MEATWORKS MARVELS

Hokitika Guardian, 4 December 1920, Page 4

MEATWORKS MARVELS

STORIED FROM SYtfxtiV ABATTOIRS. , SYDNEY, Nov. 23. Out on. the Parramatta river, 14 miles from Sydney, lie the biggest and most modern abattoirs in the Southern Hemisphere. The works have been in operation for some time now, but everything will not be complete until next March.. By then, they will have cost over £1,200,000. A description, of these works would fill a book; but something may be said here about the marvels of the by-products departments.

Chicago ineatpackers used to boast that nothing went from their works as waste except the squeal and the smell. The Sydney abattoirs go onp better than that—they utilise the smell. . Air-suck-ing appliances .draw lively odours from the different departments and direct them into .the furnaces, where they are burned. The bad smells of course are gases, and combustibleand their use in this way has added 2} per cent to the value of the coal . fuel. Resi,dents who live to leeward of these works do not, average one evil whiff per month. 1

Bullocks’ heads constantly arrive in one corner of the works. An expert with a huge axe splits eaclr skull neatly and the split skulls are passed along to another'gory giant expert. The latter puts a knife into a cavity beneath the brain of each ox and fishes out some-

tiling that looks like an elongated oy- ■ ster. These are the pituitary glands. They go to a firm oi : manufacturing chemists, and from them is extracted a 1 valuable drug, now much used by doctors in connexion with child-birth operations. Not a thing leaves these works as waste, 0 except the dirty water which flows into the sewers. The horns of cattle are ground up and used in a special process for hardening steel. The pith of the horns goes into manures and fertilisers. The horns of rams are sent off to reappear elegantly as buttons, ihe hide skinned from heads and shanks is used in the manufacture of glue. The small intestines from sheep —average length 98 feet—go to England, to come back as tennis strings, violin strings, efc. Sinews are dried and are used in gelatine. The stomachs of calves that have never eaten grass' aye the basis of the invaluable rerih?c. fiooves are carefully sorted into blades and whites—from the blacks come an indigo dye, while the whites go tb Japan for manufacture into combs. Tlie ihpide of the hooves yields the trooter oil, used in harness work. The shank-' bones of sheep yield neatsfoot oil, after which the bones become knife handles. The thyroid glands of sheep go <.o chemists who secure therefrom a ding used in the treatment for goitre. The hair from the tails of cattle, sort’l and cleansed; goes into high-class lUiniture. The intestines of the va , "ous animals are used as casings for ah' sizes of sausages. What is left over becomes either fowl or pig food, or comes out of the digesters as mogt ,yg~e pyanur.e-