Meat Processing

History

Commercial meat processing, commonly called meatpacking, began in the American colonies in the late 1600s when hogs were bought, then slaughtered, and packed for the West Indies trade. Until the invention of mechanical refrigeration, [Page 946]most meatpacking took place in winter. Pork was cured, salted, and “packed” into large barrels known as hogsheads. Beef did not preserve well, so cattle were slaughtered as needed for fresh meat. In the 18th century, every American city had its own slaughterhouses, but in 1818, the first commercial pork packing plant was built in Cincinnati, Ohio. Chicago’s first packinghouse was built in 1827. Situated near ready supplies of cattle, hogs, and sheep, and linked to the eastern seaboard by the Great Lakes, Erie Canal, and later railroads, Chicago soon became the center of meatpacking in the United States.

In the second half of the 19th century, meatpacking emerged as a national industry dominated by a handful of giant companies. The invention of the refrigerated rail car in 1879 and the expansion of railroads allowed companies to ship carcasses instead of animals, which lowered costs and increased profits. Refrigeration and railroads transformed meatpacking into an industry that shipped beef and pork nationwide and year-round. The industry expanded from its base in Chicago to other major cities in the Midwest and west, including Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Worth, Texas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Denver, Colorado. Five companies—Armour, Cudahy, Morris, Swift, and Wilson—formed the Beef Trust, which controlled prices, wages, and labor conditions. In 1916, the Big Five, as these companies were often called, killed 90% of the cattle and 80% of the hogs in the major meatpacking cities of the United States.

Factory assembly lines are credited to Henry Ford, who reputedly got the idea from Chicago packinghouses. “Disassembly” lines, which turn live animals into meat, first appeared in Cincinnati’s pork packinghouses in the 1830s and were refined in Chicago’s slaughterhouses. Until the late 19th century, slaughterhouses employed skilled butchers to kill, skin, eviscerate, and dismember animals. They were paid by the head and worked at their own pace. But if killing and butchering animals could be reduced to discrete tasks, each assigned to a different worker, managers could speed production, reduce labor costs, and increase profits.

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