Chapter 01: Bacon, my Teacher!

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


Bacon is more than a culinary delight! The universe chose this humble dish to be my teacher. It took many years to prepare me so that I could receive its lessons. First I had to be disillusioned. From my earliest consciousness, I was totally engrossed in my experience of life. I was taught the human mental pictures of language, religion, family, nationalism, geography, sport, school, music, history, mathematics, poetry, woodwork, war and love. At first, I believed everything. Love was unconditional, deceit was foreign, and life was simple. I must have been six or seven when I started noticing cracks in aspects of my belief system. That the worldview I was being taught was at times at odds with real life.

I wanted to figure it out and started testing using simple experiments. The first step was always to understand the system. Initially, I completely immersed myself in it. I studied the systems from within and not as an objective onlooker. I then design experiments based on the internal logic of the system. If a and b, naturally should follow c. I would change a or b or sometimes both while observing for changes in c.

The Most Elemental

In my 20s as I discovered the work of Michael E Porter and under his influence I sharpened my investigative strategy. I sought to identify the most fundamental elements which determine the essential characteristic of anything whether it is physical or abstract. The next question was this – are the fundamental elements fixed? Do they exist objectively and independently and if not, what are the things that influence their particular set of characteristics? Almost always I found such characteristics to be conditional.

This testing of anything and everything of great value and interest to me became my single-minded quest to the exclusion of any other pursuit in life. I started to appreciate the unfathomable value of old traditions. The benefit of others, infinitely more able to analyse than myself with often years of experience which I did not have. Their voices came with clarity, filtered by the sands of time into a purity that I enjoyed in my current existence that is very noisy and distracted by everything that the modern world offers.

Mental constructs which were discredited through experimentation reappeared in different perspectives as I changed my angle of looking at them. For example, I started to value the formative influence that the Christian tradition had in my life by instilling the value of disciplines like archaeology and the interpretation of ancient texts. Within the Christian framework, I wrested with the distance between us and the ancients who wrote the bible. Using the same techniques I was able to very carefully discover a body of ancient knowledge that holds the key to much of the puzzle of meat curing. I am indebted to my Christian teachers for schooling me in these. On a side note, spirituality and my connection with the mysterious “unknown” grew and I later embraced it as a valuable part of my human experience and a rich way to connect to others.

The Fog of Antiquity

The time before writing existed has a fog that obscures it from us. I discovered that the fog of millions of years contains small particles of light and reflections and just as we can know the make-up of distant stars by analysing its light, so we can decipher the knowledge of the ancients by studying the particles of the fog of antiquity. I learned that knowledge is not only acquired by sight, smell, hearing and touch but by our entire being. An example of this is my quest to know the food traditions of ancient civilisations. In Africa, I want to know the food people ate. The transmission of recipes from mother to daughter is like reciting poems or songs and carries clues about ancient times not written down anywhere. Even where I have no ancient writing to fall back on or recipes handed down I discovered that by visiting the old settlements, now uninhabited, with only ruins remaining, sitting amongst these or walking through them – the ancients would speak to me till I can see the flames of the fires where woman are preparing supper and I smell the aroma of the ancient dishes.

It was not until my 38th birthday that powers greater than me determined that the crystal that would refrac the light of the reality of everything to me would be bacon. The new world of discovery started to open up, leading me into lands I could not imagine existed. All this through my pursuit of bacon which is so mundane that nobody has bothered to write the comprehensive story of its development. It became my teacher of the marvels of the natural world.

Meat Curing’s Ancient Origins

I love the unpretentious beginnings of meat curing which is the bedrock of bacon and ham. Its secrets were initially guarded by women before artisan guilds took over as custodians of its principles and practices. The curing of meat became intimately linked with the earliest desire of humans to explore far away from their habitation. When the horse was domesticated and long-distance travel became a thing as was already the case with long sea voyages, the curing of meat was essential to ensure nutrition thus enabling the fulfilment of a basic human desire for exploration and discovery. It made international trade possible as fleets and caravans of animals and people trading their commodities around the globe relied on its power to deliver nutrition. Other more unfortunate human characteristics were likewise enabled by meat curing – the desire to dominate. Cured meat would become the staple of armies for the building of empires.

It facilitated another basic human instinct of immortality, our final destination and our relationship with the departed. Here we get the first glimpse that bacon curing is not the application of an external preservative to food or colourant to meat. The curing of bacon and hams is not something done to the meat. It is unlocking secret powers inside the meat with the aid of salts or waters or what was naturally excreted from the human and animal bodies which would then facilitate the change in the essential nature of the meat. This change in the character of the meat made it last longer, taste delicious and caused the meat to “come to life again” by changing from a dull brown to a bright pinkish/ reddish colour. The ancients found that most of the excrements of the human and animal body namely sweat and urine were powerful agents to elicit this enigmatic change in meat.

Like the power of nature which allows huge and heavy ships, laden with many tonnes of produce, people and ammunition to stay afloat by natural forces that early humans did not fully understand; yet, they mastered its application – in the same way, the ancients could appreciate the fact that the curing of meat was something natural, intimately associated with the normal, healthy functioning of the human and animal body. In this sense, it was completely different from cooking a soup where different bits of ingredients are added or the baking of bread where heat cause the parts of the bread to clump together, rise and dry out to form a new, appetising whole.

The earliest cognitive and conscious humans recognised this. Since it could bring meat back to life, could this not prevent our deceased relatives and other loved ones from decaying? Bacon and hams, the curing of meat became the bedrock which allowed mummification to develop as stories from around the world were told by travellers of corpses in distant desert lands that do not undergo decay if they are exposed to particular salts, so powerful that thousands of years later we still have these naturally mummified bodies with us. They knew what salts caused this because women used the same salts in preserving meat. They started experimenting with the salts and applied them to the deceased with astonishing success, being able, not to bring the dead to life again, but to prevent decay!

The next progression naturally followed from the previous. If it could bring old meat back to life and safeguard the deceased from decay, surely this life-giving transformation must work for the living also. So, they incorporated it into the much-prized elixir of immortality. The quest to find a cocktail that would allow us to live forever and if we could not live forever, would have the ability to stay off the outwards ravages of old age at least for a time. They not only experimented with the salts responsible for curing. They applied the same bodily experiments of sweat, urine and saliva to the skin and bathed in it as is done to this day in India where cow urine is considered holy by some. They found that it kept the skin young and prevented acne in teens.

They observed that it indeed possessed life-giving power not just for the dead, but the living also. The same elements which stimulate meat curing can heal wounds and a host of other human ailments such as the relief of chest pain. Some were able to work out that by combining curing salts with saliva, for example, its potency is enhanced many times over.

Spices had the same effect on meat especially noticed by people living in the Mediterranean and the nations around the Black sea. To this day stories persist that these people can cure meat without the salts commonly associated with curing.

Meat Curing – A Life-Giving Principle?

The ancients knew that certain salts were not the only curing agents. The millions of years separating us from them means that this knowledge was lost except in a few isolated communities where certain aspects of the trade persist in salt-only long-term curing, spice curing in Italy and Spain and drying techniques in Turkey. These are however fragmented bits of knowledge viewed as oddities and nothing more. The wonder, the life-giving aspect revealed in meat curing has for the most part been lost.

Everything related to cured meat has, however not always been positive and some linked it with disease. Humans who do not understand that the answer to the fundamental question of the most basic realities of life is not fixed, started to make absolute pronouncements on matters which are relative, depending on multiple factors. Imminent scientists from the modern world report that people who consume cured meat tend to suffer from certain ailments. They made the fatal error of concluding that cured meat is unhealthy, causing cancer. In making this assertion, they chose to ignore the fundamental importance of the curing reaction to human and mammalian existence and the complex factors which make many foods turn against our bodies. They chose simple statements that obscure truth over the wonder of complexity.

In recent years through rigorous scientific investigation, the essential role of the curing reaction in meat has been elucidated. It was discovered that the curing reaction is essential to the functioning of the body of all animals, including humans. The body has the inherent ability to create the curing reaction in response to a host of diseases and invasive enemy microorganisms and viruses. More than a defence mechanism only, the curing reaction in the body generates chemical species involved in functions such as the signalling between different parts of the body.

Most recently we discovered that microorganisms, bacteria, in particular, can create the curing reaction in meat in a way that mimics the reactions created by what came to be known as curing salts, closely linked with how our bodies create the curing reaction without the aid of salts. In other words, certain bacteria, feeding on parts inherent in meat solicits the curing reaction in the same way as curing salts, plants, spices, waters and human bodily fluids such as urine, sweat and saliva do. The basic mechanism is the same as how the body creates these reactions “by itself!” This has been a remarkable discovery and ultimately answers the question if meat curing is possible without curing salts and for that matter, without spices or plant material or human or animal bodily fluids. The answer to this question is an overwhelming “yes!”

Can Something of Infinite Benefit be Harmful?

Let’s return to the question related to a possible link between cured meat and disease and ask the important question about the health effects of cured meat as follows. Is it possible that what has been known since antiquity as having great health benefits to humans, could have detrimental effects also? This of course relates to curing salts in particular. Can millions of years of human experience be wrong about cured meat? We already eluded to the answer. The resolution of the question is in the understanding of the interconnectedness of everything. That any classification of cured meat as cancer-causing is wrong in that it incorrectly presents the conclusion as an objective statement of truth which stands independent of any other fact while it is in reality at best only a conditionally true statement. Assigning cured meat with the designation of cancer-causing these scientists reveal a lack of understanding of the interconnectedness of life and a strawman position is presented about the modern curing industry. This is a very serious error as it portrays the false use of science.

