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Profit and Protection INDUSTRY: PROFIT AND PROTECTION JAMES E. REYNOLDS So, each segment of the ruggedly competitive food industry fights to protect our food in the area in which its profit lies, to the ultimate benefit of the industry and the consumer. This, actually, has been the story and the history of the food industry. Reaching back a long way for an illustration, it was a man wanting to MAKING an honest dollar through make money who got the canning end honest effort has, historically in of the food industry underway. France these United States, been considered in the closing years of the 18th century as American as Mom's apple pie. was fighting most of Europe, by land That's what the food industry in this and by sea. She was not able to keep country does. It makes an honest dol- her soldiers and sailors adequately lar. It makes that dollar through an provisioned. So, her governing body honest effort to protect your food and of five men—The Directory—offered mine against ail hazards. a i2,ooo-franc prize to the citizen who It's a multibillion-dollar, almost un- could devise a method of preserving believably complicated operation, this food for transport on campaigns. business of protecting our food as it makes its several ways from the pro- NICOLAS APPERT, an obscure chef duction area to the shopping cart we and confectioner with no knowledge of wheel to the checkout counter in the biology, came up with the method. food store. It took him 14 years to develop and It's a successful business, as well. fully test his process, but in January Food, animal and vegetable, pre- 181 o Appert was awarded the prize by sents itself to us in many forms today. Count Montalivet, French Minister of It comes fresh, frozen, dried, concen- the Interior. trated, milled, processed in a profu- In June of the same year Appert sion of forms. It comes by truck, train, published ''The Book of All House- water, and air. It is safe to eat. holds; or the Art of Preserving Animal The principal reason our food is safe and Vegetable Substances for Many to eat is because the industry supplying Years." It set forth procedures used in it to us could not make a profit fur- nishing us unsafe food. We would not buy it. We would transfer our food dol- James E. Reynolds is Chief of the Current In- lar away from that segment of the formation Branch, Information Division, food industry that failed us. Agricultural Research Service. 247 canning more than 50 different canned storages, and transferred swiftly to the foods and was immediately widely dis- retail outlet, where trained personnel tributed and translated into many keep it in top quality condition until European languages. you purchase it. So, Appert found a way to keep food Much the same is true of the han- safely—^won 12,000 francs—and the dling of fii-esh peaches, except that whole world benefited. peaches have for a number of years now been hydrocooled—bathed in THE CANNING INDUSTRY has changed ice water before shipment. More re- since the days of Appert, and it con- cently, shippers have also been dunk- tinues to change. People like Louis ing the peaches for just a couple of Pasteur of France, H. L. Russell of minutes in hot water. This doesn't Wisconsin, and Samuel G. Prescott cook or change the taste or tempera- and W. Lyman Underwood of Massa- ture of the peaches. It simply cuts chusetts pioneered in demonstrating down the incidence of rots and extends the importance of destroying bacteria, the shelf life of the peaches. to make food keep. Other people Industry has for many years used developed the equipment that led to flood-type hydrocooling for cooling today's sanitary, high-volume output. asparagus, celery, and sweet corn. But Appert's simple theory, that Oranges, in whatever form, are food sufficiently heated while sealed similarly protected. Fresh oranges are in a container that excludes air will protected against adverse tempera- keep, is still the fundamental modern tures, against bruising. Chilled orange principle of canning as practiced today. juice frequently travels in giant tanker cars, under controlled temperature. A LOT OF OTHER theories have been Frozen concentrate goes in refrigerated developed into principle in the century trucks or railroad cars that maintain and a half since Appert made his great the concentrate's temperature at o^ F., contribution to the food industry. In or below. Appert's day, little fresh produce In some cases, as in winter shipment traveled more than one day's wagon of potatoes from northern States, in- journey to the market. sulated cars equipped with heaters Today, whole railroad cars of lettuce protect the commodity against cold. are sent through a vacuum-cooling process in California, then dispatched THE HISTORY of protecting commodi- eastward to markets 3,000 miles away. ties against heat and cold during Fresh pineapple arrives in Kansas City transit is quite a story in itself, and one from Hawaii. Florida citrus, as fresh the food industry delights in relating. as you would find it in your own super- As in many a good story, a detail or market, is on sale in Switzerland. two is lacking, but the story is there The average retail food store in the nonetheless. United States has some 46 various The name of the shipper seems to fresh vegetables on display at one time have vanished into the mists of time, or another throughout the year. When but generally accepted as fact is that you include fresh fruit, the number of on July I, 1851, a freight train pulled fresh produce items is about 75. out of Ogdensburg, N.Y., on the These day-to-day happenings are Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain Rail- possible because the food industry road (now the Rutland). The train protects these foods. trundled across the northern part of Lettuce, for instance, is field wrapped New York State, close to the Canadian in film, packed 24 heads per box, border, then all the way down the east vacuum-cooled, shipped to terminal side of Lake Champlain and south- markets in rail cars or trucks in which eastward to a connection with what is temperature and humidity are con- now the Boston & Maine at Bellows trolled, placed in similarly controlled Falls, in Vermont. 248 This was an ordinary freight train of Ships were designed and built spe- the period, hauling the usual number cifically for carrying bananas as early of cars. But one boxcar carried an un- as 1904, and shippers learned that the usual load, an experimental shipment, process of protecting them was more bound for Boston. The 30-foot wooden properly one of air conditioning than boxcar, constructed upon the same simply of refrigeration. principle as the home icebox of the They learned that the safest carry- period, was insulated and iced, for it ing temperature is about 55° P., and was carrying 8 tons of butter—the that the carbon dioxide content in the earliest known successful use of re- holds should be no greater than %Q of i frigeration on a long haul by railroad. percent. The car was twice replenished with Today shippers recognize that fresh ice during the journey and the butter fruits and vegetables are living orga- reached Boston as fresh as when it left nisms and both in storage and shipment Ogdensburg, far up on the St. Law- are heedful of their total environment. rence River, hundreds of miles away. Day-to-day application of this prin- ciple is what helps us in this country, OTHER SHIPMENTS followed as Bos- in city or in village, in the producing tonians developed a taste for New area or 3,000 miles distant from the York State butter. The operation be- producing area, to have the variety came so successful that more cars had and quality of the fresh fruits and the to be built to handle the traffic in vegetables we enjoy. butter which developed all the way across northern New York. And ac- SAFE TRANSPORTATION has been a cording to press reports of the day, the major factor in protecting our grain "Butter Train" that ran every week shipments, as it has been in protecting "brought immeasurable financial ben- the more perishable commodities. efits to the towns along the line, as well Behind every slice of bread we eat as to people everywhere." is an interesting story of transporta- The first successful refrigerator car tion. That slice of bread may have was patented in 1868 by William started in the wheatfields of Kansas, Davis of Detroit, and the Davis cars Montana, the Dakotas, or any one of were used with some success for the the many States in the grain belt. shipment of fruits and dressed beef. It may have run through several But as early as 1857 ^* W- Chandler States, traveling as grain or flour had added an inside lining to each of from country elevator to the terminal, 30 ordinary boxcars for the Pennsyl- from terminal to mill, from mill to vania Railroad, filled the airspaces the grocery or bakery. with sawdust, and installed iceboxes in The farmer's immediate market for the boxcar doorways. his wheat ordinarily is the country It was really in the late i88o's, when elevator. From the country elevator the ammonia compression machine for the wheat may be shipped to one of making artificial ice emerged from the the big terminal elevators. Terminal experimental stage, that railway re- elevators are usually equipped for frigeration became truly practical cleaning, clipping, drying, grading, throughout the United States.
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