Meat-packing industry

The meat-packing industry (also spelled meatpacking industry or meat packing industry) handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of meat from animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock. Poultry is generally not included. This greater part of the entire meat industry is primarily focused on producing meat for human consumption, but it also yields a variety of by-products including hides, dried blood, protein meals such as meat & bone meal, and, through the process of rendering, fats (such as tallow).

In the United States and some other countries, the facility where the meat packing is done is called a slaughterhouse, packinghouse or a meat-packing plant; in New Zealand, where most of the products are exported, it is called a freezing works. An abattoir is a place where animals are slaughtered for food.

The meat-packing industry grew with the construction of railroads and methods of refrigeration for meat preservation. Railroads made possible the transport of stock to central points for processing, and the transport of products.

Before the American Civil War, the meat industry was localized, with farmers providing beef and hogs for nearby butchers to serve the local market. Large Army contracts during the Civil War attracted entrepreneurs with a vision for building much larger markets. The 1865–1873 era provided five factors that expanded the industry to a national scale:

In Milwaukee, Philip Armour, an ambitious entrepreneur from New York who made his fortune in Army contracts during the war, partnered with Jacob Plankinton to build a highly efficient stockyard that serviced the upper Midwest. Chicago built the famous Union Stockyards in 1865 on 345 swampy acres to the south of downtown. Armour opened the Chicago plant, as did Nelson Morris, another wartime contractor. Cincinnati and Buffalo, both with good water and rail service, also opened stockyards. Perhaps the most energetic entrepreneur was Gustavus Franklin Swift, the Yankee who operated out of Boston and moved to Chicago in 1875, specializing in long distance refrigerated meat shipments to eastern cities.

A practical refrigerated (ice-cooled) rail car was introduced in 1881. This made it possible to ship cattle and hog carcasses, which weighed only 40% as much as live animals; the entire national market, served by the railroads, was opened up, as well as transatlantic markets using refrigerated ships. Swift developed an integrated network of cattle procurement, slaughtering, meat-packing, and shipping meat to market. Up to that time, cattle were driven great distances to railroad shipping points, causing the cattle to lose considerable weight. Swift developed a large business, which grew in size with the entry of several competitors. The Bureau of Corporations, predecessor of the Federal Trade Commission investigated the country's meatpackers for anti-competitive practices in the first decade of the 1900s.

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of legislation that led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Another such act passed the same year was the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The new laws helped the large packers, and hurt small operations that lacked economy of scale or quality controls.

Historian William Cronon concludes: