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In economics, the meat industry is a fusion of primary (agriculture) and secondary (industry) activity and hard to characterize strictly in terms of either one alone. The greater part of the meat industry is the meat packing industry – the segment that handles the slaughtering , processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as ...
The companies supplying this meat were known as the "Big Four" of meatpacking. The companies that made up the "Big Four" were Armour, Swift, Wilson, and Cudahy. Butchers at "Big Four" stockyard plants in Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha formed the backbone of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AMCBW). [1]
The William Davies Company facilities in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, circa 1920. This facility was then the third largest hog-packing plant in North America. 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.
The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 (7 U.S.C. §§ 181-229b; P&S Act) regulates meatpacking, livestock dealers, market agencies, live poultry dealers, and swine contractors to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices, giving undue preferences, apportioning supply, manipulating prices, or creating a monopoly.
Union Stock Yards, Chicago, 1947. The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, was the meatpacking district in Chicago for more than a century, starting in 1865. The district was formed by a group of railroad companies that acquired marshland and turned it into a vast centralized processing area.
A fierce rival of Chicago's Union Stock Yards, the Omaha Union Stockyards were third in the United States for production by 1890. [2] In 1947 they were second to Chicago in the world. Omaha overtook Chicago as the nation's largest livestock market and meat packing industry center in 1955, a title which it held onto until 1971. [3]
In 1904, laborers consumed 39 kilograms (87 lb) a year while aristocrats ate 140 kilograms (300 lb). There were some 43,000 butcher's shops in Britain in 1910, with "possibly more money invested in the meat industry than in any other British business" except finance. [51] The US was a meat importing country by 1926. [51]
Within the meat production industry, "meatpacking" is defined as "all manufacturing of meat products including the processing of animals." [1] This includes production of beef, pork, poultry, and fish. [1] The scope of the American meat production industry is large; it slaughters and processes over 10 billion animals per year. [4]