Life taught me that even a false narrative is an opportunity to learn and grow and where I at first was annoyed by this wrong view I came to appreciate it. It intensified my own search for the conditions that make cured meat either good or bad. It forced me to look deeper than I would have done and to expose the fact that under certain conditions cured meat can be dangerous just as milk or water or oxygen can be harmful to the human body under certain conditions. More than anything, these false notions trusted me in the realm of nutrition. Bacon became the doorway that taught me about the relationship between humanity and our food.

My Teacher is Bacon!

Bacon became my teacher. Worlds opened up that have been lost to time, obscured in the fog of antiquity. Meat curing’s scope of influence is breathtaking. It aided almost every great human endeavour. The loss of this knowledge is tragic and I set out to tell its story from the perspective of my discovery of its secrets.

On my many travels around the globe, I wrote letters to my kids and colleagues recounting what I am learning. I present much of the work by publishing these letters, interspersed with chapters where I advance the storyline and explain essential detail. Like bacon, I also speak from a very specific environment that impacts the presentation of the facts. The southernmost tip of the great African continent became the backdrop of my discoveries and from here I set out on a global quest to learn how to make the best bacon on earth.

In the end, bacon not only taught me about health, nutrition and science but about my relationship with the entire human race and with my family. As Bacon taught me about life, the lessons reached into the most basic realities of my existence. Its story became my own story of love and life, tragedy and triumph, deceit and manipulation by others, respect and honour, great and enduring friendships and comradery.

What follows is the story of Bacon & the Art of Living!


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The Truth About Meat Curing: What the popular media do NOT want you to know!

So much miss information and reporting for the sake of sensation-seeking on this matter that I had to do this short series. One can keep silent for only so long!

The series is in response to the following documentary, “The Meat Lobby: How the Meat Industry Hides the Truth | ENDEVR Documentary” on YouTube https://youtu.be/nX1KUPZC3Ck

There are many similar ones on the web and every so often a newspaper decides to run articles on the matter.

Part 1: Setting the stage


Part 2: The Curing Molecule

In this instalment, I refer to Fathers of Meat Curing and my article on the work of Dr Polenske, Saltpeter: A Concise History and the Discovery of Dr Ed Polenske.


Part 3: Steps to secure the safety of cured meat

I discuss steps taken by the meat industry, academia and government right from the inception of nitrite curing to ensure it is completely safe. The article I did which I discuss is Regulations of Nitrate and Nitrite post-1920’s: the problem of residual nitrite.


Part 4: The Benefit of Nitrites

Therapeutic Uses of Inorganic Nitrite and Nitrate – From the Past to the Future.


Please mail me at ebenvt@gmail.com or Whatsapp on +27715453029 for any comments, questions or feedback or post your question/ comment below.

Cover Photo

Cover photo is courtesy of Robert Goodrick.


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Chapter 11.03: The Jewish Master Curer and the Prince of Ireland

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


The Jewish Master Curer and the Prince of Ireland

1 April 1920

Dear children,

Since the Boer War ended Minette and I returned to New Zealand often. For a time, we even considered moving there. It would seem though, that our lives and times are tied to Africa. I did not mind this. The thought of being continents removed from you is too much to even contemplate. On the other hand, it is Africa I fell in love with from my youth when I crossed the interior of South Africa many times riding transport. The ancient cultures and technology of the mysterious peoples, closely connected to the land in a way which Europe has lost, mesmerised me as I could see in their comings and goings a way of life completely appealing to me. In the end, Africa did not push me away as it does so many Europeans – she welcomed me and introduced me to her innermost secrets. I don’t think this had anything to do with being born here – she initiated it when I responded with awe and thankfulness, and in doing so she continued to reveal more, drawing me ever closer. This is an experience I will write about when I’m done with the great work of Bacon & the Art of Living.

You know that from the time when you can remember, my great passion has been to understand bacon curing. It was the purpose of my trip to Denmark and England where I was introduced to much of the story of bacon. The most ancient development was dry-cured bacon. The bacon curing system existed for hundreds of years and included only dry ingredients and later dry ingredients with wet brine added. The principal objective was to dry the bacon quickly using copious amounts of salt to remove moisture before bacteria could and the breakdown of the flesh could overtake the curing process. (Dry Cured Bacon)

Mild Cured Bacon was probably the first major progression from this where the power of the old brine was used to speed up curing allowing for a “milder cure.” The invention was by the chemist William Oake from Northern Ireland sometime before 1837. (Mild Cured Bacon) The Harris family in Calne gave us Sweet Cured bacon in the 1840s which did not use the old brine but hot smoking was the key feature that sped curing sufficiently up that less salt was needed resulting in a piece of less dry and far less salty bacon. Sweeter! The result was Sweet Cured Harris Bacon. Pale Dried Bacon likewise came from the Harris family in Calne under John Harris in the 1890s. It was dried with no smoking and rendered pale and dry bacon that could keep a long time. Wiltshire Curing or Tank Cured Bacon was used by the Wiltshire curers in the closing years of the 1800s or early 1900s, which was identical in almost every way to the mild cured technique of William Oake from Ireland. (Harris Bacon – From Pale Dried to Tank Curing).

Auto Curing was invented by William Harwood Oake, the son of William Oake from Limerick in Ireland who invented mild curing. William Harwood Oake in all likelihood was one of the people who brought mild curing to England when he opened a curing operation with two partners in Gillingham, Dorset. Tank curing was probably independently incorporated into the Harris operation when they got the technology from Denmark. The basics of Auto Curing were, however, not developed by Oake him but by an English team of researchers in America under Robert Davison. American Auto cured system was developed by Davison in 1843 and Oake’s Auto Cure system was a progression of this system. (Oake Woods & Co., Ltd., Rapid – and Auto Cured Bacon)

A revolution followed that saw the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines under American leadership replacing all these systems. Ladislav Nachmüllner invented the first curing brine legally sold containing sodium nitrites in 1915 in Prague. The system was made popular around the globe by the Griffiths Laboratories. The direct addition of nitrites to curing Brines is covered in two letters in Bacon & the Art of Living, namely The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – the Master Butcher from Prague and The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – The Spoils of War.

Within the grand story of bacon, there are two other developments that fit into the time before Harris invented Pale Dried bacon in the 1890s namely the alternative methods for producing mild cured bacon by the Irish firm of Henry Denny and the system of the Dutch master curer, Aron Vecht. It’s best to deal with these two progressions together because Vecht’s method was essentially the same as what Henry Denny patented with a slight temperature adjustment in shipping. While Denny’s work was focused on Ireland and Denmark, Vecht took the system to the southern English colonies.

I learned about Vecht in New Zealand. It was these islands that he covered from north to south on horseback. When a New Zealander, Dr James Anderson asked me if I know him, I did not. It was Jim who told me not only about Vecht, the Dutch Master Curer, the travelling Jew and adventurer who fought in the Anglo Boer war on the side of the Boers against the English, who claim to have invented his own form of mild cured bacon, essentially copying the method of Henry Denny and adapted bacon transport conditions on cargo ships operating between New Zealand, Australia and England to suit bacon better. It was in studying his curing method that I discovered the true genius of Henry Denny, the prince of Irish bacon curers who established one of the largest curing operations on earth and did the last remaining work on bacon curing before Vecht incorporated bacon transport to frozen conditions as opposed to chilling the meat. It would only be the direct addition of nitrites to curing brines that would overtake these developments, but even then, Vecht’s work on refrigeration would stand.

Aron Vecht: His Life

Aron Vecht was born in a small village in Holland and educated in trade and Jewish orthodoxy. The Jewish Herald, Victoria described him as “one of the earliest pioneers of Zionism.” Physically he had an impressive posture. He is described as a “commanding figure, long, black beard, and [his] lustrous eyes gave him a close resemblance in appearance to the great Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl.” (Jewish Herald) He is tall, and well built with an excellent carriage, with a pair of blazing, big eyes, tinged with the melancholic brown. People described him as the most excellent travel companion. I imagine him to be very persuasive and charismatic. A born leader!

He soon moved from Holland to England. In London, he made a living buying and selling bacon. The curiosity of an orthodox Jew who consulted the Code of Jewish Law or the Shulchan Aruch frequently, being the bacon trade was explained by him “that he never saw nor handled the produce.” (Jewish Herald) A claim is made that Vecht married a member of the wealthy Van den Bergh clan in London. Records from the Cape Archive indicates that he married Bernadine Vecht (nee Coopman). Dr Anderson explained that she was part of the Van den Berg clan; she was the daughter of Jacob Coopman and Catharina van den Bergh. Vecht’s first venture is into journalism and he launches the now-defunct Jewish Standard newspaper, to combat the Jewish Chronicle. In London, he met a young and aspiring Jewish writer, Israel Zangwill who makes his debut writing for this newspaper with a weekly humorous column, “Morour and Charouseth.”

After the failure of the newspaper, Vecht developed a desire to travel. This led to a lifetime of wondering which earned him the nickname, “The Wandering Jew.” The Jewish Herald reports that “this wandering Jew’s first trip sent him to Australia. He went not single-handed, but with a large family. They travelled in a slow boat; their stock of Kosher provisions gave out but that was a mere incident. To keep up his family spirits, Wanderer-in-chief got the ship’s printer to print a most remarkable imaginary menu for a Purim dinner, whilst bread and coffee were the only elements of the actual repast on the festival. In the same sportive mood, he won all the ‘sweepstakes’ on the daily runs, the whits prize, as well as a prize for the best fancy dress at a ball given during tho voyage.” (Jewish Herald)

At some point, he moves his family to Argentina. Here he started a frozen kosher meat export business, approved by European rabbis. (Lebrecht, 2019) He eventually sets his head office up in Buenos Aires. He frequently returns to England and moves across Europe.

