Editing Slaughterhouse (section)

==History==
[[Image:Lovis Corinth Im Schlachthaus.jpg|thumb|In the slaughterhouse, [[Lovis Corinth]], 1893]]
Until modern times, the slaughter of animals generally took place in a haphazard and unregulated manner in diverse places. Early maps of London show numerous [[Meat packing industry|stockyards]] in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air or under cover such as [[wet markets]]. A term for such open-air slaughterhouses was ''shambles'', and there are streets named "[[The Shambles]]" in some English and Irish towns (e.g., [[Worcester, England|Worcester]], [[York]], [[Bandon, County Cork|Bandon]]) which got their name from having been the site on which butchers killed and prepared animals for consumption. [[Fishamble Street]], Dublin, was formerly a ''fish-shambles''. Sheffield had 183 slaughterhouses in 1910, and it was estimated that there were 20,000 in England and Wales.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=36 }}</ref>

===Reform movement===
The slaughterhouse emerged as a coherent institution in the 19th century.<ref name="humanecologyreview">{{cite journal|url=http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her171/Fitzgerald.pdf|title=A Social History of the Slaughterhouse|journal=Human Ecology Review}}</ref> A combination of health and social concerns, exacerbated by the rapid [[urbanisation]] experienced during the [[Industrial Revolution]], led [[social reform]]ers to call for the isolation, sequester and regulation of animal slaughter. As well as the concerns raised regarding hygiene and disease, there were also criticisms of the practice on the grounds that the effect that killing had, both on the butchers and the observers, "educate[d] the men in the practice of violence and cruelty, so that they seem to have no restraint on the use of it."<ref name="HER">{{cite journal |last1=Fitzgerald |first1=Amy |title=A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary Implications |journal=Human Ecology Review |date=2010 |volume=17 |issue=1 |page=60 |jstor=24707515 }}</ref> An additional motivation for eliminating private slaughter was to impose a careful system of regulation for the "morally dangerous" task of putting animals to death.{{citation needed|date=July 2014}}

[[Image:Smithfield Last day of Old Smithfield ILN 1855.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Smithfield, London|Smithfield Market]] in 1855, before it was reconstructed]]
As a result of this tension, meat markets within the city were closed and abattoirs built outside city limits. An early framework for the establishment of public slaughterhouses was put in place in Paris in 1810, under the reign of the [[Emperor Napoleon]]. Five areas were set aside on the outskirts of the city and the feudal privileges of the [[guild]]s were curtailed.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6hdZ2BXP2GEC|title=Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse|author=Paula Young Lee|year=2008|publisher=UPNE|page=26|isbn=978-1584656982}}</ref>

As the meat requirements of the growing number of residents in London steadily expanded,
the meat markets both within the city and beyond attracted increasing levels of public disapproval. Meat had been traded at [[Smithfield, London|Smithfield Market]] as early as the 10th century. By 1726, it was regarded as "without question, the greatest in the world", by [[Daniel Defoe]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Defoe|first=Daniel|author-link=Daniel Defoe|title=A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain|year=1726|page=342|publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-04980-0|url=https://archive.org/details/natureofpolitics0000mast/page/342|url-access=registration}}</ref> By the middle of the 19th century, in the course of a single year 220,000 head of cattle and 1,500,000 sheep would be "violently forced into an area of five acres, in the very heart of London, through its narrowest and most crowded thoroughfares".<ref name="fm" />

[[Image:Fish market smithfield.jpg|thumb|Part of the original construction of the [[Smithfield, London|Smithfield Market]] in 1868]]
By the early 19th century, pamphlets were being circulated arguing in favor of the removal of the livestock market and its relocation outside of the city due to the extremely low hygienic conditions<ref name="dodd">{{cite book|last=Dodd|first=George|author-link=George Dodd (19th century writer)|title=The Food of London: A Sketch of the Chief Varieties, Sources of Supply, Probable Quantities, Modes of Arrival, Processes of Manufacture, Suspected Adulteration, and Machinery of Distribution, of the Food for a Community of Two Millions and a Half|year=1856|publisher=Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans|page=[https://archive.org/details/foodlondonasket00doddgoog/page/n244 228]|url=https://archive.org/details/foodlondonasket00doddgoog}}</ref> as well as the brutal treatment of the cattle.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kean|first=Hilda| author-link = Hilda Kean |title=Animal rights: political and social change in Britain since 1800|publisher=Reaktion Books|year=1998|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eP9PAAAAIAAJ|page=59|chapter='Wild' domestic animals and the Smithfield Market|isbn=978-1-86189-014-6}}</ref> In 1843, the ''Farmer's Magazine'' published a petition signed by bankers, salesmen, aldermen, butchers and local residents against the expansion of the livestock market.<ref name="fm">{{cite book|title=The Farmer's Magazine|publisher=Rogerson and Tuxford, 1849|location=London|year=1849|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eP9PAAAAIAAJ|page=142}}</ref> The [[Town Police Clauses Act 1847]] created a licensing and registration system, though few slaughter houses were closed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=36 }}</ref>

An [[Act of Parliament]] was eventually passed in 1852. Under its provisions, a new cattle-market was constructed in Copenhagen Fields, [[Islington]]. The new [[Metropolitan Cattle Market]] was also opened in 1855, and West Smithfield was left as waste ground for about a decade, until the construction of the new market began in the 1860s under the authority of the 1860 Metropolitan Meat and Poultry Market Act.<ref>{{cite book|last=Thornbury | first = Walter  | author-link = George Walter Thornbury  | chapter=The Metropolitan Meat-Market| title = Old and New London: Volume 2| pages = 491–96|year=1878|chapter-url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45117|access-date= 2008-02-01}}</ref> The market was designed by [[architect]] Sir [[Horace Jones (architect)|Horace Jones]] and was completed in 1868.

