{"id":8358,"date":"2014-12-08T00:14:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T05:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8358"},"modified":"2014-12-08T00:14:37","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T05:14:37","slug":"rogue-abattoirs-and-the-plight-of-phillys-meat-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2014\/12\/rogue-abattoirs-and-the-plight-of-phillys-meat-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Rogue Abattoirs and the Plight of Philly’s Meat Men"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Interior<\/a>
Interior of Slaughterhouse (Abattoir), 5319 Westminster Avenue, Dr. Schreiber, Meat Inspector. January 16, 1909 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf we do not want to eat the stuff ourselves,\u201d declared veterinarian Charles Allen Cary<\/a> in 1887, \u201cwe had better bury or burn it.\u201d Experts of the American Veterinary Association called for more inspections of dairies and slaughterhouses to reduce the amount of tubercular meat and milk reaching consumers.<\/p>\n

At the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, tuberculosis still remained a leading cause of death in the United States. Approximately 10 percent of the cases resulted from exposure to infected cattle or cattle products. More distressing was the fact that cattle caused 25 percent of the childhood cases of tuberculosis. More distressing still<\/em> was the fact that these rates were even higher in cities.<\/p>\n

It seemed a losing battle to Franklin K. Lowry, Philadelphia’s official \u201cMeat Detective.\u201d In 1904, Lowry\u2019s office reported<\/a> nearly 6,400 visits to slaughterhouses and about 700 to the city\u2019s stores and markets. His team inspected more than 205,000 cattle and calves. Nearly all of the infected animals they found and destroyed showed signs of tuberculosis.<\/p>\n

Lowry augmented his team with a graduate of Penn Veterinary School, Dr. Albert Fricke Schreiber. Chief Meat Inspector Schreiber ramped up the search for violators and condemned more meat, sending it to M. L. Shoemaker\u2019s Fertilizing Plant<\/a> at the foot of Venango Street. Even so, with few arrests and even fewer convictions, Philadelphia\u2019s cattle drivers and meat packers conducted business as usual\u2014and new cases of tuberculosis went unabated.<\/p>\n

Schreiber and his inspectors visited nearly 44,000 butchers, slaughterhouses (also known as abattoirs), storage houses and markets in 1909. He reported<\/a> dropping in \u201cquite unexpectedly, late at night, on two small downtown abattoirs\u201d and finding \u201ca tubercular beef carcass, from which the affected tissues had been carefully, if not deftly, trimmed out\u201d and \u201cbeing dressed for market.\u201d A good day\u2019s work for the meat inspectors, but an unusually successful one. With a \u201csmall and inadequate force,\u201d Schreiber had little chance of keeping up with the violations among the city\u2019s 150 or so small abattoirs spread far and wide, about half of which had been cited for unsanitary conditions. Nearly 375,000 pounds of meat was condemned and destroyed in 1909 alone. But it resulted in only a single fine; a single guilty plea. Business as usual.<\/p>\n

\"5319<\/a>
Exterior, Slaughterhouse (Abattoir), 5319 Westminster Avenue for Dr. Shreiber, Meat Inspector. January 16, 1909. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Philadelphia to have \u201csomething remotely related to intelligent supervision,\u201d Schreiber promoted New York\u2019s solution: confining its abattoirs to a single section of the city. He pleaded that his force of six inspectors (only two of whom were veterinarians) be expanded to twelve, including four veterinarians, a team \u201capproximating the scope of the problem with which we have had to deal.\u201d Then, and only then, could Schreiber hope to seriously address the tuberculosis problem, not to mention citing many other infractions, including \u201cthe handing of meat outside in the open air, uncovered and exposed to street dust, refuse and insects.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1910<\/a>, attrition caused by low pay reduced Schreiber\u2019s team to three, \u201ca force obviously and absurdly inadequate\u201d if the city was \u201cto prevent the killing of tuberculous cattle, measled hogs and immature calves,\u201d and provide anything like \u201csystematic surveillance\u201d of the city\u2019s stores and markets.<\/p>\n

The case for more staff had merit on several fronts. In 1910, Philadelphia\u2019s population stood at just over 1.5 million (about the same it is 100 years later) and the city was still growing and diversifying. The meat inspectors needed to not only catch up, they needed to keep up with new challenges.<\/p>\n

When the city\u2019s meat inspection unit did expand to eight (not the requested twelve) in 1911<\/a>, Schreiber still<\/i> felt overwhelmed. Now, in addition to the ongoing problem of killer cattle, he wanted his inspectors hoped to turn their attention to the city\u2019s \u201c\u2019pest\u2019 sections,\u201d to address \u201c\u2019persistent offenders,\u2019\u201d that \u201cclass of dealers, who keep dirty shops in congested localities overrun with street stands, barrow venders, and other features of like character peculiar to the sections of the city inhabited by people of foreign birth.\u201d These newcomers, \u201cvendors of the curbstone and push cart variety\u2026bring in partially decomposed rabbits, heated and unwholesome poultry, and other products.\u201d Schreiber found them \u201cpitifully poor, woefully ignorant of the plainest rudiments of sanitation, and not infrequently belligerently obstinate in their opposition to hygienic regulations.\u201d He found their shops \u201cbadly kept, lacking in equipment, \u2026without order or intelligent direction, and sometimes [a] jumble two or more lines of trade obviously not compatible under one roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could Philadelphia officials address the issue of tuberculosis and also<\/i> mitigate the new and growing health problems caused by \u201clong rows of curbstone and sidewalk vendors, extending several blocks on some of our streets\u201d with vendors who \u201clitter the roadways, gutters and sidewalks with refuse; and allow street dirt to be \u201cblown over and upon exposed meats, poultry and fish\u201d? In a city evolving daily with a new, growing immigrant population and a persistent, unsolved problem of tuberculosis in cattle, the small number of city meat men had no choice but to take it as they saw it\u2014one day at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf we do not want to eat the stuff ourselves,\u201d declared veterinarian Charles Allen Cary in 1887, \u201cwe had better bury or burn it.\u201d Experts of the American Veterinary Association called for more inspections of dairies and slaughterhouses to reduce the amount of tubercular meat and milk reaching consumers. At the turn of the 20th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}