Vecht arrived in New Zealand in early 1893 (his ship may have docked in Australia on the way). Vecht’s family joined him later in New Zealand — they are listed as passengers on the Ruahine that left London in July 1893. There is a story that he explored the island’s top to bottom on horseback. This account seems to be a fabrication and dr James pointed out that a free railway pass was issued to him by the New Zealand government. Vecht, with his experience in refrigeration, sets up New Zealand’s first bacon-curing plant, charging one shilling for each carcass he treats. (Lebrecht, 2019) From New Zealand, he went to Australia (October 1894) and from there to South Africa (1900). (Correspondence with Dr. James Anderson)

In South Africa, he participated in an interesting scheme namely De Beers Cold Storage. It is alleged by some that he participated in the Anglo Boer War but after an extensive search at the Anglo Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein, I could find no record of this. The contrary seems to be true, namely that his time was initially spent in and around Cape Town till he was sent on a business trip through the country by Cecil John Rhodes. His skill in refrigeration caught the attention of Cecil John Rhodes who, at the time, was regarded as the wealthiest man in Britain. Rhodes asked him to assist in matters pertaining to refrigeration for his De Beers Cold Storage Co. which Rhodes set up in opposition to the refrigeration chambers of David De Villiers Graaff. The instruction from Rhodes to set such a company up came in 1889. From the records available to me it seems that the request from Rhodes came to him towards the end of the war since the Jewish herald reports that his contract with Rhodes included “a clause providing that he should do no manner of work on Jewish Sabbaths or festivals. Doing an expert in refrigeration, he got the British Secretary of the Colonies, and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs/ and the War Office, to conspire together against the military regulations and issue a pass to him to pass through the British lines during the Boer war — a thing permitted no other foreigner. Strangest of all, he cut all the strands of red tape of all these offices in one day, and that a short one, too, for it was a Friday in the winter of 1902. . .” (Jewish Herald) Records at the Cape Archive indicates a number of interesting facts about his stay in the Cape.

Due to business interests in the Cape, the death notices of both Vecht and his wife Bernadine was filed at the Cape to set in motion the winding up of their respective estates. Bernadine passed away on 21 July 1926 close to Antwerp at age 69. At least two of their children remained in South Africa for a time. Florance was appointed in the Cape as executor of her mother’s estate on 5 January 1927. Vecht’s oldest daughter, Rosa Vecht, married Jacob Politi in Wynberg in Cape Town on 3 February 1903. Jacobs occupation was listed as a manager for De Beers Cold Storage and he resided in Wellington where I assume he also worked. Rosa was listed as living in the upmarket suburb of Constantia, Cape Town, very close to Wynberg presumably with the rest of the Vecht family.

This bit of information leads to some interesting observations. Instead of the picture of a Boer supporter who partook in the Anglo Boer War, the picture that is emerging is one of a very well off family who resided in Constancia, Cape Town. If Vecht arrived in Cape Town in 1900, it did not give him much time to get involved in the Wellington operations of De Beers Cold Storage, sufficiently so for him to get to know Jacob Politi who at some point was introduced to Vecht’s daughter, Rosa. The image we have of Vecht is a sophisticated businessman, in the style of Rhodes and Dawid De Villiers Graaff who would later buy De Beers Cold Storage from Rhodes. Between Rhodes, Vecht and De Villiers Graaff, it would seem if Rhodes was the one who got the deepest involve in direct conflict during the siege of Kimberley and not Vecht as has been reported. Rhodes remained in Kimberley almost for the full duration of the siege and his De Beers was active in the manufacturing of articles for the war.

We will later see that the British commodity trader Trengrouse and Co., who is an interesting link between Vecht’s business and Phil Armour from Chicago’s packing plant, was also located in the Boland town of Wellington with a South African Canning company, Langeberg Foods. Langeberg Foods supplied canned fruits to Trengrouse and Co..

The relationship between De Beers Cold Storage and Langeberg Foods is something for further investigation since Langeberg had a requirement for cold storage facilities right at the time when refrigeration was introduced into South Africa. It is interesting that in this one location we find Vecht, Rhodes, Langeberg, De Beers Cold Storage and Trengrouse and Co. Could it have been Trengrouse who introduced Vecht to Rhodes? Could they have told Vecht about the opportunities which were emerging with the creation of De Beers Cold Storage? At the moment these are no more than tantalising possibilities but it definitely warrants further investigation.

The reported support that Vecht had for the Boer course, was in reality probably no more than sympathy, in the same way as Dawid de Villiers Graaff had sympathy for the Boer course, but never actively supported them in any way. After all, De Villiers Graaf’s company won the contract to supply the British army with meat during the war. If Vecht actively supported the Boers in any way, having lived in Constantia, it would probably have landed him in jail and would most certainly have been the end of his collaboration with Rhodes. Rhodes later sold De Beers Cold Storage to De Villiers Graaff, proving that supporting the English was financially a good decision as was the case with many wealthy Afrikaner business people at this time. I think that comparing Vecht’s emotional sympathy with the Boer course with that of De Villiers Graaff’s is a fair comparison. In any event, I seriously doubt if in Vecht’s case it was anything more than that.

Dr Anderson writes that “although residing in South Africa, in 1903 he represented Australia at the 6th Zionist congress in Basle, Switzerland. Shortly after this he moved with his family to Holland and then to Argentina for fifteen months (dates unclear) before finally settling in Belgium. (Infuriatingly, the Belgian immigration archives record the arrival of the Vecht family, but without a date – probably 1907 or early 1908). (Correspondence with Dr James Anderson)

Vecht’s children were not all born on one continent. “His eldest daughter was born in Holland (in Vecht’s hometown of Elburg); the next six children were all born in London, UK; his two youngest sons were born in Melbourne and Sydney, respectively. (Dr James Anderson) His children were Rosa (Roosje), Moses (Mozes), Florance, Jacob Emile, Constance, Nora, Deena, Victor and Phillip. Eventually part of the family returned to Antwerp. Here he underwent gall-bladder surgery. He passed away from complications following the surgery on 8 November 1908 at the age of 54. (Cape Archives) (Lebrecht, 2019)

Aron Vecht: His Business

Aron Vecht was involved in a number of business ventures, mainly related to refrigeration and meat. We know, for example, that sometime before 1889 he was in business with Samuel Hamburger, Ellias Levi, Aron Vecht, and Carolina Wolff in the Dutch town of Ede. “A New Zealand report claims that in Holland ‘he and his brother had successfully introduced the mess-pork industry in 1879’ (Dr James Anderson)

Vecht probably used several trademarks which were associated with his products. Dr James Anderson points out that one was “Morepork,” traded under Vecht & Stokvis. Vecht took out patents in 1894 in New Zealand related to the singeing of pigs and the preservation of meat. His method of preservation was called the “Vecht Mild Cure Process.” He masterfully tied the patent to his own bacon brand. One such brand was York Castle. The patents were presumably owned by his business in New Zealand which he had with William Stokes called the Christ Church Meat Company, Ltd. (1)

I was first alerted to the trademark from a liquidation sale advertised in The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW, Tue 29 Jun 1909).

The notice read as follows:

MESSRS. STEWART and MORTON, at NOWRA, on account of THOMAS MARRIOTT, Esq., Liquidator of the Shoalhaven Co-operative Bacon Curing Company, Limited in Liquidation).

BACON CURING FACTORY at Bomaderry, N.S.W., and other Assets of the above Company, consisting of the following:

  1. 4 acs 1 road 18 perches, being lots 9 and 10 of Section 33, on Deposited Plan No. 2880, in the Town of Bomaderry, Parish of Bunberra,county of Camden, TORRENS TITLE million to reservations in Crown Grant), withFactory premises and fixed plant and machinerythereon, as per schedule No. 1
  2. Movable Plant, Office Furniture, Horses, Wag-gone, Carts, and Harness, as per Schedule No. 2.
  3. License to use exclusively in NSW. process for curing Bacon known as “Vecht Mild Cure Process.
  4. “York Castle” Trade Mark for Bacon.

Items 1 and 3 are under mortgage, on which there is a Band of £2050, with Interest at a 5 per cent, per annum, from 2nd June 1900, owing, and will be sold subject thereto.

Item 3 Is held under certain Deeds and Documents, which, together with the Mortgagee over Items 1 and 3, may be inspected at the Offices of Messrs. Perkins. Stevenson, and Co., of 122 Pitt-street, Sydney, Solicitors.

The Vecht Mild Cure Process was tied to the Christ Church Meat Company and Vecht and Stokes individually as is clear from the further provision in the notice that “any Assignment of Item 3 is subject to consent of ARON VECHT, WILLIAM STOKES, and the CHRIST CHURCH CHURCH MEAT COMPANY, Limited.

Lists of the Plant, etc may be inspected, at the Office of THOMAS MARIOTT, Esq. and the Auctioneers, at Nowra, and at the Offices of Messrs. PERKINS, STEVENSON, and CO., Solicitors, Sydney.

