be attributed to their "dominance of the capital intensive central yard and distribution system and the use of anticompetitive forms of market conduct."29

Robert M Aduddell and Louis P. Cain, wrote about the Consent Decree which enjoined packers from "engaging in the business of handling, and from owning any interest in a concern engaged in handling, fourteen specified classes of food and miscellaneous items, illustrated by a listing of 145 named commodities."30 These firms were prevented from owning or conducting any retail meat markets. They were also required to separate themselves from interests in retail meat markets, public cold storage warehouses, market newspapers and journals, terminal railroads, and stockyards. This decree was created to achieve 2 goals, to end monopoly power and to prohibit the extension of that power to other areas within the food industry. The latter goal arose from the conclusion of the Federal Trade Commission study that the major packers were in a position to monopolize the food industry.31

Cudahy Packing Company later opened the legal question of the enforcement of the consent decree in 1956. Later that year, Swift and Armour joined Cudahy. Their argument was that the conditions under which the consent decree was formed had changed between 1920 and 1956. The government held up the consent decree and felt that the original conditions still existed in 1956.32

Nick Fiddes traces the significances and consequences of meat eating. He argues that the universality of the symbolic importance of meat. He feels that meat is a profound symbol of man's conquest over nature and the environment. He has formed this opinion because of the cultural idea of man as the hunter and cites contemporary acts of aggression such as a businessman eating raw steak to unnerve competitors. Another example is sexual metaphors to describe women and the idea of substance incorporation that associate meat with strength. Fiddes hopes that someday meat eating will be much like drug addiction and smoking are today.33

Men like Nick Fiddes would have been strung up for writing such a book during the late 19th century. This shows that ideas about meat consumption have changed. Also, regulations about meat sanitation have grown stricter. This is partially due to the emergence of diseases such as BSE. Environmental laws have not changed as much as other aspects of the meat industry. One can notice that little has changed by driving past Rickreall Dairy and smelling the stench in the air.

1. Jimmy Skaggs, Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the United States, 1607-1983 (Texas A&M University Press, 1986)
2.Howard Copeland Hill, "The Development of Chicago as a Center of the Meat Packing Industry" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923)253-273
3. Encyclopedia of world environmental history 4th edition Shepard Krech III, J.R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant(New York : Routledge, 2004)
4. Encyclopedia of world environmental history 4th edition Shepard Krech III, J.R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant(New York : Routledge, 2004)
5. Encyclopedia of world environmental history 4th edition Shepard Krech III, J.R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant(New York : Routledge, 2004)
6. Howard Copeland Hill, "The Development of Chicago as a Center of the Meat Packing Industry" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923)253-273
7. Howard Copeland Hill, "The Development of Chicago as a Center of the Meat Packing Industry" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923)253-273
8. Howard Copeland Hill, "The Development of Chicago as a Center of the Meat Packing Industry" The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923)253-273
9. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
10. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
11. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
12. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
13. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
14. Mary Yeager Kujovich "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry", The Business History Review, 44 (1970): 460-482
15. Leslie F. Orear "The Chicago Stockyards on the Eve of the CIO (1936)" Social Policy (2002) 108 40-42
16. Leslie F. Orear "The Chicago Stockyards on the Eve of the CIO (1936)" Social Policy (2002) 108 40-42
17. Leslie F. Orear "The Chicago Stockyards on the Eve of the CIO (1936)" Social Policy (2002) 108 40-42
18.Vaclav Smil "Eating Meat: Evolution Patterns, and Consequences" Population and Development Review 28 (2002), 599-639
19. Vaclav Smil "Eating Meat: Evolution Patterns, and Consequences" Population and Development Review 28 (2002), 599-639
20. Vaclav Smil "Eating Meat: Evolution Patterns, and Consequences" Population and Development Review 28 (2002), 599-639
21. Harrier Ritvo "Animal Planet" Environmental History 9, (2004) 204-219
22. Harrier Ritvo "Animal Planet" Environmental History 9, (2004) 204-219
23.James M. MacDonald, Michael E. Ollinger, Kenneth E. Nelson, Charles R. Handy "Structural Change in Meat Industrries: Implications in Food Safety Regulations" American Journal of Agricultural Economics no. 3 (1996) 780-785
24. Michael Ryan "Prospects of the Meat Packing Industry" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science No. 3 (1909) 33-38
25. Richard Perren "The North American Beef and Cattle Trade with Great Britain" The Economic History Review No. 3 (1971) 430-444
26. Richard Perren "The North American Beef and Cattle Trade with Great Britain" The Economic History Review No. 3 (1971) 430-444
27. Richard J. Arnould "Changing Patterns of Concentration in American Meat Packing 1880-1963" The Business History Review No. 1 (1971) 18-34
28. Richard J. Arnould "Changing Patterns of Concentration in American Meat Packing 1880-1963" The Business History Review No. 1 (1971) 18-34
29. Richard J. Arnould "Changing Patterns of Concentration in American Meat Packing 1880-1963" The Business History Review No. 1 (1971) 18-34
30. Robert M. Aduddell, Lous P. Cain "The Consent Decree in the Meat Packing Industry, 1920-1956" The Business History Review No. 3, 359-378
31. Robert M. Aduddell, Lous P. Cain "The Consent Decree in the Meat Packing Industry, 1920-1956" The Business History Review No. 3, 359-37
32. Robert M. Aduddell, Lous P. Cain "The Consent Decree in the Meat Packing Industry, 1920-1956" The Business History Review No. 3, 359-37 

33. Nick Fiddes, Meat: A Natural Symbol (New York, Routledge, Chapman and Hill, 1991)

By Moriah LaChapell Schalock, as 'The Meat Packing Industry from the late 19th to 20th Century'. Adapted/edited to be posted by Leopoldo Costa