MEAT-PRESERVING IN VICTORIA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 14, Issue 1144, 15 April 1870, Page 5

MEAT -PRESERVING IN VICTORIA.

Tfia i-Uilbwing account of the Melbourne Meat-Preserving . Company's works is abridged from the Argus : — The "Melbourne Meat-Preserving Company" was established on December 31, 1867, at a meeting of squatters and others interested in finding a market for our surplus stock, held at Scott's Hotel, Melbourne, ?and; the projected process of preservation was that devised by Mr. 8. S. Ritchie, who earned his experience in meat-preserving establishments in Great Britain, whence he derived his system of preservation in . as complete vacuo as possible. He was materially supported in the first instance by the firm of Holmes, White, and Co., Who encouraged his experiments with Australian meat, and backed bis enterprise. The- result has been a magnificent success. At the present moment the company's capital consists of £40,000, in 8000 shares of £5 each, all -Called up, and of which money about .620,000 has been expended thus :— For buildings and improvements of land, reservoir of water, laying on Van Yean water supply, wharf excavations for manure pits, railways, roads, fencing, -Sec, up to the present time, £12,800; expended on machinery and plant, £7004: The rcmainii der ; of' the money has been invested in : the company's business operations. Its. "premises consist of an extensive series pf buildings,, erected on a site adjoining the Saltwater: River, within three miles of Melbourne. It employs 251 persons, including a large number of boys ; ' pays weekly wages amounting to £493 (which toakes up an average of wages that, should tell its own tale in England); purchases from 7000 to 8000 sheep, and from 80 to 100 head of cattle, worth together from £3500 to £4000 (the present average price is Bs. per sheep, £7 per bullock) per. week,; and produces weekly £6000 worth of produce— item, 17,000 tins of, preserved meat, worth £2450, 65 tons of tallow, worth £2350, and sheepskins, hides, bones, and sundries, worth £1200. Its operations in January, 1870, aloiie comprised the shipping to London of 48,620 tins of meat (weight of meat 295,0 1 21b5.), and 780 casks of; tallow, .weighing -254 tons 1 cwt. 2 qr. But this is not all, for the excellence of the meat so preserved has caused an enormous local consumption, and the local demand is •daily increasing, fin the article of ox and sheep's tongues, ; for instance, export is nofc to be thought of, for though the company purchase about half the amount of sheep and cattle consumed in Melbourne itself, yet it is unable to supply these tongues (in a preserved form, of course,) fast enough for' its local customers. A striking proof, this, of the goodness of the preserving processes employed. The demand for the ordinary tins of meat is on a simi- ; lar scale, tor in hot weather it is often found pleasant and profitable to dine off , —^instead of joints of doubtful Sweetness—slices from a cubic piece of Cold meat, of delicious flavour, cooked to a nicety, and smothered in jellied gravy. How far this feeiing has extended during the 18 months the company has been at , work (N.B.— lt started work in September 1868, suspending operations for two months , during the unprecedented drought of last ; season) may be judged by the fact that what it has sold for consumption in the colony amounts to 61,455 tins or 183,8061 b. of meat. After this, one can easily understand that the works are a little town, with tramways; running hither and thither to facilitate transport, all converging in the line" whioh conveys the company's goods to its own. wharf on the banks of the Saltwater River, whence lighters speedily and inexpensively convey them to the exporting ship's side. Having thus indicatedthe results achieved by the company, we turn to describe their operations. The buildings being on the side of a hill,, are advantageously arranged itt stages, and asthey spread over a considerably area, tramways, ingeniouslj designed for easy transit, connect the departments. First come the slaughter-houses and sheep and cattle-pens. The former are substantially built of stone, with ample means of ventilation. Drainage is obtained by a false floor, composed of joistings laid as a grating, and thus all fluid matter runs through into a bluestone reservoir beneath, which, in its turn, drains into the places prepared for that purpose. Behind the slaughter-house are pens, which, extensive as they are, contain only sufficient accommodation for the sheep and cattle required for. one. day. ; ; , The, practice is to turn the animals, as fast as they. arrive from the country, into an accommodation paddock of €000 acres, within four miles of the works, where they are fed and watered till they have recovered 'from their journey. From thence they are drafted off to the pens, which are covered with open roofs so that the doomed creatures are not exposed^to' the weather. These roofs cost £700, which was spent partly from humane motives and partly to keep the -animals in the best condition. The company is now working double tides, ie.; day and night, and 1000 head are brought in for the day's work, and 500 head for the night's operations. Water from the Van Yean is laid on iv every direction. The proci ss of slaughtering is of the simplest, and the sheep are brought into the slaughter-house, polled, disembowelled, and skinned with such amazing speed that it is the allotted work of two men and a boy — the latter to clean the offal — to slaughter and convert into carcases ready for the butcher's shop 210 sheep per working day. The bullocks are killed by spearing, and the, use. of very simple tackle enables the easy transit bf the carcases, which are eventually hung on a truek — used for shecy, also— -constructed for the purpose, and run along a tramway to the scene of the next series of operations. It is not too much to say that the only observable smell in these slaughter-houses is that of fresh meat, for the blood and offal have no time to accumulate. The former drains at once into the tidal river: and the latter is carried off in -trunks per njamway to pits prepared for the. pur pose. These-^re each enclosed in solid bluestone.wal.ls, and .in them the offal and debris is laid in layers, with earth between, ,JWhen full the pit is allowed to remaih:'fouf.br r five months, by which time the deodorisation by contact with earth is complete, arid *the ; material is then sold for - " ;manure;;v:r*:^::t^ v -- - • ■-'.?:- v^'beyc^rcaseas. it leaves the slaughter-■yyavdswti^t-^ieii tothe "butchers' shop," y , ;Thiß is the place where the meat is boned and jointed ready

, ! fu- 'he kitchen, a id it is fully occupied by J the men and boys at work preparing mutton and beef fur the tins, und sorting it into the i lots required. There are little mountains of meat on all sides, and the benches and tables are strewn wifch it, bufc a fresh smell pervades the air, and though the day of our visit was oppressively hot, rhe apartment was comparatively cool, tmr was there room for even a suspicion of taint. Exquisite cleanliness prevailed. The practice of the company is not to preserve bone except in some few instances, in which, nevertheless, all the large bones are removed. In dealing with mutton, the legs and shoulders are boned, hnd sometimes when the sbeep is a particularly fine one, a portion of the sides is put up too, as "mutton witb bone ; ' but in most cases the fore-quarter, except the actual shoulder, is abandoned altogether to the boiling-down part of the establishment, where the tallow is extracted, and the remainder turned into manure. Indeed, it is a fixed rule to consign to the tallow-vats all the inferior portions of every animal preserved. All the bone is taken from the beef, tbe rounds, flanks, and briskets of which are turned into " corned beef," and the rest is made into " roast or boiled beef (fresh). As fa.t as the meat is sorted into the requisite quantities, it is placed in trunks, which run on a tramway to the " Kitchen." The first process there is to' place the meat on large trays, and immerse it for a few minutes in boiling water, which scalds ifc, and removes t-cum and possible impurities. Steam lifts next carry the trays away to tables, on to which their contents are shot. Nimble fingers then place the meat in the tin canisters, which are brought in from the tinmen's room, and it is now that care is taken to give adequate weight, and to insure, further, that great desideratum, cleanliness. As fast as the canisters are filled, tinmen solder on the tops, and each canister is then intact, save a small pinhole in the centre of tbe convexshaped cap. The canisters are next put into huge trays, which steam hoists carry aloft into the " preserving room," to which we will take our readers presently. Meanwhile the visitor must come to the " roasting and soup" department of the kitchen. Here are six 260ga1. coppers, ofthe kind known as "jacketed pans," i.e., with a chamber left between the outside and inside coating of the copper to be filled with the steam by which the boiling process is effected. In these coppers is boiled the stock for the soups, which, when