So far then there is no direct link between the “York Castle” trademark for bacon and the Vecht Mild Cure Process even though the fact that they are joined in one notice raises the possibility that they were indeed somehow connected. The connection becomes clear when we examine events related to a trademark dispute after the passing of Vecht but related to Stokvis. William Stokvis of Brussels instituted legal action against Barnes Bacon Company Ltd. (Mr WJ Gale being the managing director at this time). The lawsuit related to the use of a secret curing formulation for bacon and hams in 1936. The plaintiff alleged the unlawful use of the trademark and he claimed that this secret method was alleged to be used for bacon made under this trade name when in reality, so he alleged, it was not always used. Two tradenames were involved in the agreement being “York Castle” and “More Pork. The lawsuit is reported in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 16 Jun 1936.

From a lawsuit related to the York Castle trademark in New South Wales, Australia, and despite it taking place sometime after Vecht’s passing, we get possible further insight into how he managed his intellectual property. The trademark and his secret method of curing went hand-in-hand. Only the Vecht Mild Cure Process could be used to produce the York Castle brand of bacon. Vecht would receive monetary compensation for every pig so cured in a territory. (2)

Dr Anderson wrote to me that Vecht used the “York Castle” trademark in NSW and the “Yorick” trademark in Victoria. He also sent me a copy of the Victoria Government Gazette from October 1900 where the trademark is published.

Victoria Government Gazette, October 1900, p 19.

I found the following Yorick poster from A Legal History of Lithography, Dr Amanda Scardamaglia. It shows that the brand was used before Vecht registered it in 1900. It could have been an older brand that he took over. It is a notable example of old bacon branding. Interestingly the bacon is advertised as “special mild”. It appeared before Vecht arrived in Australia in ’94. What the “English system” would be a reference to is a matter of great interest. It sets the background for Vecht’s presence in the Victorian market.

Yorick Bacon and Hams (circa 1881-1890) Printed by Troedel & Co, Lithographers & Printers, State Library Victoria

Let’s return for a moment to the publication in the Victorian Government Gazette in 1900. Dr Anderson made the interesting comment that “Vecht used the ‘York Castle’ trademark in NSW and the ‘Yorick’ trademark in Victoria.” The Victoria Government Gazette was published in October 1900 where the trademark appeared. Dr Anderson commented that “the date is interesting because the following month it was reported in New Zealand that Vecht was on his way to South Africa. Perhaps the Victorian government was slow to publish?” (Private correspondence with Dr Anderson) The timing was of great interest to me. What was happening in South Africa at this time that could have possibly created such an emergency or necessity for him to leave behind all the prospects and possibilities in New Zealand and Australia and move him to go to South Africa?

The backstory becomes very interesting. Cecil John Rhodes, the prime minister of the Cape from 1890 to 1896 had made refrigeration a primary focus. There were two main areas of direct interest to him. The one was the export of fruit. The first consignment of fourteen cases of peaches was loaded onto the Drummond Castle on Wednesday, 13 January 1892 for export to England. It arrived in London on 31 January. Rhodes appointed a select parliamentary committee on fruit culture and fruit exports in that same year. Merriman was the minister of Agriculture in Rhodes’ Government. He happened to be in London on 31 January when the peaches arrived aboard the Drummond Castle. Percy Molteno shared his recollections of this event in the Cape Times: “I remember mentioning to Mr Merriman that a shipment had arrived and invited him to accompany me to see the cases opened. This he readily did. With great delight, we saw case upon case opened up in splendid condition. The public sale of this fruit created a great sensation in the fruit world.” (De Beer, 2003)

Rhodes, after being forced to resign as Prime Minister in 1896 after the unsuccessful Jameson Raid set his sights squarely on the development of the fruit industry. He purchased twenty-nine farms in the Franschhoek, Tulbagh and Wellington districts. These were mainly wine farms, and he converted them to fruit farms. They, collectively, become known as the “Rhodes Fruit Farms” with Harry Pickstone as managing director. They plant approximately two hundred thousand trees on these farms. (De Beer, 2003)

With Rhodes backing the industry to this extent, not only did cold storage facilities become a major drive but steamship companies raced to increase their cold storage capacity. Shortly after the end of the Anglo Boer War, “Table Bay became the first harbour in the world to boast a cold storage terminal specially designed for fruit.” (De Beer, 2003)

The second point of application of cold storage was in relation to meat. The Anglo Boer war was the first time where frozen meat was used to provide an army with meat. David de Villiers Graaff’s company was ideally positioned to capitalise on this and his huge investments in the area of cold storage paid off handsomely when his company secured the contract to supply the English forces in South Africa with meat. This saga overshadows the creation of cold storage works related to the fruit export trade both in terms of its financial scope and the personal investment of Rhodes in the projects. Vecht must have been involved in the fruit project also through De Beers Cold Storage works in Wellington where the fruit was packed and canned as we have seen from the marriage of his oldest daughter to a manager of De Beers Cold Storage in Wellington, but that his prime focus was probably related to the meat contracts becomes clear.

De Villiers-Graaf installs the first refrigeration equipment in the new head office of his company, Combrinck & Co. in Strand Street in Cape Town in 1892. I have been inside these refrigerated rooms many times in my life. His focus was initially only restricted to meat, but soon they expanded to include butter and cheese in the product offering.

In March 1896 his firm Combrinck & Co. orders ice containers from a firm in New York. They order the first ammonia compressors from Glasgow. By 1897 his firm had eight ice and freezing facilities with six in the Cape Colony, one in Aliwal-Noord and one in Kimberley. One was in Beaufort-Wes, one in Piketbergweg (Gouda) and two more in Cape Town. One is in Port Elizabeth and one in Johannesburg.

The name on the building below was later changed to the Imperial Cold Storage & Supply Company but was the first refrigerated chambers erected by the Graaff brothers.

His agents in Australia is identified as Willoughby C. Devlin van Dunn & Co. in Queen’s Place, Sydney.
A suggestion that Graaff appoints a marine engineer now becomes of the greatest importance to our current discussion. In response to this suggestion, Graaff replies that he decided to appoint a properly trained refrigeration engineer from abroad since such expertise was lacking at this time in the Cape Colony. It is possibly this exact same thought, not from De Villiers Graaff, but from Rhodes which led to the seemingly abrupt move from Aron Vecht to the Cape of Good Hope in 1900. (Dommisse, 2011)

Rhodes gave instructions in 1889 that his Diamond company, De Beers must construct cold storage facilities in Kimberley and Cape Town. This happens when he tries to persuade the Schreiner government in the Cape to construct additional freezing space and they refused. He saw the cooling chambers of De Villiers Graaff as a monopoly. He remarked, “This close monopoly must not be allowed to go on.” Initially, De Villiers-Graaff was willing to work with Rhodes and Stephenson tried to convince Rhodes that such an arrangement would work well. (Dommisse, 2011)

In the end, Rhodes could not work with De Villiers-Graaff and gave instructions for the establishment of De Beers Cold Storage. Rhodes was known not to be shy to spend on the right equipment and saw to it that his cold rooms boast with the latest cooling equipment. Construction is completed in February 1900. I am fascinated to learn what Vecht’s contribution was to this building project. It remains an ongoing project! The Cape premises is hugely successful as was the Kimberly operation and four months after the opening of the Cape facility, the management recommends the packing facilities to be expanded from 160 000 cubic feet to 220 000. (Dommisse, 2011)

De Villiers-Graaff transformed his company, Combrinck & Co into the South African Supply and Cold Storage Company which is listed in London. De Beers Cold Storage tried to compete with the Graaff brothers, but the South African Supply and Cold Storage Company was so well entrenched in the supply and distribution of frozen products that De Beers Cold Storage stood no chance. A major stumbling point was that De Beers completely underestimated the importance of owning the refrigerated carriages to transport the meat. It was this exact point which I speculate De Villiers-Graaff learned from Phil Armour, and it would not surprise me if Vecht had any direct dealings with the Armour company, that they would have educated him on the importance of this exact point. De Villiers-Graaff returned from his only recorded visit to Chicago and copied Armour by constructing his own refrigerated railway carts for the transport of frozen products. He also ensured a close relationship with the railways.

De Beers Cold Storage had none of these and meat reported arrived at its destination in a rotten state. The desperation of the situation mimics the report from the Jewish Herald about the unprecedented travel authorisation given to Vecht in 1902 to travel through the country when it reported that Vecht “got the British Secretary of the Colonies, and the Secretary for Foreign Affairs/ and the War Office, to conspire together against the military regulations and issue a pass to him to pass through the British lines during the Boer war — a thing permitted no other foreigner. Strangest of all, he cut all the strands of red tape of all these offices in one day.”

Prospectus of the South African Supply and Cold Storage Company, Ltd.

During the late 1901 and early 1902, Rhodes were frantic in his efforts to win the British army contract to supply meat and to prove that his company was able to deliver. Rhodes never saw De Beers Cold Storage receive the lucrative meat contracts from the British army. He passes away in a small cottage in Kalk Bay on 26 Maart 1902. This is also a location that I often visited over the years and stood next to the bed in which he passed away many times. The meat contracts he wanted to win so desperately and for which Vecht was presumably dispatched throughout the country in 1902 were awarded to De Beers Cold Storage and come into effect on 1 April 1902. The peace treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 Mei bringing the devastating war to an end. (Dommisse, 2011)

The loss of the British meat contracts forces the Graaff brothers to reevaluate their strategy. The years 1898 to 1901 becomes the last years that when the South African Supply and Cold Storage Company had the lucrative Britse meat contracts. Trading in imported frozen meat escalated in this time from 1 965 000 pounds to just below 43 000 000 pounds from Australia. The Graaf’s created a new company, the South African & Australasian Supply and Cold Storage on 27 February 1902, only eight days after Rhodes registered the Imperial Cold Storage & Supply Company Limited in Pretoria to take over all cold storage works and the trading of meat from De Beers Consolidated Mines. Following the war, even the South African & Australian Supply and Cold Storage would cease trading and the Graaff’s would take large shareholding up in the Imperial Cold Storage & Supply Company. These events create a beautiful backdrop for the context of the work of Vecht in South Africa from the time he arrives in South Africa till his departure.

