THE CHICAGO MEAT PACKING SCANDALS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11919, 16 July 1906, Page 2

THE CHICAGO MEAT PACKING SCANDALS.

FURTHER DETAILS BY MAIL.

A TALE OF HORRORS.

Under date New York, June 1, the following further details of the Chicago tinned meat horrors have reached us by mail: —

The whole country is deeply stirred over the horrors of Chicago and' the great Chicago meat establishments recently recently revealed. It is now known tht Mr Roosevelt for months past has been quietly investigating matters on his own account, and has received Buch shocking reports that he is determined to put an end to the existing- conditions.

J' should be remembered that every vaiu ty of tinned and potted meat comes licm the Trust's yards, and it is in these that the greatest contaminations can be most easily concealed". v

FEWER ORDERS FROM' ENGLAND.

The newspapers are devoting columns to the packing-house exposures, quoting copiously from "The Jungle," and urging the public to beware of such Chicago dainties as potted chicken made of diseased veal, eausages made of unfit materials and treated with chemicals, and potted ham made of beef gullets and' ground potato-.-Ouns, dyed red.

These revelations are causing a great falling off in the consumption of potted meats and other Chicago products, and it iB reported that already a reduction of 33 per cent in orders from Germany and England', two of the largest foreign consumers, has occurred.

Almost incredible stories of the horror* of the packing-house are related by Mr and Mrs Bloor. who made a preliminary investigation for Mr Sinclair, -and whose experiences from part of his story. They resided at Chicago for some time, associht"'i with packing-house workers, and obt<»ii "d astounding revelations. On man uuriOed that unborn calves were largely u'ili^ed 1 in the potted meat departments, and that quantities of chickens, so decomposed as almost to be dropping apart, were frozen solid, deodorised, and tinned.

FARCICAL INSPECTION.

Investigation has disclosed the fact that the conditions of the meat-packing houses in New York and other large cities are fully as bad as at Chicago. The present inspection system is utterly inadequate and farcical. Six inspectors in New York examined 493,000 carloads of packinghouse products last year, in addition to several thousand live cattle daily. Over eleven million pounds of meat were condemned as diseased or otherwise unfit during the recent investigation of the Chicago slaughter-houses. One of Mr Roosevelt's commissioners witnessed the inspection of 31 diseased cattle having large lumps on the jaws. Only seven were rejected.

In Omaha, one of the largest meat centres of the West, there has been no inspection at all for over ten years.

"UNSPEAKABLY HORRIBLE."

The secretary of the New York Butchers' Association, in an interview to-day, de(lares that the conditions of the New York iau -age factories are unspeakably horrible. ''Many places* have no eewer connections, and keep huge cesspools, filled with reekii'Sf, decomposed' matter. In one establishment rats swarm over the tables on vrhich the meats are thrown for grinding, and no attempt is made to remove the filth which collects. If a dozen rats .ire caught in the machinery, they are ground up with the rest.

"Large quantities of refuse brought from hotels and restaurants arc mixed with sausage meat. Not a single sausagemaker thinks of eating his own sausages."

Mr Thomas Dolan, formerly killing superintendent of one of the largest Chicago packing-houses, says that thousands of cattle pass inspection suffering from tuberculosis, grangene, and other diseases. Animals unfit for cats' nieaf are boiled down and' the nutriment used for soups and beef extracts, while the dry. worthless pulp remaining is mixed with gelatine, tinned, and advertised as jellied beef.Diseased meat, condemned by the inspectors, is systematically smuggled' back and f inned. CHOPPED SAUSAGE MEAT AND FROZEN PIGS.

"Tho chief danger to the British public liv* iv the use by certain sausage makers of the American-chopped sausage meat, as to the composition of which no one knows anythiug, and in the sale of boned

meat, of which the consumption is very large in the North of England, and carcases of pigs in such a hard frozen state as not to admit of proper inspection here," writes a London meat trado expert. He adds:

By far the greater part of the American meat comes into this country in the form of quarters of beef, which as a rule are entirely free from evidence of diseases; but of late years there has been an increasing trade in sausage-meat chopped up and put up in tins, and various goods packed in boxes, which is not bo satisfactory. These consists of sheep's and lambs' plucks, ox livers, ox and pigs' kidneys, loins of pork, pork cuttings which profess to be the trimmings of hams and sides of bacon, and. worst of all, quarters of beef with the bones taken out.

All of these are put into boxes soft, frozen up hard, and' sent here in a condition which precludes the possibility of inspection, so that the only guarantee of their soundness is an adhesive label of the American department of meat inspection stuck on the outside of the box, and capable of being transferred from one box to another.

A similar label is tied on the carcases of pork, which are scut here frozen hard. Very recently a meat inspector was denirous of showing an official of +he Local Government Board how utterly impossible it was to form any opinion a^ to the soundness of these, antl took him into Ihc shop of one of the large importing firms for that purpose. There he found one carcase which, having hung from the previous clay, had thawed and become soft. This, though still carrying the American label, of inspection, was obviously diseased. Then as to the boned beef. The Royal Commission on Tuberculosis made among others this recommendation : "In the case of foreign dead meat, seizure shall ensue in every case where the pleura has been 'stripped.' "

WHOLE THUTII UNPUBLIRHABLE.

The Now York correspondent of the London Times, writing on May 28, says: — The certain, result in legislation, and it is to be confidently hoped, in the punishment of the blackguards who have been accumulating great fortunes by selling unwholesome food to the American people. So far as the newspapers are concerned, the half has not been told, and I am in a position to say that the whole truth can never be told in print, for the reason that it would transcend the bounds of decency. But what we have learned' already is enough. The New York Times this morning devotes an entire page to the subject.We read of carcases of hogs which had died of cholera made into lard and into grease, which is used in making sardine oil ; of hams in a putrified condition injected with chemicals which make thorn odourless; of the nee of other chemicals for dyeing bad meat : of potted "ham" made from mouldy portions of smoked beef; of tinned beef from cattle which died from disease; of mutton which is really goats' flesh ; of sausages manutactured from ncrapinga of floors liberally treated with embalming chemicals; of inspectors passing as fit for food animals affected with tuberculosis; of operatives being caught in machinery and mutilated, and of the machinery not even being stopped, so that human flesh is mixed in the canned food and sausages. These allegations are supported by documents supplied by Mr Upton Sinclair. I have taken a few instances of what has been going on absolutely at random. In the newspaper reports the great packing houses are all mentioned by namo, and it is asserted that the conditions are the same in practically overy large establishment. Is it supriaing that

ihe Americans arc more wrought up by these revelations than by any other scandal of recent years? J\iiirope, of course ,is , deeply interested in the matter on acI count of the enormous quantities of food I it receives from this country.