FROM THE STATE VET’S OFFICE
BY DR. TONY FRAZIER
The StockYards In 1880, the Union Stock Yards outside of Chicago covered approximately 375 acres and included 2,300 livestock pens. By the turn of the century, nine million animals were being slaughtered there annually. These stats bring us to the last in a series about the early transition of the slaughter and processing of livestock, particularly beef, and how the modern meat inspection system now in place came to exist. As I said before, this series has been more like a history lesson but in order to see where we are going, we must look at where we’ve been, and some of those pictures of the past are not too pretty. I must add that the reference to the Stock Yards of Chicago in no way includes the stockyards and livestock markets of today, who do a great job marketing cattle across the state and country. The buffalo herds had disappeared and had been replaced by cattle. By the mid-1800s, the American people had developed a growing taste for beef. Supplying this demand brought about the cattle drives that we’ve all heard about and seen on television or in the movies. Scenes from the TV series “Rawhide” which we mentioned in last month’s article or, one of my favorites, the miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” describe these events. Many of you, including me, most likely have always wanted to be a cowboy, but have
probably never fully understood the hardships these individuals faced. Despite the adversity, longhorn cattle were rounded up, trailed north to the railheads and shipped to the stockyards. It seems that meat processing on a large scale had become centralized around Chicago during the Civil War. The United States government was buying a lot of beef and pork to feed its Union army that was fighting the Confederacy. Chicago became a major railroad center as the Mississippi River was blocked, closing all north and south travel. In 1860, nearly 400,000 hogs were butchered out of the stockyards. By 1865, over 1.4 million hogs were butchered. Over the same time period, beef slaughter numbers rose from 117,000 head to 338,000 head. The existing butcher markets around Chicago just could not keep up until new modern, consolidated plants were built just after the War. The Union Stock Yards were designed to consolidate livestock procurement, harvesting and processing operations. Men like Gustavus Swift and Phillip Armour realized that the demand for meat was exploding and they could capitalize on that by building and controlling this process. The concept was hugely successful at the time and the business practices helped set the course for American companies. As I November 2020
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