MARKETS OF FROZEN FOOD.
It is. not generally known (observes the Daily News) that some millions of the human race subsist for one-third of the year on frozen food, not only meat and fish, but also butter, game, milk, &c, reduced to the condition of blocks of ice..- We do not refer to. Esquimaux or Samoyedes,'but to people living in the utmost affluence who are compelledto this kind of diet as often as winter comes' round. ; That. it is not unwholesome appears from the fact that (excepting St. Petersburg) the death rate is not higher than the average of towns in Prance, and"that the/meat"loses' none of its flavour after months pf freezing is admitted by all travellers. These are two very important considerations for us at present in England, since every week brings us cargoes of frozen meat from the Antipodes, showing that we shall soon be as dependent oh frozen food for a part of our yearly supply as the markets of Moscow, Quebec, Montreal, or St. Petersburg. Although we afe not yet accustomed to see milk sold by the cubic foot, or Bordeaux wine in lumps like,coal, or " frozen eels like walking-sticks, these are'not novelties in some other countries, and cheap freight may soon make them as common as Jersey pears or Italian chestnuts. Suffice it now to observe that frozen food is as wholesome and nutritive as unfrozen, and that it is destined to be of the highest utility in supplying the deficit between growth and consumption in such denselypopulated countries as England, Belgium, and. Germany. The frozen markets of Russia and Canada do not depend on latitude or geographical identity, but on isothermal lines, being all below an average annual temperature of 42deg. Fahr., and their winter cold ranging from zero to 18deg. They are as follow :-—
CONSUMPTION OF FROZEN FOOD. Meat. Fish,' Total Tens. Milk; &c. Tons. Bt. Petersburg .. 76,000 142,000 ■ 218,000 Moscow ~ .. 62,000 110,000 172,000 Kazan .. .. 5,000 10,000 : 15,000 Archangel .. 4,000 10,000 14,000 Irkutsk .. .. 5,000 12,000 17.CC0 Quebec .. .. 7,000 15,000 "22,000 Montreal .. 12,000 26,000 38,000
171,000 325,000 ' 496,000 The season begins simultaneously iv Russia and Canada in the second week of December, and lasts till April, during which period the markets present their ■ most showy aspect, prices are lowest, and everything is most abundaut. All roads leading to St. Petersburg are crowded with sledges laden with food; swans from Finland, bears-flesh from Olonetz, partridges from Saratoff, geese from the Don Steppes, beef from tho Ukraine, grouse from Livonia, reindeer meat from Archangel, caviare from Astrakari, sheep from Orenburg, and thousands of hares from all quarters, all frozen as hard as the North Pole. The stranger who enters the Gostinnoi marketplace sees himself surrounded by countless rows of oxen and calves, pyramids of pigs, mountains of sheep and goats, sacks of little fish that rattle like walnuts, blocks of salmon and sturgeon or of bear's flesh that is cut out of the snow with hatchets, sledge-loads of snow-white hares frozen in a running position, with ears pointed as if escaping from the hunter, and reindeer lying down as.if asleep—all await the axe or saw of the butcher, who makes no distinction of joints, but sells in blocks or slices so many inches thick. Children gather up the dust that falls on the snow, for it is powdered meat. ; During the season it is usual to sell 60,000 oxen, besides smaller cattle,'and the consumption of fish is prodigious, herrings alone exceeding 30,000 tons, besides 600 tons of caviare from the Caspian. The tables of the Russian nobility,'so celebrated for splendid hospitality, are never so well supplied as in the winter. Tie total consumption of frozen food, including the smaller markets not given above, may be summed up thus:—Beef, 130,000 tons; mutton and goat, 45,000; pork, 33,000; fish, 220,000; game, 90,000; milk, butter, &c, 100,000— total, 018,000 tons. Canada uses altogether nearly 150,000 tons, of which meat and fish comprise two-thirds. The markets have some resemblance to the Russian, but many features of their own. Singed pigs standing upright, deer from the backwoods, obelisks of cod and haddock, aud piles of game and. poultry from the Saskatchewan, alternate with columns ef solid milk. Here, as in Russia, the frozen season is that for abundance—the farmers fattening their stock in summer, and killing it when winter has set in. We shall not be over the mark if we say that 12,000,000 of people in the Northern Hemisphere consume 1,000.000 tons of frozen food during the winter months. This does not include the frozen meat consumed in England, the quantity whereof is growing so rapidly that our annual deficit of 650,000 tons will shortly be covered in this way a3 the cheapest and most advantageous. Australia can easily send us 300 ? 000 tons of mutton without reducing the capital of her flocks, and the best assurance in this regard is the fact that the prides obtained are remunerative, and that the last cargoes from Sydney and New Zealand were resold in the markets as Southdown mutton.
Lieutenant Shore, in a lecture on China and Japan, says that until the arrival of foreign sergeons there was not a native in the whole Chinese Empire who could remove a tumor, treat an abscess, or even set a fractured limb with certainty, and even now there are no eur-. geons in the army and navy. It is in contemplation to erect a bronze statue somewhere in the neighbourhood of Paisley to the memory of the Scotch poet Tannahill, the proceeds of the recent anniversary concart, withf those of previous ones, affording a nearly sufficient sum for < that purpose.
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 6441, 4 October 1882, Page 4
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936MARKETS OF FROZEN FOOD. Otago Daily Times, Issue 6441, 4 October 1882, Page 4
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