On That Date, No. 8

“Iowa Beef Packers, Inc. [IBP], disclosed plans to built an air-conditioned, indoor cattle-feeding facility capable of turning out 50,000 to 100,000 animals a year.

“The Denison, Iowa, packer will invest about $5 million in the unusual operation, [an IPB vice president said]. To be located near Irvington, Iowa, the 1.5 million-square-foot facility will be the nation’s largest indoor cattle-feeding operation . . . Smaller indoor operations are run by many Midwest farmers.

“Cattle will be housed in a series of pre-stressed concrete buildings that will be air conditioned to maintain ideal temperatures for weight gain, the company said. The building will contain slatted floors over 8-foot pits that will collect manure, which will probably be sold to farmers for fertilizer.

“Feeding will be controlled by computer, Iowa Beef said. Ration recipes will be punched on computer cards, and the feed will be weighed and mixed automatically. An on-site feed mill will formulate the feed ration.”

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“Large Indoor Facility to Feed Cattle Slated By Beef-Packing Firm,” Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1965, p. 32.

On That Date, No. 7

“It has been said that the vitality of [dying] animals unites with the atmosphere, and is absorbed by those people who are immediately about the body at the time of death. This vitality is known to exist in the blood, and it is not surprising then that there are persons who daily visit the abattoirs to catch the hot blood of the bullock and, drinking it, nourish and sustain their own exhausted vitality.

“Such is actually the case, and the abattoir at the foot of Thirty-Fourth street . . . is the recipient of the most patronage of numbers among its patients or customers the greatest variety of diseases. The blood is drank principally for consumption [now tuberculosis] and debility, and for diseases and complaints of a kindred nature.

“A visit to the slaughter-house . . . was made yesterday by the writer[, who asked an employee]: “Do people come here to drink blood?”

“Lord bless you, yes; lots of them . . . .”

“Has it an unpleasant taste?”

“O no; it tastes something like warm milk,” and here the man made a motion as if to get some, which the writer hastily checked.

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“The Blood-Cure,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 30, 1877, p. 8A; originally published in the New York Herald.

On That Date, No. 6

“Animal rights activists told farm organization representatives at a Chicago conference that they kind of hog production they will accept involves a pasture system, for farrowing as well as growing and finishing.

[Conference] speakers make it clear that the animal rights movement considers confinement production of hogs ‘abuse and torment.’ They were particularly critical of stalls and crates for sows during gestation and farrowing and the films they showed indicated pasture production is the only system they consider acceptable.

“While speakers insisted that vegetarianism is not necessarily a part of the animals rights movement, many of the speakers were vegetarians; much of the literature distributed to registrants extolled the merits of a vegetarian diet; and the lunch entree was a cheese sandwich.”

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“Only Pigs on Pastured Condoned by Welfarists,” National Hog Farmer 26, no. 3 (March 15, 1981): 20.

On That Date, No. 5

“In Georgia there is a man who hatches, feeds, raises, kills, plucks, freezes, and sells 10 million chickens a year. He also owns the hens that lay the eggs that hatch into the broiler chicks; and he makes the pies that contain the chicken meat that isn’t sold as frozen broiler. His name is Jesse Jewell, and his operation is just about the perfect example of what may be the agriculture of the future.

“The revolutionary economic organization that propelled Jewell from a small-town feed dealer to the largest integrated producer of broilers in the country is called vertical integration. Some hail it as a long needed reorganization of farm economics that will bring greater efficiency to agriculture; others see it as the slimy tentacles of a tyranny that is changing the American farmer into an employee -- a piece rate worker.

“Nearly everyone who has studied the dynamic growth of integration agrees that as this system, which now dominates the broiler industry, is applied to hogs and cattle and other farm enterprises it is bringing about the greatest change in American agriculture in a generation.”

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Grant Cannon, “Vertical Integration,” Farm Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 56.

On That Date, No. 4

“We are no longer a nation of farmers living in sight of our food supply,” a writer reminded the readers of one national magazine. “The journey between us and [our] food supply, once only as long as from our own field and garden to our back door, has been lengthening year by year.” _____________

Mary Hinman Abel, “Safe Foods and How to Get Them,” Delineator 66 (September 1905): 394, 396.

On That Date, No. 3

"The universal march toward convenience and cheapness, even though it . . . means loss in quality, generally brings a higher average of goodness. . . . [Consider] the meat supply --- never better than at the present time. Considering the relation of the [small] supply of cattle to the [high] demand for fresh meats[,] the cost is phenomenally low. "And why? Because the great slaughter-houses have eliminated waste. Not a hair is lost, not a bone, nor an ounce of blood, hide, hoof or horns, for all are given a commercial value, to secure which the consumers . . . of the entire world have been sought and won.

"Keep in mind when inclined to complain of the cost of meat that every year there are more millions to be fed and fewer acres for grazing cattle. The day of low cost meat has passed, and we have to thank the great beef barons for keeping down cost by means of steam, machinery, improved methods, distribution in refrigerator cars and scientific methods of handling."

--- F. N. Barrett, "The Improving Food Supply," Good Housekeeping 53, no. 4 (October 1911): 477, 478.