A [[cut and cover]] railway tunnel was constructed beneath the market to create a triangular junction with the railway between [[Blackfriars railway station|Blackfriars]] and [[London King's Cross railway station|King's Cross]].<ref>[http://www.londonrailways.net/snowhill.htm ''Snowhill''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130605193008/http://www.londonrailways.net/snowhill.htm |date=2013-06-05 }} (London Railways) accessed 13 April 2009</ref> This allowed animals to be transported into the slaughterhouse by train and the subsequent transfer of animal carcasses to the Cold Store building, or direct to the meat market via lifts.

At the same time, the first large and centralized slaughterhouse in Paris was constructed in 1867 under the orders of [[Napoleon III]] at the [[Parc de la Villette]] and heavily influenced the subsequent development of the institution throughout Europe.

===Regulation and expansion===
[[File:Richardson's_abattoir.jpg|thumb|right|Blueprint for a mechanized public abattoir, designed by slaughterhouse reformer [[Benjamin Ward Richardson]]]]
These slaughterhouses were regulated by law to ensure good standards of hygiene, the prevention of the spread of disease and the minimization of needless animal cruelty. The slaughterhouse had to be equipped with a specialized water supply system to effectively clean the operating area of blood and offal. Veterinary scientists, notably [[George Fleming (veterinarian)|George Fleming]] and John Gamgee, campaigned for stringent levels of inspection to ensure that [[epizootics]] such as [[rinderpest]] (a devastating outbreak of the disease covered all of Britain in 1865) would not be able to spread. By 1874, three meat inspectors were appointed for the London area, and the [[Public Health Act 1875]] required local authorities to provide central slaughterhouses (they were only given powers to close unsanitary slaughterhouses in 1890).<ref>{{cite journal|title=The vital city: public analysis, dairies and slaughterhouses in nineteenth-century|author=Chris Otter|journal=Cultural Geographies|year=2006|url=http://www.geog.canterbury.ac.nz/powerpoints/Otter%20%282006%29.pdf}}</ref> Yet the appointment of slaughterhouse inspectors and the establishment of centralised abattoirs took place much earlier in the British colonies, such as the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria, and in Scotland where 80% of cattle were slaughtered in public abattoirs by 1930.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=38 }}</ref> In Victoria the [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/num_act/maa1850n17240.pdf ''Melbourne Abattoirs Act 1850'' (NSW)] "confined the slaughtering of animals to prescribed public abattoirs, while at the same time prohibiting the killing of sheep, lamb, pigs or goats at any other place within the city limits".<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Trabsky|first1=Marc|title=Institutionalising the Public Abattoir in Nineteenth Century Colonial Society|journal=Australian Feminist Law Journal|year=2014|volume=40|issue=2|page=180|doi=10.1080/13200968.2014.981357|s2cid=142813253}}</ref> Animals were shipped alive to British ports from Ireland, from Europe and from the colonies and slaughtered in large abattoirs at the ports. Conditions were often very poor.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=42 }}</ref>

Attempts were also made throughout the British Empire to reform the practice of slaughter itself, as the methods used came under increasing criticism for causing undue pain to the animals. The eminent physician, [[Benjamin Ward Richardson]], spent many years in developing more humane methods of slaughter. He brought into use no fewer than fourteen possible anesthetics for use in the slaughterhouse and even experimented with the use of electric current at the [[Royal Polytechnic Institution]].<ref>{{DNBSupp|wstitle=Richardson, Benjamin Ward|first=D'Arcy|last= Power}}</ref> As early as 1853, he designed a lethal chamber that would gas animals to death relatively painlessly{{Citation needed|date=November 2023|reason=What evidence is there of relative painlessness?}}, and he founded the Model Abattoir Society in 1882 to investigate and campaign for humane methods of slaughter.

The invention of [[refrigeration]] and the expansion of transportation networks by sea and rail allowed for the safe exportation of meat around the world. Additionally, meat-packing millionaire [[Philip Danforth Armour]]'s invention of the "disassembly line" greatly increased the productivity and profit margin of the [[meat packing industry]]: "according to some, animal slaughtering became the first [[mass-production]] industry in the United States." This expansion has been accompanied by increased concern about the physical and mental conditions of the workers along with controversy over the ethical and environmental implications of slaughtering animals for meat.<ref name="humanecologyreview"/>

The Edinburgh abattoir, which was built in 1910, had well lit laboratories, hot and cold water, gas, microscopes and equipment for cultivating organisms. The English 1924 Public Health (Meat) Regulations required notification of slaughter to enable inspection of carcasses and enabled inspected carcasses to be marked.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=119-20 }}</ref>

The development of slaughterhouses was linked with industrial expansion of by-products. By 1932 the British by-product industry was worth about £97 million a year, employing 310,000 people. The Aberdeen slaughterhouse sent hooves to Lancashire to make glue, intestines to Glasgow for sausages and hides to the Midland tanneries.
In January 1940 the British government took over the 16,000 slaughterhouses and by 1942 there were only 779.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Otter |first1=Chris |title=Diet for a large planet |date=2020 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=US |isbn=978-0-226-69710-9 |page=41, 160 }}</ref>