In an editorial entitled "Cold Storage Hardly a Blessing" the New York
"Times" called attention during the holiday season of 1911 to the fact
that the price of cold-storage turkeys was six cents a pound less than
that of the fresh-killed birds. "This difference of almost 25 per
cent. is an admission by the cold-storage people, forced from them by
unalterable public opinion, that their much-wanted wares are to just
about that extent inferior to those which they vociferously declare to
be no better."
Quoting the happy expression that cold-storage fowls taste "as if they
had been buried and dug up again," the same writer remarks: "None of
us really knows how fowls do taste after they have gone through that
process. We can imagine the flavor, however, and do, noses helping
tongues."
Were it not for the storage people, chickens and eggs would come into
our markets fresh, cheap, and in abundance at the time when they are
at their best. But it is precisely when they are at their best and
cheapest that the storage men corner the market and hold the goods
till they are good no more; whereupon they sell them at their own
prices, largely increased through gambling. In view of such facts the
"Times" refers to cold storage as "a baleful invention."
A baleful invention it certainly is--and a needless one, too. To quote
Dr. Wiley again: "Poultry is a food product which under the present
scientific methods of production can be furnished in a fresh state all
the year. The necessity for cold storage, therefore, is not so apparent
in this case as in that of fruit and other perishable foods."
The American public, surely, will not much longer tolerate the present
condition of affairs. There are packers and packers. Some are more
careful and cleanly in their methods than others; but cold-storage fowl
at its best is more or less denatured, and at its worst it is worse
than denatured, putting us almost on a level with the African Bushmen
who, when they kill a sheep, eat the entrails with their contents.
I would no more eat such undrawn storage poultry as is placed daily
before thousands of my countrymen than I would the flesh of a hyena or
a vulture.
It was estimated that, in 1912, $75,000,000 worth of poultry was
consumed in New York City. Of this, only $1,500,000 represented the
business done in live chickens, and nearly all of this went to the
Kosher butchers of the East Side. Surely Christians cannot afford to be
less cleanly than Hebrews in regard to what they put in their stomachs.
The time has come for Christians to gird up their loins and fight for
untainted food on their tables, too. There is encouragement in the
information that in one season 1,100 more cars of live poultry were
shipped to New York City than the season before (1910), and that plants
were being established near the city for providing poultry freshly
slaughtered and dressed. The consumer must, however, make sure that
the fowls are not only freshly killed but drawn within a few days;
the second joint is sometimes tainted on the second day. Butchers
and poultry dealers would make friends if they gave up the habit of
charging for fowl at so much a pound including the intestines. Let them
charge more per pound for the meat alone, refusing under any conditions
to have an undrawn bird in their shops, and the poultry business will
soon be doubled, nay, quintupled.
The fact that fresh fowl costs more than frozen is due to artificial
conditions which can be remedied and _must_ be remedied. For the
present, if you cannot afford a six-pound fowl, try one weighing three
pounds. If your dealer understands--as mine understands--that you will
not under any circumstances eat a cold-storage bird he will supply a
fresh one. What you want is not quantity but quality--particularly the
true chicken Flavor. In the chapter on Savory Cooking it will be shown
how a few pounds of fresh chicken can be made to yield their delicious
flavor to a dish much larger and much cheaper than would be afforded by
a fowl double its size cooked in the usual way.
In Europe, most persons travel third class on the railways because they
cannot afford first or second. In this country, nearly everybody can
afford to travel first class. Americans are always bound to have the
best of everything--if they know how to get it. Only in the gastronomic
world are they--with the exception of the Jews--traveling third
class--eating third-rate poultry prepared by third-rate cooks. This
cannot last. We can afford the best. Let us have it.