Some Country Slaughter-Houses
In the February number of the Teachers' Sanitary Bulletin, published by the State Board of Health of Michigan, we find the following report of visits to the slaughter-houses from which comes the local meat supply for the city of Kalamazoo. The writer who had the courage to deal with a local health question in this forcible way is Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, of Kalamazoo. After stating the circumstances which led up to the tour of inspection, the writer says:— “Where to begin? Where did our meat come from, anyway? I had long had a vague idea that here was a matter which needed looking into. But there are so many things that need looking into, and this one so particularly uninviting! My thoughts reverted to certain old, dilapidated structures standing paintless and forlorn upon the edge of sluggish streams. On country drives of summer evenings who has not been made aware of these establishments, so unobtrusive to the sight, so insistent upon the olfactories, where is carried on a gruesome business which our human constitution seems to require, but which we wish to think as little as possible about? Nobody but small boys, I supposed, ever had the courage—or the stomach—to peer into these grizzly precincts; and now it seemed necessary that I should visit them myself. On March 21 of last spring, having secured information of the number and the exact location of these slaughter-houses which encircle the city of Kalamazoo, I proceeded immediately upon a tour of inspection, which covered six of the seven places in a day and a half, before any of the proprietors got wind of our intentions. The seventh place we also visited, but found it closed and locked, so that a second visit was necessary, after the proprietor had learned of our previous attempt. “I was accompanied on these visits by two men and two women, one the wife of our mayor at that time, Judge Alfred J. Mills; the other the wife of a former mayor, the Hon. Otto Ihling. “We did not start upon our rounds ‘expecting to find a parlor,’ as the proprietor of one of these places afterward sneeringly remarked to a newspaper reporter. We did start out pledged to make no comments and to show no surprise at anything we might witness; and we were kept speechless, not so much by resolve, as by the unspeakableness of the state of things which everywhere was revealed to us. “Since this state of things proved to be news to our mayor and city council (which, ex-officio, constitute our local board of health) as well; since I never found any one who professed to be aware of the condition of things, and since, from a large correspondence following with health officers and other officials, State and national, all over the country, I am persuaded that the condition of things about Kalamazoo is not exceptional, but, rather, typical,—I will attempt briefly to describe to you what I found; and I trust you will believe that this is no hysterical version, but a simple and restrained account of facts. “These seven slaughter-houses are all situated within one mile of the city limits of Kalamazoo, upon or near frequented roads. Not one of the seven buildings or premises has anything whatever in point of construction, arrangement, or care, to redeem it from utter condemnation. Entirely without provision for drainage of either house or ground, the earth beneath and around is soaked with the rotted blood and filth of many years. The pens and sheds containing the animals to be slaughtered are, for the most part, apparently bottomless pits of mud and filth, into which the half-devoured, uncooked offal is trampled, while squealing pigs carry on, literally, an intestine warfare; presenting, when it is remembered that these same swine are destined shortly to be eaten by ourselves, a sight as revolting as human imagination could picture. In one pen we saw trampled into the mud the decomposing body of a very small calf, quite too young, I think, to have been born, and inevitably suggesting the previous slaughter of a pregnant animal. “As to the buildings themselves, they are nearly all old, abandoned barns or sheds, unpainted, weather-beaten, warped, decaying; and they are, with one exception, filthy to an unspeakable and an unimaginable degree. Dense black cobwebs drape the open lofts and upper walls; but when one gets down to within six or seven feet of the floor, nothing less than a hoe and plane long and conscientiously applied could remove from walls, floors, posts, and shelves the caked blood, grime, grease, hair, mold, and other quite unmentionable filth which covers every inch of every exposed surface, and which, in many large areas, was actually more than an inch thick. The cooling rooms—foul-smelling as the rest—showed somewhat less of blood and chunks of putrid flesh on the walls, but more of green mold and slime. In none of these places did we find evidence of even the floors having been washed with even cold water. The place last visited—the one, by the way, which is reputed to furnish as many carcasses as all the rest together—was the only one in which they claimed to have a hose or any means of flushing floors,—13a broom and pail being the extent of what cleansing paraphernalia apparent in the others. As this floor gave no evidence of ever being flushed, I questioned particularly, only to receive repeated assurance that they did use a hose. After leaving the building, I mustered courage of my convictions to return and say: ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like very much to see that hose.’ And the man replied, after some hesitation, that it was ‘over at the house.’ I will say, however, to be just, that a disinterested person has since assured me of having seen a hose on the floor of that place; but he more than doubted its habitual use. “In some of the places, the floor appeared to have been roughly scraped, as with a hoe; in others, dirt could have been shoveled out, on Saturday afternoon, when the last slaughtering had been done Friday; and in one place the animal had evidently been stabled over night, which now lay deprived of its skin, on that filthy floor. “Rats, those fell distributors of slaughter-house disease to neighboring farms, were in evidence everywhere. I regret now that I did not procure some of them for examination for the presence of trichinae. But at the time of my visit I had omitted the appointment of an official rat catcher, and after my objection to the condition of things became public, I naturally could find no opportunity for making rat reprisals against the enemy. “As to the manner of slaughtering and dressing animals, it is no wise better than one would infer from the surroundings. In the last place visited,—the largest one, which kept the hose over at the house,—the beeves awaiting slaughter are confined in a filthy shed, only separated from the slaughter-room by one thickness of ill-fitting boards, through which it is to be presumed they witness, trembling, the fate of those which precede them. The man in charge told me that they had to be dragged in by the head, because ‘they seem to be afraid.’ Surely, here is something which concerns the humane society. “After knocking in the head and bleeding (which painful spectacle we avoided in every place visited), the animals were skinned by a big, burly, sweaty negro, who ever and anon wiped the grease from his knife on the manure-covered flanks of the cow, and when he was not using his knife, held it by the blade in his mouth. After skinning, the viscera were removed by a white man, who threw parts of them, including the liver and heart, on the floor, and slapped the delicate sweetbreads onto a rusty hook against the filth-crusted wall. “By a shelf in one corner, a boy—whom we so regretted to see in this place—was cutting up the viscera, and throwing that part designed for human consumption onto the floor under the shelf, while from time to time he opened a door into the offal pen, and hurled handfuls of intestines over the heads of the hogs that stood with expectant snouts ranged at the threshold. A pail of water stood on the floor, and the white man, the boy, and the negro came from time to time to wash their hands and knives in it. When a beef had been eviscerated and hung up, before splitting, the butcher dipped a piece of an old gummy sack into this same pail of same water, and zealously, as for our approval, scrubbed dirt into the naturally clean interior of the cow. “In every place I examined the knives, saws, and cleavers. They were always found stuck into or hanging flat against the crusted walls. They were invariably filthy, with blood, grime, and hair thickly bedded about the handle. It is perhaps needless to add that the hands and clothing of the butchers were as filthy as their filthy methods and surroundings. “Now I well know that, revolting as this all is, the danger to the public health from filthy ways of butchering is hardly comparable to the dangers from meat which is itself diseased. Concerning that, however, you know a great deal more than I do; and hence I wish only to remark that, by the method which now obtains in Kalamazoo, and, as I understand, in almost all the cities and villages of our State, and in other States as well, there is nothing—not even the necessity of taking out a butcher’s license—to prevent any kind of a man from killing any kind of a beast in any kind of a place, and selling it to any local dealer who may, or may not, be aware if that animal came to the slaughter-house diseased, dying, or dead.”