Dr Anderson wrote to me that Vecht seems to have moved around a lot during 1900/1901 before going to South Africa. This would probably mitigate against the picture of him “rushing” to South Africa, but once here, events in South Africa clearly shows that he had his work cut out for him.

Aron Vecht: The Incorporation of Temperature into Cured Transport

When refrigeration was introduced into international trade, its impact on meat quality was unknown. People opted for the less harsh conditions of chilling temperatures and tried to avoid freezing the meat. A drawback of mild cured bacon is that it did not last on long sea voyages under chilled conditions. The English market has, by the time Aron Vecht arrived on the scene, became used to mild cured bacon as opposed to heavy salted which was the kind of meat produced under the Rapid Cure process of Robert Davison. An attempt was made to use the sea voyage for the curing to take place and to pack the pork on ice. Famously the Harris brothers of Calne was involved in exactly this scheme. The Waikato Argus who reported on this in 1901 said that the lowering of the temperature below 32o Fahrenheit (0o C) has ‘invariably faded the flash into a pale, unpleasant colour and alienated the affections of the British matron.” What I think they meant was that lowering it to 0o C was ineffective in securing a good product that would arrive in London. At chilling schilling temperatures, when the meat has not been heated through hot smoking, the curing colour, resulting from the effect of nitric oxide on the meat proteins, giving it a bright pinkish/ reddish appearance would be reversed. If, however, the meat is frozen, such reversal would not take place. The meat would then be smoked when it arrived at its destination and the colour would be “fixed” through the unfolding of the proteins.

The Waikato Argus reported on this progression by Vecht as follows: “Now, however, by what may be called a triumph of transit and cure, a most promising and important trade has begun between New Zealand and England. By employing the Vecht curing process, a New Zealand firm is shipping pigs from that distant colony, placing them in refrigerators with a temperature of 20 deg Fahrenheit (-6 deg C), and curing them here on the banks of the Thames with apparently perfect success.

It was not well understood at the time and it was incorrectly believed that the method of sterilisation of the meat which was part of the Vecht process was responsible for preventing the cured colour from fading. What is true is not that it would have prevented the cured colour from fading, but that it would have stopped bacterial and enzymatic action which spoiled the meat and degraded the meat quality and this would undoubtedly also have affected the meat colour, even though it was by no means the only reason why the colour faded.

The article reported on this as follows. “This success is obtained by first treating the carcase*, before they leave New Zealand, by the Vecht curing process, which allays the action of the cold, and so sterilises the flesh as to prevent the changes which have hitherto interfered with the successful curing at Home of what is grown abroad.” (3)

The Waikato Argus which we quoted above related to the use of temperature and the curing of meat made also provides us with another very valuable bit of information related to the trading of bacon cured with the Vecht method. It reported that “Messrs Trengrouse and Co., who are colonial shippers on a huge scale and the British agents of Armours, of Chicago, are encouraging this new process, and prophesy for it a vast influence on the bacon trade.” (3) The mention of the agents of the legendary firm of Phil Armour is of extreme interest as is the link between Armour’s company and the propagation of Vecht’s method of curing. Armour was the pioneer of freezer technology for the distribution of meat in America and owned probably the largest curing works in Chicago in the world. Vecht was an expert in the refrigeration of meat in particular. Phil Armour was carefully plotting his way to introduce sodium nitrite directly as a curing brine but not wanting to be left out of the huge and lucrative international bacon trade, must have seen Vecht as a brilliant ally to secure bacon for his own trade while avoiding the expensive curing systems such as Auto Cure which Armour knew would be replaced by the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines.

Aron Vecht: His Curing Method

In New Zealand, Dr James Anderson elucidated the secret method of curing of Aron Vecht as follows. He told me that “his mild-cure method of preserving pork involved first roasting and cooling the carcass which was then injected with an antiseptic fluid invented and patented by him (Vecht). It involved hanging the carcass for 13 seconds in a furnace, bathing it in cold water and removing the two outer skin layers. ‘This removes the sweat glands of the pig … and the layer of fat next to the skin having been melted in the furnace saturates the thin paper-like inner skin, and when suddenly cooled hermetically seals the pig.’ The carcass is then split in two and the spine removed, allowing the serum to escape and finally treated with salt at such a temperature as to render the chloride constituent inoperative, thus retaining the albumen which is lost in the ordinary salting method. A newspaper article appeared in New Zealand on 18 September 1893 which reports an interview done by Aron Vecht where he describes his curing method first hand. (4)

In his description, he uses a phrase that stands out. He describes the process in similar terms as what Dr Anderson related to me. He mentions nothing of a vacuum vessel as in the Rapid Cure system of Robert Davison or the Auto Cure equipment of William Henry Oake. He simply states that his saltpetre based, patented brine is “pressure injected into the carcass, which becomes wholly impregnated, and the curing is complete.” (4)

I have often thought about what made Aron Vecht’s patented system unique and different from his compatriots. The singeing of the pork was undoubtedly something he got from the curing method of Henry Denny in Ireland. I will deal with this subsequently and you will see what I mean. Vecht gave the clue in the interview he did with a reporter in New Zealand. (4) He said that after slaughtering, the animal is allowed to cool down. His method of curing allowed for “year-round” application. His system cannot be confused with that of William Henry Oake or Robert Davison. That his patented blend of antiseptics would not have an impact on the meat colour is certain. Only one molecule can cure meat which is nitric oxide, derived in all quick curing systems from sodium nitrate which is turned into sodium nitrite. From the same interview (4) we know that his was saltpetre based (nitrate). At first, I suspected that Vecht probably incorporated the old brine into his process which, by this time was almost universally used in Australia. After I discovered the 1911 process description which fits his in every other way, I realised that he probably did not use old brine as was the cornerstone of William Oakes original mild cure system. I discuss the complete system below with particular reference to the brine he used. If he cooled the carcass down through refrigeration after slaughter, he most definitely did so after the brine was injected “under pressure.”

The fact that the carcasses were transported in refrigerated conditions meant that curing would not have progressed much further en-route to England. Once there, when they were hot smoked before sale, the curing reaction would undoubtedly have continued. Heating the carcass to around 50o C and keeping it at that temperature for as long as 60 minutes is a method that I use myself when there is not enough time to “rest” the cured meat before smoking. The heat allows the brine to be spread through the meat and the smoke materially contribute to nitric oxide formation which results in cured meat.

Messrs Trengrouse and Co

I told you that the one interesting aspect about Vecht was his method of curing. I referred you to the Waikato Argus which did an article on his life from where we got the all-important information on the temperature during the shipment of the meat. The same article mentions that Vecht’s products were sold through the firm of Messrs Trengrouse and Co.. They are described as colonial shippers on a huge scale and the British agents of the Armour Packing Company from Chicago, who are encouraging his new process. This brings us to the next fascinating aspect of this remarkable man’s life namely his link to the legendary provisions and general commission merchants of Messrs Trengrouse and Co.

The firm was officially called Trengrouse, H & Co., and was described as “Provision Agents and General Commission Merchants” Their address was 51, 55, Tooley Street, London, S.E. The firm was established in 1875 by Henry Trengrouse and his brother, who retired in 1908. They had agents in Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Dunedin, (N.Z.), Monte Video, Buenos Ayres and they specialised in butter, cheese, bacon, eggs and canned goods. They claim to have pioneered the trade in New Zealand and Australia in dairy products. Most importantly for our purposes is that they were the agents for Armour & Co. from Chicago and by 1914 they have been Armour’s agents for upwards of thirty years. (1914 Who’s Who in Business) This means that Phil Armour probably set them up himself and dealt directly with them. Phil passed away at the turn of the century.

The grandfather Henery Trengrouse after whom he was named was a legendary figure in his own right. He devoted his life to the invention of a number of methods to improve safety aboard ships after he witnessed the sinking of a ship with a tragic loss of life close to his hometown when he was a young man. (5) Adventure and perseverance ran in the family and, I am sure, accounted for their success in no small way!

Messrs Trengrouse and Co in South Africa

Years ago, when I wrote to you about David Graaff’s Armour – A Tale of Two Legends, I speculated that Philip Armours agents must have visited Cape Town. The basis of my speculation was the global reach of Armour’s network and the fact that Phil himself made his money starting out in the Californian Goldfields and I could not imagine that he sat idly by with the discovery of gold and diamonds on the Rand and Kimberley respectively in South Africa. Further, the link between De Villiers-Graaff visiting Chicago in 1892 where Armour pioneered refrigerated meat transport and refrigeration for the meat trade in general through cold storage works, coupled with De Villiers Graaf’s own focus on this from that time onwards is just too much to be coincidental. I have gone to great lengths over many years to find the details of the agents for Armour but with no luck whatsoever. Not even a hint!

Until Dr James Anderson informed me about Aron Vecht, I was unable to discover the name of the agents for Philip Armour. Introducing me to Vecht, led me to the discovery of the agents of Armour being Messrs Trengrouse and Co who did not do business with Combrinck & Co. (Later the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Co. of De Villiers Graaff) as I suspected but with Langeberg Foods on canning, presumably from the Boland town of Wellington in the Cape Colony.

