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many of them allege who are opponents to a change in the
plan recommended for the metropolis.
Public health authorities ought not to be ignorant of the fact,
that a good interest, as well as profits may be obtained for any
capital expended upon works of this kind. There is scarcely
any town of considerable size, where a slaughtering place,
cattle-pens, a boiling-down shed, and a knacker's yard,
are not needful receptacles for the deposit of offal and refuse,
and their conversion into a saleable product, in the form
of manure. It would be a profitable undertaking, either to
the municipal authorities, or taken up by a private association.
I say this from personal inquiry into the modes of
dealing with the refuse of towns, and from reports in my
possession, to which I have had occasion to refer.*
Having denounced in rather strong language what I
conscientiously believe to be the eradicable evils of the
present cattle-killing sheds, my paper would be incomplete
if I were to omit to mention what are the
* A report from a visit to the Slaughtering, Fat-Melting, and
Refuse-llendering establishment of New York, states:—"A hog-killing
place, where 700 hogs had been killed the previous night, was
found odourless, scrupulously clean, and not a trace of blood or offal
seen. The blood is led by a simple contrivance to the cocks for removal;
it is all caught by a fertilizing company, without trouble to the slaughterers,
and they pay for it over 2000 dollars a year. Every provision is made for
the comfort of the animals, excellent ventilation, &c. The tanks of the
melting vats for condemned animals burn up offensive gases, and give
out no bad smells during the process. In a Jewish slaughter-house the
proprietor told the inspectors that the blood was sold for 6000 dollars a
year. At the Butchers, Hide, and Melting Company the cattle were in
pens as fresh and sweet as a model farm-yard—food and water in abundance.
Every member of the party seemed convinced that the profits made
through the utilization of blood were well worth having. This new and
valuable way of treating scraps and blood is, as far as we are able to learn,
a great improvement upon any method heretofore used, either in this
country or in Europe. By this new process, the success of which seems
to be proved, a similar result is reached without offensive odour, and a
fertilizing produce worth forty to fifty dollars a ton, from 'tankings,' and
also from blood, without the addition of chemicals, in the space of one
or two hours. This method will be used at the Brighton (Mass.) abattoirs,
and by means of it the blood and offal of all the animals slaughtered each
day will, in the course of the same day, be reduced to the form of a simple
and inodorous powder. If it can be shown at Brighton (Mass.), as we
believe it will soon be done, that foul odours, which have been thought to
be inseparable from slaughtering, bone-boiling, and fat-melting, are avoidable,
and that, in the final treatment of refuse animal matter, the ammoniacal
products of decomposition, instead of being wasted to pollute the
air, may be saved to enrich the earth, it will be a sanitary and economical
demonstration, whose good effects will not be limited to the (State of
Massachusetts."