Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1896-05-15
HORSEFLESH FOOD.
ENEW BUT GROWING INDUSTRY IN
THE UNITED STATES.

age Reader.
The use of horsenesh for food is a com
taratively new thing in the east but it is
growing.
l met some time ago the artist who lately
received a commission to prepare pictures
for a magazine article on this subject He
had considerable trouble in executing the
commission, because the horse meat bust
ness is conducted as If it were illicit To
be sure, it ought not to be, for there is no
law against horse butcherng in this or
any other state.
There are laws, moreover, against the
slaughter and sale for food of diseased ami
mails, equine or bovine, and that may ex-
plain why the artist experienced So much
difficulty in passing the barriers of the
trade. BY little fnesse, however, he did
get into the largest butchery in the east
or perhaps in the country. 1t is situated
In that sparsely settled part of Brooklyn
called Centervile. The owner, Belgian
named Bosse, kills about 300 head of horses
and mules a week AS his profit is some
thing like $40 n head, it appears that Mr..
Bosse is on the high road to fortune.
The artist got access to this place by rep
resenting himself as the American agent
Of French house DESTROYS Of opening up
an export trade 1t is no secret that the
French are large CONSUMERS of horse meat.
| They acquired the taste during the starva-
ton regime of the commune, 20 years ago.
Now horses of special breeds are fattened
! for the market.
That is the most important difference
between the French and American trade.
| The horse butchers Of this country sell
/ finn luf IL - H..
ham, pork, what not. Theirs is fraud
ulent business.
1t appears that the red hots" Crank
furter sausnges) sold at Coney Island and
on the streets of New York are horse meat
or mule meat to say nothing of their be-
ing of the very lowest quality at that.
BOsse has plant covering several acres
His buildings are the merest shanties and
there is not even IA pretense of cleanliness
Twenty big savage dogs guard the place
against intruders.
He courts secrecy in this and other
ways. All his CRITTERS are brought to
him and all his manufactured product
taken away under cover of night This is
out of Difference to the great public which
is perfectly cognizant of the nature of his
business, but loves above all things to be
humbugged
The horses and mules are bought in a
famous old market at Ridgewuod devoted
to the purchase and sale of broken down
steeds-old truck horses, "discards" from
the street Car service. At this cheerful
place there is an old law of custom under
which n horse may be entered for sale at a
fee of 10 cents. The butcher buys them
in big lots at nn average price of So. 90
For a fancy lot he will pay 81.
10
obvious reasons, l am not able to confirm
that all the "critters" have not even so
respectable an origin as this 1t is said
that on several occasions when a horse has
died on the streets. its body has mysteri-
ously disappeared at night, before the
health authorities could arrive to carry it
away.
Bosse, l am told, sells a great part Of
his product to "A firm in Newark, n j. This
firm makes "a speciality of the dainty known
as "chipped beef" Its brand, on very
handsome tin boxes, may be seen in the
best groceries of almost any large city, and
is an accepted standard of excellence. The
horse butcher makes no bones of Boosting
that this "chipped beef" is from his
slaughter house. 1t is horse meat, smoked,
cut very thin, daintily packed and fraudu-
lently labeled.
The slaughter of "a horse is very much
like that Of an OK. The animal is Knocked
in the head and its throat is cut. The skin.
which is stripped off instantly, fetches
from 81 30 to So at the tannery. There is
tannery in First avenue, New York city,
devoted exclusively to the tanning of horse
hides
1t is the hind quarters that go to the
Clipped beef factory. And it will be "a use
full bit of information for housewives to
know that they can invariably distinguish
this bogus product from the real article by
the color. Horse meat is much darker than
beef Sometimes it is almost black.
The hoofs go to the glue factory and the
bones are boiled for the makers of phos-
pilates
Bosses place in thronged at night by
butchers from the poorer quarters They
get the first pick from the barrels into
which the flesh has been thrown, and
bright and early next morning their pur-
chases are on sale as heefsteaks. There is
no especial harm i'll this, except the fraud
have eaten horse steaks. They are not
10 be distinguished from beef steaks unless
ii Is because they are tougher The steak
from an old street car horse is as yielding
To the tooth as rubber boot, but it is
wholesome enough.
There are two classiilcations at the Bosse
establishment-lean ana very lean The
lean animal goes to the butcher and the
Clipped beef man. The very lean are re-
served for the frankfurter man. Some of
these latter animals could not be described
without uffense. They are in the last
stages of famine and sometimes also of
disease Where they come from tho Lord
only knows. The butcher doesn't think it
worth while to carve them into fore and
hind quarters, but chops off the scraps of
flesh from their skeletons directly they are
killed and thNOws them into barrels
Heart, liver .dngs-all the urgans-go in
to the nauseating mess. The sausage is
all horse, even to the covering.
The "corned beef so layishly afforded
as free lunch in the poorer class of drink
ing saloons is almost invariably horse
meat.-Brooklyn Eagle.
Iafa