A Tour Through South America

by A. S. Forrest

Every part of the animal is used; nothing is wasted. The flesh being cared for, the fat goes one way, the hides another; the offals a third and the blood a fourth. Some of the bones are boiled with the meat to make a particular kind of extract; whilst portions of the meat are boiled alone for tinning, other portions are cut up fine by machinery, and made into extract. The bones are carefully sorted and exported for the making of combs and knife handles. The horns are sold to manufacturers in Europe, who split them up, and by processes of their own turn them into such articles as combs, brush handles, boxes, etc., so closely imitating tortoise-shell that an innocent and indiscriminating public mistakes them for the genuine article. Such parts of the animals as are good for nothing else are made into manure.

It need hardly be said that the Liebig Company’s organisation has by no means overlooked the needs of the large number of work-people engaged at their factories, and the settlements both at Colon and Frey Bentos provide accommodation far superior to any to be found in any of the villages in the country-side. The houses and plots of ground allotted to the workers at Frey Bentos form quite a rural settlement, whilst Colon, a more recent and very inviting colony, is a town built upon approved modern lines. The houses, which are all kept painted white, are built in squares, their backs looking on to a large courtyard. This keeps all the fronts free from the unsightly domestic pots and pans and other paraphernalia usually to be seen crowding the fronts of village houses and shacks. Stores, schools, and a doctor’s shop are provided, and each household has its own plot of ground for the growing of vegetables and flowers, and is also provided with the very necessary baths which the architects and builders of the peons’ houses (generally the owners themselves) invariably forget.

Large recreation rooms and club houses are provided, and the company give an annual feast to their workers, a feast unlimited as to beef and wine, and followed by dancing and singing to the accompaniment of an instrumental band also provided by the employers. There is also available land for those of the workers who care to go in for cattle-raising and farming on their own account; indeed, everything is done to induce and encourage them in such effort, and there is an attractiveness about these colonies which keeps them well populated. A more varied and pleasing life is held out here than that offered by a residence on the great distant melancholy camps, where social intercourse is necessarily restricted, and where the monotony of existence is only broken by the arrival of some chance visitor from a neighbouring camp or an occasional excursion to one of the “pulperias” for a glass of “boliche” and a gossip with similarly situated companions.

In addition to being big consumers of cattle, the Liebig Company are themselves land-holders and stock-raisers on a large scale, their farms or estancias in Uruguay, Corrientes, and Missiones being typical of each of the states, although all managed from headquarters at the two factories. In the Republic of Uruguay they own six estancias and rent two, comprising in all 252,871 acres, whilst in the Argentine province of Corrientes they control 329,941 acres, and in Paraguay 118,584 acres, making a total of about 700,000 acres, upon which close upon 200,000 head of cattle are maintained.

THE VILLAGE OF FREY BENTOS.

No less than from three to six hundred tons of extract of beef are annually exported from their factories, in addition to the tongues, soups, and preserved meats for which they are noted. If one takes in the whole of the River Plate littoral, the dry-salting and meat extract business consumes about half a million animals yearly, a figure which is destined to grow larger year by year. This consumption of cattle is quite apart from that of the freezing trade, which is on a still larger scale, and in which a capital of nearly four million pounds sterling is invested, much of the money coming from Britain and the United States.

The first shipments of frozen meat from the Argentine were made in 1877, and so successful was the experiment, that within eight years the first large freezing establishment was erected in Buenos Ayres. Others followed in rapid succession, and the combined turnover of the “Frigorificos,” as they are called, has reached the enormous sum of twelve million pounds sterling per annum.

These “Frigorificos” having been for the most part built during recent years, their builders have been able to take advantage of all the experiments and improvements made by hygienic science, and no pains are spared to keep the reputation of Argentine meat above suspicion. The stock slaughtered for foreign markets undergoes a careful examination by veterinary inspectors, the animals being subjected to a severe scrutiny before they are permitted to leave the paddocks and pens adjoining the factories, and allowed to pass along the “race” to the slaughterhouse. In not a few of the factories the “race” has a long, deep trough of water in it, through which the animals pass to cool and cleanse their bodies before they reach the narrow box in which they receive the coup de grâce. Directly this has been given, the truck-like floor of the box is wheeled quickly out, and placed in a favourable position to allow of the carcase being hoisted by the hind legs to a transport rail. The bleeding takes place over a channel which conducts the blood into a large underground tank, and the carcase is then placed upon the flaying beds alongside. Very rapidly the hide is removed by highly skilled and well-paid operators, who are fined for every flaw made by them in the skins they remove. The carcase is next opened up in the presence of the Government inspector, who pronounces his verdict as to the soundness or otherwise of the animal. Having been thoroughly cleaned, the meat is sawn in halves and each side hauled up on to a transport rail and run along to another shed where the trimming is completed before it enters the chilling or freezing chamber, as the case may be. For twenty-four hours the meat is subjected to the freezing process, and then each side is quartered, covered first with a cotton wrapper and then with a stouter one of jute, and the quarters, thus protected from dust and dirt, are shipped into the cold chambers of barges which deliver them to the specially fitted steamers bound for Europe.

As the killing goes on day after day, a seemingly endless procession of “sides” is hurried along the transport rails to the great freezing chambers, which are filled and emptied day in and day out all the year round. The only disagreeable parts of the whole operation are the killing pens and the flaying beds, and the visitor to the Frigorifico, if at all squeamish, will do well to give these a very casual inspection as he makes his tour.