6 minute read
The StockYards
BY DR. TONY FRAZIER
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The buffalo herds had disappeared and had been replaced by cattle.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 say sometimes when discussing controversial issues, I don’t want to “knock the top off an ant bed” but this likely led to the current Hatfields’ and McCoys’ relationship between the feed yards and packers. This ant bed or debate has certainly been stirred up recently by COVID-19 and the perceived shortage of meat. As you probably know, the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into potential price-controlling activities by the big meat packing companies. More to come on that. Let’s go on.
Built in 1864 and connected to city’s main rail lines, the Stock Yards processed two million animals yearly by 1870, nine million by 1890. Between 1865 and 1900, almost 400 million livestock were butchered there.The Stock Yards eventually covered one square mile and used 500,000 gallons of water a day from the Chicago river. Phillip Armour was the first person to build a large-scale, modern-day meat plant in 1867. This plant developed the “assembly line method of work,” or rather the “disassembly line.” This method helped inspire Henry Ford to come up with the assembly line for manufacturing cars.
I guess now I come to the “meat” of the article and series. At the turn of the century and the years leading up to it, our country was figuring out how to become industrialized. The population was growing. The economy was growing. There was a large immigrant labor force. And everybody was hungry. The process of harvesting the millions of animals mentioned above was done largely without many modern conveniences. The Stock Yards were designed for a continuous flow of animals and products. Animals were slaughtered diseased or not, ambulatory or not, sometimes around the clock. The slaughter floors were hot in the summer and very cold in the winter as there was no air conditioning or heat. Child labor was common. Nothing was wasted so as to make a profit on all parts. Blood, hair, hides, bones, fat, grease and intestines were all processed. Beef carcasses were hung for a day or so to cool down, then cut up and sent out to the public fresh as there was no refrigeration. There was usually a government inspector present during the processing but at the time they had only limited authority. A medical doctor proposed that tuberculosis was being transmitted in contaminated meat but was disregarded.
News reports began to surface saying the Armour Co. had supplied tons of rotten canned meat to U.S. troops in Cuba. Many of the soldiers who ate the meat became ill and some died. More articles began to be published revealing the tactics of the “Beef Trust,” a group made up of the five largest meatpacking companies based in Chicago. This involved a likely attempt to monopolize the industry and reported on the unsanitary conditions in the slaughterhouses and the disregard for government inspection.
One young man spent some time in the slaughterhouses and wrote about the conditions in a fictional publication that would later become a book. His name was Upton Sinclair and the book was entitled “The Jungle.” His political ideas were socialistic and against capitalism that, according to him, produced these giant companies that made millions of dollarsno matter the cost. I might add here that in my opinion no socialistic program in human hands will ever work. Capitalism and free enterprise can work but must be guarded. That’s probably enough of that. Despite his political views, the description of the conditions in the Stock Yards and slaughterhouses got the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. On June 30, 1906 he signed into law the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This law prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. The law reformed the meatpacking industry, mandating that the USDA inspect all cattle, swine, sheep, goats and horses both before and after they were slaughtered and processed for human consumption. This law was amended in 1967 by the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 that we still use today. The Stock Yards closed at midnight Friday, July 30, 1971, after several decades of decline during the decentralization of the meatpacking industry.
Today we have the safest, most wholesome, most affordable meat and food supply in the world. Our U.S. farmers and producers do a great job producing outstanding livestock. Our feed yards finish out cattle using science-based nutritional rations. Poultry growers and the poultry industry produce the most efficient and well-cared-for chickens in the world, no matter what animal activists claim.
I know this has been a different type of article than what we’ve done before, but it seemed important to remind everyone of the importance of the security of our food supply. And that Agriculture is certainly Critical Infrastructure.
