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In Paris one eats the best chicken in the world; in New York, as a rule, the worst. How do they do it in France? The answer will be given in the chapter on French Gastronomic Supremacy; here let us anticipate only a few details as supplied to the Government of the United States by Newton B. Ashby, special agent of the Bureau of Animal Industry and published in its Sixteenth Annual Report (1899).

The French, he notes, "are economic people, and the system of sending young and immature chickens to market is not practised. The fowls sent to market are from 4 to 8 months old. They are carefully fed and grown for market instead of being allowed to scavenge. For instance, the chickens are given clean water instead of being allowed the run of filthy pools and puddles."

The method of slaughter, he goes on to say, "seems to be chiefly by cutting the jugular vein. The fowl is then dry plucked very carefully to prevent tearing the flesh, and is drawn through the vent."

How they do it in France?

Note those last six words. They show that the French do not allow chickens to remain undrawn even one day; for, as Mr. Ashby continues, "the fowls are packed the afternoon or evening of the day of slaughter, and despatched to Paris by special express train that night. They are due in Paris before five o'clock in the morning. They are delivered at once to the market, and are sold on the day of arrival, so that French fowls are generally disposed of in the market within twenty to twenty-four hours after being killed.... In July and August many French fowls come to the market alive."

"The Paris markets, and French markets generally," we are further told, "do not take kindly to foreign poultry or meat." Such poultry would of course have to be brought in cold storage, and what the nation which knows most about eating wants is fresh chicken. "Foreign poultry is not in demand in Paris," because the French know and have known for generations that to freeze meat is to spoil it. On this subject I shall have some further remarks in a later section on the Roast Beef of Old England.

Now look at the way much of the poultry consumed in American cities is gathered. Dr. Cavana of Oneida, N. Y., who found no fewer than eleven distinct groups of bacteria in the flesh of a single undrawn fowl, remarked, in a lecture delivered in 1906, at the Annual Convention of Railway Surgeons, that poultry stocks are collected for eastern cities from all parts of the country. He goes on to say that after slaughter the feathers are removed and the carcasses packed in barrels, generally without further dressing. The head, feet, and legs, as well as the craw of partially digested food, therefore, is left in the sealed cavities of the fowls, forming conditions which force the general infection of the tissues by the flagellated, or rapidly swimming intestinal bacteria, which double their quantity and numbers every forty minutes, a single bacillus being capable of developing over forty-two billion germs in twenty-four hours. Their shipments are made by rail and steamship, and cover transit periods of several days before reaching the cold atmospheres of the storage warehouses.

"To determine the activity of these germs and the period required for their permeation of the tissues in the slaughtered undrawn fowl, we caused to be made a series of experiments, the results of which justify the belief that a great percentage of the infected poultry and game stock in storage became so infected before reaching the low temperature of the storage warehouses."

Nor does ordinary cold storage destroy the noisome bacteria. They are merely scotched, to revive and multiply at the first opportunity.

One of the principal objections to cold-storage poultry is that after being taken from the storehouse they decompose much more quickly than fresh birds.

Some dealers aggravate the evil by soaking the poultry when taken out of storage in cold water for the purpose of thawing. This adds to its weight, to the profit of the dealer, but it "causes heavy bacterial infection," as Dr. Charles Harrington, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Health, has pointed out. Dr. Pennington, in an article on Changes in Chickens in Cold Storage, to which we shall recur, refers to a case in which a frozen fowl, after being immersed in water, had increased in weight eleven per cent. (to the dealer's profit).

In Bulletin 144 of the United States Department of Agriculture we read:

"Under precisely the same conditions of temperature and humidity, drawn fowls will keep from twenty to thirty days longer than those not drawn. The presence of undigested food and of excrementitious substances in animals which have been killed most certainly favors the tainting of the flesh and general decomposition. The viscera are the first parts to show putrescence, and allowing these to remain within the body cannot do otherwise than favor infection of the flesh with bacteria and ptomaines, even if osmosis does not actually carry putrid juices to contiguous tissues. Hunters know the value of drawing birds as soon as possible after they have been shot, in order to keep them fresh and sweet and to prevent their having a strong intestinal flavor."

Read also the following weighty remarks reprinted from Senate Report No. 1991, March 22, 1906:

The process of decomposition and putrefaction begins at once after the death of the animal. Cold storage and freezing may limit the rotting process, but do not entirely stop it. When poultry or animals are taken from cold storage and are thawed out for exhibition and sale, the decomposition continues with marked energy, impregnating the flesh with poisons—and this decomposition is exceedingly rapid even when the poultry is kept in the market or grocery refrigerator, the temperature of which is much higher than that of the cold-storage warehouse. Flesh in which the blood has been permitted to remain is particularly susceptible to such decomposition, and this susceptibility is increased by the long period of freezing and thawing.

Even with poultry which is "freshly killed" there is frequently a period of several days between the time of slaughtering and sale. Not only is it dangerous, but it is repugnant to our sense of decency, that the flesh we are to eat shall lie for several days in close contact with putrefying animal matter.

Undoubtedly undrawn poultry, fish, and game have caused many cases of poisoning which have been wrongfully attributed to other sources. The poisoning resulting often resembles that caused by other poisons administered by persons or taken with suicidal intent. Many sufferers from digestive troubles—headache, nausea, colic, and diarrhea after eating, owe their ailments to tainted foods.

We are advised that the reason for slaughtering poultry without thorough bleeding is the saving in the weight of the fowl, and this reason is doubtless also one for the storing of poultry and offering it for sale without removing the viscera. There is, however, no reason why the consumer should be compelled to purchase a large percentage of excreta, offal, and refuse with his poultry. We would not tolerate the addition of a certain percentage of weight in the form of entrails of the steer with each beefsteak we buy. The consumer purposes to buy edible food and not the disgusting waste which should be eliminated in the process of slaughtering and dressing. It is just as reasonable to ask the consumer to buy hogs, calves, and lambs without the intestines removed as to solicit his purchase of undrawn turkeys and chickens.