I know Langeberg Foods very well and will take this up with them directly as well as securing the book where the reference is made -> Langeberg: 50 Years of Canning Achievement, 1940-1990 – Page 27, D. J. Van Zyl, 1990

Developments in Ireland – 1866: The Patent of Henry Denny

Let’s first get some background on Denny. Ireland in the first half of the 1800s was a fertile field for innovation. An excellent example is found in the person of Henry Denny. Part of his remarkable legacy is a firm that once was the largest bacon producer in Europe, Henry Denny & Sons. Henry was born in Waterford, Ireland in 1790.

Denny started out as a provisioner merchant in Waterford. The first reference to him as a bacon merchant comes to us from 1846. In 1854 he started using ice in bacon curing which allowed him to cure meat all year round like his colleagues in Calne. The bacon he cured was also referred to as mild cured bacon and a patent was granted in 1857 on his process. I failed to discover the exact nature of his patented process till Aron Vecht introduced me to it. Like the process invented by C & T Harris, which they called Sweet Cured Bacon, Henry’s process used much less salt. The priority for inventing the first mild cured system, however, goes to William Oake from Ulster whom we know invented this at around the time when Denny had his merchant business or shortly after this and well before Denny entered the pork processing trade. Denny undoubtedly achieved mild cured bacon in a way different from William Oake.

Henry’s curing system is described in one source I consulted (Geocaching) which seems to be a copy from another work that is unfortunately not referenced and all my attempts to locate the original publication has been in vain. The author describes it as follows: “Until the early 19th century, pork was cured by soaking large chunks of the meat in barrels of brine for weeks. Shelf life was poor, as often as the inside of the chunks did not cure properly, and meat rotted from the inside out. Henry Denny and his youngest son Edward Denny introduced a number of new innovations – he used long flat pieces of meat instead of chunks; and they dispensed with brine in favour of a dry or ‘hard’ cure, sandwiching the meat in layers of dry salt. This produced well cured bacon with a good shelf life and revolutionised Ireland’s meat industry. Irish bacon and hams were soon exported to Britain, Paris, the Americas and India.“

Reference is made to the fact that Denny invented several curing techniques and if the description given is correct, it would be one of several inventions. Taken at face value I doubt the superiority of his system over Oake’s invention. It also comes so late in terms of dates that I seriously doubt if this could be the patent that was awarded in 1957. By this time meat injection was already well established which solved the shortcomings of William Oakes invention in his mild cured system of simply filling the curing tanks with brine to diffuse into the meat “naturally.” If this was in fact the patent that was granted in 1857, it would represent a serious step backwards.

A great contribution to my understanding of Denny’s system is the fact that he acquired a meat curing company in Denmark in 1894. The reference is Lets-Look-Again who also seems to quote an uncredited source. They make a statement that this purchase “introduced Irish meat curing techniques to Denmark.” I have over the years come across several authors who made the same claim that the Irish meat curing system was introduced to Denmark in the late 1800s after an Irish firm acquired a Danish processing company. They never gave the name of the Irish firm in question. The end of the 1800s is, however, the wrong time for the introduction of William Oake’s system to Denmark. By this time it was already well established in Denmark and the likely transfer of the technology to C & T Harris took place from Denmark either at this time (closing years of the 1800s) or in the opening few years of the 1900s. For this reason, I never used the reference but I was always curious who the Irish firm was, wrongly credited for the transfer of the original mild cure technology to Denmark. If, as I now suspect, the Irish firm referred to was that of Henry Denny, the question comes up as to exactly what the invention was that he took to Denmark!

Denny could very well have been the inventor of the pork rasher. Geocaching quotes an unnamed source that “the rasher (a piece of bacon to be cooked quickly or rashed) was reportedly invented in 1820 by Henry Denny, a Waterford butcher who patented several bacon curing techniques still used to this day.” It must be mentioned that Denny’s career only started in 1820 but that was not as a butcher. It was as a merchant and he entered the pork processing business only in 1854. There could still be credibility to the claim which I base on the widespread nature of the story in Ireland. Maybe he was a young man with unusual interest and creativity in selling pork at his trading business. The claim may however be apocryphal.

This now brings us to the link between Aron Vecht and Henry Denny which lead me to discover the real invention of Henry Denny and his mild curing process. One aspect of pork curing that I overlooked for years was the importance of singeing. Singeing pork was nothing new. Removing the hair off the carcass and retaining the “rind” was done with straws for centuries. The old method is beautifully illustrated by Тихомир Давчев in their set of photos featured below.

Henry Denny automated this process. He re-looked at the process in light of the latest industrialised equipment available. One publication from 1866 describes it as follows. “Each pig is hoisted by the hind leg, it is hooked on to a lever, which suspends the animal head downwards, and its throat is slit with a sharp knife; the blood caught in a receiver flows into an external tank, from whence it is carted away. The leg is then fixed to a hook, which slides on a round iron bar placed overhead on an incline. A push of the hand sends the dead pig with railway speed to the singeing furnace, a distance of 30 to 50 feet. Here it is taken by a crane, placed on a tramway, and run into the furnace, where the flame impinges on it, and in a moment all the hair is removed. The carcass is re-hooked by the leg, passes into another room, where it is disembowelled, the entrails being transferred to an underground region or be dealt with. The head is next removed, and then the backbone is cut out, thus dividing the carcass into two flitches, which pass, suspended on the round bars and without handling, into the cooling room, where it hangs until the meat is firm.” (Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, Vol. LXXIV July to December 1866) 

Molander (1985)

His fame was in the first place due to his invention of the automated process of pork singeing. He may have, of course, also called his process “mild cured” as with the aid of refrigeration he would have obtained the same result as did William Oake who actually invented the original mild cured process. It is what I suspect Aron Vecht did and his claim that the key feature of his process is his secret antiseptic brine formulation. Since no brine formulation could secure the cooked/ cured look of bacon, I suspect that it was an attempt by him to divert attention from the fact that he essentially copied a patented process that was owned by Henry Denny. The real brilliance of Vecht was in the adjustment of cold storage temperatures from chilled to below freezing point.

Was this disingenuous for him to also have called it “mild cured”? I think not. It illustrates the inherent problem in using the result of the process (i.e. milder bacon) as the name of your product. If the result is the same but a different process was used to arrive at it, how would the consumer know (or care)! From a trademark perspective, it makes it tricky since the words seem to be difficult to protect as it would be the general way people would refer to the bacon, not heavily salted. It is like trying to trademark the phrase “well cooked.”

The one point, which as it stands right now, I believe, is that Denny invented the automated process of singeing the carcass. The publication I site above is the earliest mention of automating the process that I could find and I am now convinced that Vecht got his method from Denny. Auto Curing requires the use of pressure cylinders (autoclaves or retorts) which make the auto cure bacon’s production even more expensive than mild cured bacon. It is the only process that was really patentable because neither sweet cure nor mild cure nor Vecht’s process, neither Denny’s singe process is so unique that it cannot be copied by someone with even mediocre technical skills and is not really patentable. The existence of Aron Vecht and his process proves this.

In this regard it is similar to the refrigeration patent which Harris took out – may I add. Anybody could, and I am sure would make small changes to the system to show it to be unique and to overcome the trademark issue. This was not the case with Auto Cure which relied on unique equipment. To this day, people buy bacon and the exact process is, as it were, lost in the final product. Trade marks speak to consistent quality, but in the final analysis, bacon has always been and still is today a commodity that most people buy on price (given a relatively wide range of acceptable product quality)

I have personally been faced with this exact issue over the years. One invents a new process, but the protection of the process only lasts as long as your staff remains with you. The moment they move away, the process is gone! Till this day meat plants are notoriously shrouded in secrecy. From British producers to the largest bacon producer in South Africa (close and good friends) refuse me access to any of their plants because they are scared will see something I am not supposed to. Phil Armour was famous for trying to break the secrecy which existed even amongst this own plant managers. 

I wonder if this does not also explain why Vecht did this, not in Holland or in the USA or England, but in faraway New Zealand! Processors all claim that they invented processes! Whichever process one talks about!

Have a look at the article below, Effect of Singeing on the Texture and Histological Appearance of Pig Skin. (6) It beautifully describes the process, and it ascribes the tradition to be Danish. The reason I will still give priority to the invention of Denny is that Denny created bacon curing plants in Denmark. I believe that the technology was invented by Denny, transferred to Denmark where it was used on a large scale and subsequently made its way to the Harris operation in Calne and other Wiltshire curers (including Oake Woods – son of William Oake who invented Mild Curing).

There are many traditions that mild curing for example was invented by the Danes, but after 10 years of research, I know that this is incorrect. As I already discussed, I can imagine that through his process Denny also arrived at a “milder cured bacon” but he was by no means the first to have done so. The invention is Irish and was kept a secret till disgruntled Irish curers (on strike) were lured to Denmark under a Danish continual learning scheme where they were paid handsomely to train the Danes in Mild Curing.

1911 Description of what Denny and Vecht’s Process Looked Like

There is a further rear description from the Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, 1911 describing mild cured bacon production without the use of curing baths or old brine. It has all the elements of the Denny/ Vecht system.

It, interestingly, says that it was not too long ago when curing methods were closely guarded secrets, handed down from one generation to the next orally. By 1911 this was not the case any longer and the account which follows is in this new tradition.

The animal is stunned and bled after which the carcass is placed in a tank with 70 – 85 deg C (160 to 185 deg F) water where the carcass is scalded and the hair removed.

