Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the SlaughterhousePaula Young Lee Over the course of the nineteenth century, factory slaughterhouses replaced the hand-slaughter of livestock by individual butchers, who often performed this task in back rooms, letting blood run through streets. A wholly modern invention, the centralized municipal slaughterhouse was a political response to the public’s increasing lack of tolerance for “dirty” butchering practices, corresponding to changing norms of social hygiene and fear of meat-borne disease. The slaughterhouse, in Europe and the Americas, rationalized animal slaughter according to capitalist imperatives. What is lost and what is gained when meat becomes a commodity? What do the sites of animal slaughter reveal about our relationship to animals and nature? Essays by the best international scholars come together in this cutting-edge interdisciplinary volume to examine the cultural significance of the slaughterhouse and its impact on modernity. Contributors include: Dorothee Brantz, Kyri Claflin, Jared Day, Roger Horowitz, Lindgren Johnson, Ian MacLachlan, Christopher Otter, Dominic Pacyga, Richard Perren, Jeffrey Pilcher, and Sydney Watts. |
Contents
1 The Grande Boucherie the Right to Meat | 13 |
City of Blood 18671914 | 27 |
From Shed to Factory | 46 |
4 Animal Bodies Human Health and the Reform | 71 |
The Development of the British | 89 |
6 Humanitarian Reform Slaughter Technology | 107 |
Public and Private | 127 |
Slaughterhouse to the World | 153 |
9 The Politics of Meat Shopping in Antebellum New York City | 167 |
Reconstructing | 198 |
12 Abattoir or Packinghouse? A Bloody Industrial Dilemma | 216 |
Why Look at Slaughterhouses? | 237 |
List of Contributors | 289 |
Common terms and phrases
abattage Aberdeen AHCM American architectural authorities Berlin bestiaux blood body Boucherie Britain British building butcher stalls butchers carcasses cattle central Central-Viehhof Chicago city council city's Committee construction consumers cultural disease Edinburgh Encyclopédie established exsanguination facilities Figure France French Gamgee Garnier guild History houses humane slaughter Humanitarian hygiene Ibid important John Gamgee Journal killing La Villette labor livestock located London Marché meat industry meat inspection meat market Meat Trades Mexico City modern municipal Nationale neighborhood New-York Historical Society nineteenth century nuisance officials packinghouses Paris Parisian Peralvillo poleaxe police political private slaughterhouses production Public Abattoirs public health public markets public slaughterhouses reform regulation Rochechouart RSPCA Rudolf Virchow Sanitary Sept shechita sheep slaugh slaughter Slaughtering Animals social Society space stockyards Street stunning terhouse tion Tony Garnier trichinosis tueries University Press urban veterinary viande Villette Virchow workers Yards York City