ready for use, is drawn off by taps, cooled, and passed into the kitchen, where it is placed in the pans with the material that establishes its flavour, and which is prepared in the same apartment. In this place, too, is a special process for the manufacture of "extractura carnis," or the essence of meat prepared according to Liebig's process. An essential feature of the latter is the reduction of the extract in shallow pans at a low temperature, still further lowered by the boy who continually stirs up the treacly-looking fluid with a huge ladle. Here, too, cow-heel is reduced to add gelatine to the soup stock. In the boiler fire-places is the apparatus for roasting the meat that is to be preserved in that shape, and following the latest scientific .teaching, purified fat is made the means of conveying the heat. The visitor now proceeds to the " preserving room," whither the soldered canisters (the pin-hole open at top) have been previously conveyed. The trays — in each of which 100 tins have been placed — have perforated bottoms, and they are carried along the room on travellers, and lowered into the cisterns ranged round the room, and sufficiently full of a chemical composition of which muriate of lime forms a large ingredient. The cisterns are heated by steam, and here the canisters are boiled, according to the nature of their contents and the amount of cooking they are intended to undergo. As we have indicated, Mr. Ritchie's process involves the expulsion of air to the last particle possible, and to secure this, whatever tbe amount of cooking required, the concluding point is always when a jet of steam is being expelled through the pin-hole. At tbis juncture the solderers come and solder up the pin-hole, applying a cold sponge immediately afterwards to cool the solder and prevent the steam from forcing its way through. This final process is a very delicate one, and great skill is demanded from the workmen who perform it, for an extra pressure of the finger might cause air to re-enter the tin, the effect of which would be found out of the testing-room, and cause the ruin of the meat. So soon as the tin is hermetically sealed in this way, the canister is subjected to a still higher heat, by which means the trifling quantity of air that may be left inside is nullified. The tins are then hoisted away into the cooling room, from which each day's work passes in batches to the testing room. It is a feature in Mr. Ritchie's process that he uses every means to avoid over-cooking, and the appliances for cooling are so arranged that when once the contents of the canisters have received their last heating, the temperature is rapidly reduced by cold water, and in this way the cooking is not allowed to continue a moment beyond the needful point. The temperature of the testing-room is kept at 100 deg. Fahr., and here the canisters remain a certain time— generally seven days —to develop defects which are ordinarily exhibited by the exudation of the contents or the convexity of the ends of the tins. On leaving the testing room, the tins are carried off into other apartments, where they are painted, labelled, and packed in wooden ca-=es, stencilled with marks showing their contents. Last of all they are placed in trucks, and transported by rail to the company's wharf on the river side (the company have half a mile of river frontage), when they are put into lighters fur transit to the exporting ship's side. Besides all this tliere is a melting-de-partment for the tallow which the company export so largely, being impelled thereto by the necessity of utilising their debris. The latter is packed into trucks and carried on rails to a staging in the meltingroom, from which it is unloaded into six huge vats, creditable specimens of Fulton's manufacture. There are three large and three small vats, and they hold collectively as much as would constitute the carcases of 1200 sheep. The fat being boiled out, is carried off by spouting for refining, and from the refinery it runs into coolers, from whence it is turned off by means of taps into tbe barrels in which it is sent to market. All the above processes are arranged so that there shall be no handling of the fat, and the human labour required is comparatively trifling. As in other parts of the establishment, tbe utmost cleanliness appears to be

observed, and the means <if v.-u-ilidi ni are su perfeot tint cv it the talimv does nut smell oiLnsive. Outside thin department is a kind of mill, where the bones and other debris after boiling have their last drop of fat expressed from them. They are then turned into manure.