The carcass is then pushed into the singeing furnace. It specifies that where Wiltshire bacon is produced, singeing is always used.

Sculping table to the singeing furnace. This furnace was invented by Denny and copied by Vecht.

The carcass is left in the furnace for 25 seconds. The subcutaneous fat which would be soft is changed to hard fat after the carcass has been removed and is cooled down in a cold water bath.

The carcass is hung on dressing bars where it’s cleaned and disembowelled. Singed and unsinged carcasses are from this point onwards treated in the same way.

They are cleaned with cold water and scraped clean. The intestinal offal is removed and handled separately. Kidney fat is still in the carcass at this point.

The carcass is now split and the backbone or vertebral column removed. Secondary offal is removed being the head, feet and kidney fat. It is the removal of the vertebral column which liberates the two sides. The sides were then hung until they sufficiently cooled down, to around 38o F or 3o C.

Scoring – remove the backbone and separate the sides.

The process following is described as follows. “When the temperature is riched, transfer the carcass to the curing cellar. Here the blade bone is drawn out.” Curing according to their method did not involve the re-use of the old brine. Instead, a fresh pickle is pumped into each side at a pressure of 40 lbs. to the square inch. “The pickle is pumped through a pickle needle with a number of perforations arranged in a spiral manner through which the pickle is discharged. The sides are now laid one by one on the floor of the curing cellar which is maintained at a temperature of 42o F or 5o C. The atmosphere must be humid and moist. Each side is covered over by an equal mixture of salt, saltpetre and curing preservative on top of which is placed a heavy layer of salt.” (Journal of the Royal Society, 1911) No mention is made of a liquid pickle.

Curing cellar in an Irish Bacon factory.

“Under these conditions the curing proceeds and the salt, as it melts, take the place of the meat juices.” (Journal of the Royal Society, 1911) In their view, the salt and the rest of the cure “replaced” the meat juices which were drawn out. They worked out that under refrigerated conditions, less salt can be used. The process laster 14 days. A statement is made that the bacon can then be sold as “mild cured bacon”. Alternatively, the bacon could be washed, dried, smoked and sold as smoked bacon.

An interesting comment is made that the bacon would not keep very long in the mild-cured condition. For the bacon to last long, it had to be kept in the salt. Farm cured bacon is typically kept in the salt for 28 days.

Bacon pumping in Denmark. In Denmark, only Wiltshire sides of bacon are produced, and the bacon is all pumped before being placed in the curing bed and covered with salt and saltpetre.

A fascinating and insightful section follows where the curing process is discussed in some detail. “The exact process which goes on in the production of bacon is not merely the displacement of the meat juices by a solution of salt and curing material. There is also the presence of micro-organisms which are always to be found where flesh of any kind exists. These putrefactive organisms assist in the curing process by breaking down some of the tissue of the meat, notwithstanding the presence of salt, which has no antiseptic effect on some of them. This is how the bacon flavour arises as distinguished from fresh or pickled pork. The flavour is largely due to decomposition.” (Journal of the Royal Society, 1911) That there has been a serious progression of scientific thought by this time, is clear. The use of the word micro-organisms is instructive, but surprisingly, they were at this point in Britain completely ignorant of the work in Germany related to the chemical reactions as the basis for curing – at least the bacon curing community was.

Sides of Wiltshire bacon in a curing cellar. In the curing of Wiltshire bacon, the sides are uniformly stacked as in this picture.

What we have here is clearly the Denny/ Vecht curing system and not tank curing which was invented by William Oake and later became part of the Wiltshire brine system. Another observation is in order related to the use of the Wiltshire cut in New Zealand. The largest bacon producer in New Zealand, Hellers, to this day use the Wiltshire cut in its deboning hall. In all probability, this was introduced by Vecht and was part of his curing system as is described in the Journal of 1911.

International Bacon War: Quest for Supremacy

I thought it important to deal with Vecht, Trengrouse and Denny in one letter since it speaks to the state of international competitiveness of the newly emerging superpower of the United States relative to the diminishing influence of England. We must not lose sight of the fact that Vecht’s process was a short-lived attempt by the Dutch (Vecht) and the Americans (Armour) to wrestle away control of the international bacon market from the British.

Over the years I have always wondered why Phil Armour did not try and assert his influence on the lucrative bacon trade not just through exports to Britain (which they did on a large scale), but in the international bacon trade. I never came across them in almost 10 years of research apart from sending bacon from the USA to England. This all changed with the mail from Dr Anderson and looking into the life and career of Vecht.

I speculate that their agents found an ideal ally in the Dutch curer, Aron Vecht. Vecht combined several known (and patented) curing processes, created his own version of mild cure, ostensibly predicated upon the use of refrigeration and an invention by the Irish firm of Henry Denny which automated the singeing process of the carcass. I suspect his allegiance with Armour either led him to become an expert in the newly developing art of refrigeration or he was already interested in this before he came into contact with the Armour Meatpacking company in Chicago. His curing process would have suited Armour in that it was far less capital intensive than Dorset based firm of Oake-Wood’s autocue and despite not being as fast in curing as was accomplished with the autocue equipment, it was a progression on the mild curing process of the inventor of the original process, William Oake, father of the Oake who was a partner in Oake-Woods.

The link with a unique bacon brand is a stroke of genius and something, I am sure, that was carefully deliberated. Before this time, bacon was differentiated by the particular method of curing. As I explained at the start, these would have been dry-cured, sweet cured, mild cured, pale dried or auto cured. There is evidence of Harris going after people using the name “pale dried bacon” but the advent of refrigeration, effectively levelled the playing field as many options became available to produce bacon with far less salt than was traditionally done under the dry-cured system.

Another very important point about Armour must be made. A few years ago, I came across a reference to a secret trial in the use of sodium nitrite done at a packing plant in Chicago. The year was 1905. This was done before its use was legal in any country on earth. I speculated that it was carried out by Phil Armour as very few people would have had the audacity to have tried it. I reported on this experiment in an article and shortly after this all references to it were removed from the publications I cited and I could not get hold of the source documents. I know the author of the article where this reference appeared. He is a prominent person in a leading role in European meat curing circles and I understand why this reference was removed.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it has a tone of credibility. I think that Armour or Armour with the key meatpackers in Chicago of Gustav Swift, and Edward Morris jointly performed the trial. I wrote extensively about this in The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – The Spoils of War. The experiment would have been spectacularly successful and I believe was done on the back of experiments done in German agricultural research centres for years before 1905.

With them having known about the work on nitrites, I believe the process of Vecht suited Armour well as a kind of a “placeholder” without engaging a firm like Oake-Woods and locking them into the Auto Curing system which was the leading system internationally at the time as far as it being patentable and indeed, it was the most widely used international patented system of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

There is an “air” of the thinking of Armour, Swift and Morris in the preamble to a meat science group formed by them, also in the early 1900s where their mission was stated as being “to reduce steers to beef and hogs to pork in the quickest, most economical and the most serviceable manner.” The process they had in mind here was nitrite curing.

It was a key turning point in the history of curing and the Americans spectacularly took the lead when, following the first world war, Griffith, the American Chicago-based company became the evangelists of the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines, a riveting saga which I uncovered and wrote extensively about in the article which I just now sited. So, anticipating what is to come in the direct addition of nitrites to curing brines, there would have been no point in investing in any of the “indirect curing processes” of the English, Danes or the Dutch. There is evidence that the Chicago meatpackers were preparing for this curing revolution for a number of years and the Griffith Laboratories was an important participant who had to be ready to handle the PR of what was to come. They have undoubtedly taken careful note of public perception related to nitrites and had to be careful how they introduce the matter to the public. Besides this, they had to ensure that using nitrites directly in meat curing was legalised. All this were carefully orchestrated and it completely explains why they never fully committed to curing systems that dominated through the rest of the world prior to 1905. Supporting the Vecht system would have been a perfect “placeholder.”

Was the use of the curing technique of Vecht as deliberate as I present it here? I suspect it but have no direct evidence to that effect. Is it a likely scenario, taking the full spectrum of information from that time into account? I believe so! At least it warrants keeping the possibility in mind as we progress our efforts to understand the grand story of the development of bacon!

In Conclusion

The discovery of the life and legacy of Aron Vecht brings together many loose strands in years of research and I am thrilled to share them with you! The real genius of the Irish bacon curer Denny; glimpses of the first attempts of Philip Armours company (he has passed away by this time) to dominate the international bacon production business or flirtations with the thought; the experimentation with refrigeration temperatures for bacon on long voyages; identifying the international agents of Phil Armour; identifying the brain behind Cecil John Rhodes (De Beers) attempt to enter the meat refrigeration business in competition with De Villiers-Graaff; highlighting to me the importance of the singeing of pork in the grand saga of the history of bacon curing; demonstrating how an orthodox Jew could be a master bacon curer; the tantalizing information that Vecht fought in the Anglo Boer war, opening up a new frontier of investigation and validating my own inclusion of this war as background to my book on bacon curing! Finally, the value of international cooperation through the work of Dr Anderson. Without his communication alerting me to the life of Vecht these giant strides in the investigation on numerous fronts would not have taken place. Bacon & the Art of Living is an international collaboration and full credit goes to every single person, who, like Dr Anderson contributed over many years to this work.

I am thrilled that you continue to live so close to the meat trade which I have dedicated my life to and the history of which I am discovering more about every single day!

Lots of love,

your dad.

