Despite the fact that it might be distasteful to a few fastidious persons, a trip through the London Produce and Cold Storage Company's plant would be decidedly interesting and instructive. Such a visit at this time (1915) makes one's thoughts turn to the battlefields of Europe and involuntarily a mental comparison of the scenes there with the scene in the killing room of the packing house springs before us, and, as a big, fat porker swinging on high amid the shower of his own blood squeals out his death song to the accompaniment of the terrified and defiant squeals of his imprisoned comrades soon to meet their fate, one forgets one's surroundings and imagines oneself standing waist-deep in the bloody current of the Marne, while all about struggle comrades, panic-stricken by the horrible din and the sickening odor of warm blood.
Enough! The reader will believe it's all fiction unless the chronicler gets down to the facts. The actual operations of a packing house are few, yet they are of interest to those whose walks of life do not bring them into close contact with such a business. Perhaps a detailed account of a swine's transmigration from "hog" to "pork" will be too sordid for some, yet for the instruction of the uninitiated it is here given.
Starting in the stock pens, where the hogs are lodged pending the call from the killing room, they are driven in small bunches into a basement pen and then, two or three at a time, up an inclined runway to the killing room. Here as needed they are captured, one at a time, by one who, for want of a better name, might be called the "matadore," who fastens one end of a chain about a hind leg of an animal, and attaches the other end of the chain, to a rope on a windlass. Kicking and squealing at this indignity, the hog is raised, head down several feet above the floor. Then the "matadore," armed with a gleaming, sharp knife, searches out a vein in the animal's neck and, with a practiced thrust, opens it and steps quickly out of range of the blood, which pours in a crimson stream on to the floor.
When the hog has been bled he is hoisted to a table at one end of a steaming vat of lye water, the chain is unfastened and the carcass immersed for several moments. The hot lye softens the hair, and hoofs, and a moment later the animal is lifted to the cleaning table, where practiced hands soon strip him of his hair and hoofs, leaving his hide smooth and clean. He is again hoisted by his hind legs and suspended on an overhead trolley, which conveys him to the butcher, who with neatness and dispatch relieves him of his entrails. At this point the United States government steps in and quietly and thoroughly inspects the animal for all signs of disease. The head glands, bronchial glands and mesenterics are inspected for tuberculosis and the body carefully gone over for signs of kidney worms and cholera symptoms. The successful contestants for the pork prize are next sent to the chill-room, where they are left at a temperature of from twenty-eight to thirty degrees for thirty-six hours. Then they are placed in the refrigerator cars for shipment to the East.
MEASURES AGAINST INFECTIONS
It is stated that about twenty-five per cent of all hogs coming under government inspection in the United States are in some degree infected with tuberculosis. This statement, however, need cause no widespread alarm among pork eaters, for, so thorough is the government inspection that no infected meat ever reaches the consumer. There are various degrees of tubercular infection and some forms of the disease are not at all dangerous. For instance, if a form of tuberculosis is found in the head the body glands are at once carefully looked over. If no evidences of the disease are found there the head is removed and the body passed on, for the slight infection of the head is in no wise dangerous. If, however, the least symptom shows in the body glands, the entire carcass goes to the "tank."
This tank is a huge metal cylinder which holds the intestines of a two-days kill and the bodies of all rejected animals. Here also is placed the blood of all hogs that are killed. This refuse is left in the tank for six hours under a steam pressure of one hundred pounds, which leaves the entire mass a bone-dry powder. So powerful is this steam compression that bone left in it for six hours comes out mere dust. No germ can live in the tank for six hours. The product of this activity is known as tankage and forms one of the best known hog feeds. Traffic in tankage is profitable, for it sells at an average of forty dollars a ton.
The London Produce Company also deals in butter and eggs, and at times makes a killing of several hundred chickens for Eastern markets. Spring lambs and calves are delicacies which they permit themselves to handle occasionally.
Such are the cold storage operations now going on. It is impossible to give the "local color" which forms such an important part in this business, for odors and sounds do not lend themselves easily to printed description. While speaking of the odor it might be well to mention that the greater part of the odor so objectionable in the vicinity of a packing house has been removed by the London company through the use of a deodorizer. The steam used in the compressing tank is passed through water, which removes most of the odor. The remainder is forced into the chimney of the steam furnace and is burned.
Working at capacity speed, the London plant can kill about one hundred and seventy-flve hogs a day. The daily yield of lard is about seven hundred and fifty pounds. All the dressed pork is shipped to New England and is delivered as practically fresh meat, the journey occupying but three days from London.
The building which houses this fiourishing company is one hundred and seventy five by thirty-four feet, inside measurement, with a smokehouse twenty-four by twenty feet, and was built in 1909, when the company was organized. The plant is near the Pennsylvania railroad, from which a seven-hundred-foot spur has just been laid to the doors of the building, which greatly facilitates loading and shipping.
The ofiicers of the company are: Xerxes Farrar, president; P. A. Lanigan, vice president and general manager; Thomas J. Lanigan, secretary; W. E. Farrar, treasurer. Dr. M. R. Jollie, of the Columbus station, is the federal inspector now located at the plant.