Sunday, February 8, 2015

A History of the Frozen Meat Trade

James Troubridge Critchell & Joseph Raymond - A History of the Frozen Meat Trade (1912)

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Probably somebody had to write this and if you're at all interested it goes into quite some detail.  Why mess around with a pamphlet?  If you want to know about your early frozen meat trade then you really want to know.  There are entire chapters on Australia, New Zealand and South America ("frigorificos"), on insurance, distribution and promotion, on mechanics, British farmers and the future. Plus appendices on by-products, patents, key figures and even a cold storage map of London.  The author Critchell, an Australian, was a meat trade reporter for London's Pastoral Review (a journal that apparently wasn't as bucolic as its name might suggest - I don't recall Marlowe's shepherds ever uttering the word "mutton").