(c) eben van tonder


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Notes

Note 1: Liquidation Sale Notice

The notice of the liquidation reads as follows:

MESSRS. STEWART and MORTON, at NOWRA, on account of THOMAS MARRIOTT, Esq., Liquidator of the Shoalhaven Co-operative Bacon Curing Company, Limited in Liquidation).

BACON CURING FACTORY at Bomaderry, N.S.W., and other Assets of the above Company, consisting of the following:

  1. 4 acs 1 road 18 perches, being lots 9 and 10 of Section 33, on Deposited Plan No. 2880, in the Town of Bomaderry, Parish of Bunberra,county of Camden, TORRENS TITLE million to reservations in Crown Grant), withFactory premises and fixed plant and machinerythereon, as per schedule No. 1
  2. Movable Plant, Office Furniture, Horses, Wag-gone, Carts, and Harness, as per Schedule No. 2.
  3. License to use exclusively in NSW. process for curing Bacon known as “Vecht Mild Cure Process.”
  4. “York Castle” Trade Mark for Bacon.

Items 1 and 3 are under mortgage, on which there is a Band of £2050, with Interest at a 5 per cent, per annum, from 2nd June 1900, owing, and will be sold subject thereto.

Item 3 Is held under certain Deeds and Documents, which, together with the Mortgagee over Items 1 and 3, may be inspected at the Offices of Messrs. Perkins. Stevenson, and Co., of 122 Pitt-street, Sydney, Solicitors.

Any Assignment of Item 3 is subject to consent of ARON VECHT, WILLIAM STOKES, and the CHRIST CHURCH CHURCH MEAT COMPANY, Limited. Lists of the Plant, etc may be inspected, at the Office of THOMAS MARIOTT, Esq. and the Auctioneers, at Nowra, and at the Offices of Messrs. PERKINS, STEVENSON, and CO., Solicitors, Sydney.

By order. THOMAS MARRIOTT, Liquidator, ‘

The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW, Tue 29 Jun 1909)

Note 2: York Castle Bacon

The York Castle Trademark is of huge interest. William Stokvis of Brussels instituted legal action against Barnes Bacon Company Ltd. (Mr WJ Gale being the managing director at this time). The lawsuit related to the use of a secret curing formulation for bacon and hams in 1936. The plaintiff alleged the unlawful use of the trademark and he claimed that this secret method was alleged to be used for bacon made under this trade name when in reality, so he alleged, it was not always used.

The judge said in the judgement that York Castel bacon has been sold for years throughout New South Wales and that the secret mild cured formulation was attached to it. An agreement was entered on 20 March 1922 in which Stokvis gave Barnes Bacon Company Ltd. the right to use the secret curing formulation and the trademark for 10 years in exchange for monetary compensation for every pig so cured in New South Wales. In addition, Stokvis agreed in June 1922 to pay James Macgregor (an expert in mixing the cure and supervising the curing) half of the royalties received from Australia and New Zealand. Two tradenames were involved in the agreement being “York Castle” and “More Pork.”

In June 1922, JM Watt became the owner of the trademark limited to New South Wales and in January 1926, its scope was extended internationally. Watt dies in 1926 and the partnership created in 1928 ceased in 1928. In 1929 Stokvis became the owner of the trademark. He subsequently renewed the trademark till 1949.

It was established that pork was cured for a period by Barnes Bacon Company Ltd using a curing method, different from the secret mild curing method, yet, the secret curing method was attached to the trade names. Key witnesses were Messrs. WJ Gale, A Robertson, WJ Read, and Colin C Gale. The judge regarded the witness of all except Colin C Gale as unreliable.

So far it’s all of little interest or direct bearing of our historical consideration of various curing methods. One of the legal counsels referred to a previous case between Orange Crush (Australia) and Cartell (41 C.L.R. 282) where the high court found, by majority decision, that the pickle had lost its identity in the final product. The judge did not accept the point as being applicable in this case, but it is of supreme importance for our current consideration.

It has been my contention for many years that unless a specific piece of equipment, fully protected under patent laws is attached to a certain curing or other processes; or, unless a trademark is linked to a process and the agreement between the licensor and the licensee specifically links the method of curing and the trademark, if the outcome is equal, any process loses its identity in the final product and a process or formulation without a trademark so linked to it or the use of patent-protected equipment, curing methods or any meat processing methods are essentially unprotectable.

It is interesting that the judge accepted the argument of WJ Gale that “a different cure is only a matter of the first pickle that is put into bacon.” Judgement was in favour of the plaintiff.

The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) · 16 Jun 1936, Tue · Page 6

Note 3: From the The Waikato Argus, Friday, November 22, 1901.

The issue of temperatures takes front and central role in the saga. The following newspaper article deals with this.

“Frozen pigs are arriving in England from New Zealand, to be ‘borne cured’ for the British breakfast table (say the Daily Mail). This explanation is that the world is short of pigs, and as people still insist on eating pork the shippers and curers are straining every nerve to reach the remotest parts where the pig is sold. This is why England is buying bacon from Siberia, Russia, Denmark, Holland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and a score more of our colonial friends and foreign rivals. Hitherto this foreign bacon has always arrived in England already cured, and since it is ‘mildly cured ’ to suit the British palate, a very large portion of the bacon sold to the householder is slightly tainted. To prevent this numerous attempts have been made to put the dead pig into ice and turn him into bacon on arrival in England. But the lowering of the temperature below 32deg Fahrenheit (0 deg C) has ‘invariably faded the flash into a pale, unpleasant colour and alienated the affections of the British matron. Now, however, by what may be called a triumph of transit and cure, a most promising and important trade has begun between New Zealand and England. By employing the Vecht curing process, a New Zealand firm is shipping pigs from that distant colony, placing them in refrigerators with a temperature of 20 deg Fahrenheit (-6 deg C), and curing them here on the banks of the Thames with apparently perfect success. This success is obtained by first treating the carcase*, before they leave New Zealand, by the Vecht curing process, which allays the action of the cold, and so sterilises the flesh as to prevent the changes which has hitherto interfered with the successful curing at Home of what is grown abroad. Messrs Trengrouse and Co., who are colonial shippers on a huge scale and the British agents of Armours, of Chicago, are encouraging this new process, and prophesy for it a vast influence on the bacon trade.”The Waikato Argus, Friday, November 22, 1901

Note 4: Interview with Aron Vecht

Note 5: Interesting link to the Grandfather of Henry Trengouse

In my quest to trace the history of bacon curing I wondered many times over 10 years why I cannot find any information about the Armour packing plant in Chicago trading in bacon. It was one of the largest meatpacking plants on earth. I discovered through investigating the life of Aron Vecht, the orthodox Jewish meat curer and inventor of his own curing system, the agent for Armour was the English firm of Henry Trengrouse and they were huge traders in bacon on Armours behalf.

The grandfather of Henry Trengrouse who owned the firm with his brother, Richard, turns out to be a particularly interesting man. He was also Henry Trengrouse. It strikes me that much of his spirit lived on in his grandson. I quote this section from the book Cornish Characters and Strange Events by S. Baring-Gould:

HENRY TRENGROUSE, INVENTOR

Helston is a quaint old town, once of far more importance than at present. It possessed an old castle, that has now disappeared. It was one of the six stannary towns, and prior to 1832 returned two members to Parliament. It still glories in its “Furry Day,” when the whole town goes mad, dancing, in spite of Methodism. It has on some of its old house-gables pixy seats, and it had a grammar school that has had notable masters, as Derwent Coleridge, and notable scholars, as Henry Trengrouse. It is the key and capital to that wonderful district, rich in geological and botanic and antiquarian interest, the Lizard.

The great natural curiosity of Helston is Loe Pool, formed by the Comber, a small river, penned back by Loe Bar, a pebble-and-sand ridge thrown up by the sea. The sheet of water lying between wooded hills abounds in trout, and white swans float dreamily over the still water. The banks are rich with fern, and yellow, white, and pink mesembryanthemum. Formerly the pool rose till it overflowed the lower parts of the town; now a culvert has been driven through the rocks to let off the water as soon as it has attained a certain height.

Henry Trengrouse was born at Helston, 18th March 1772, the son of Nicholas Trengrouse (1739-1814), and of Mary, his wife, who was a Williams.

The family had been long among the freeholders of Helston, and possessed as well a small estate, Priske, in the parish of Mullion; but the family name is taken from Tref-an-grouse, the House by the Cross, in the same parish.

Henry was educated in Helston Grammar School, and became, by trade, a cabinet-maker.On 29th December, 1807, when he was aged thirty-five, a rumour spread through the little town that a large frigate, H.M.S. Anson, had been driven ashore on Loe Bar, about three miles distant. Mr Trengrouse and many others hastened to the coast and reached the bar.

The Anson, forty-four guns, under the command of Captain Lydiard, had left Falmouth on Christmas Eve for her station off Brest as a look-out ship for the Channel Fleet.

A gale from the W.S.W. sprang up, and after being buffeted about till the 28th, with the wind increasing, the captain determined to run to port. The first land they made was the Land’s End, which they mistook for the Lizard, and only discovered their mistake when the cry of “Breakers ahead!” was heard from the man on the lookout. They were now embayed, and in face of the terrible storm, it was impossible to work off, so both cables were let go. The Anson rode to these till the early morning of the 29th, when they parted, and the captain, in order to save as many lives as possible, decided to beach her on the sand off Loe Pool. A tremendous sea was running, and as she took the beach only sixty yards from the bar, she was dashed broadside on, and happily for the poor fellows on board, heeled landwards. Seas mountains high rolled over her, sweeping everything before them. Then her masts went by the board, her mainmast forming a floating raft from the ship almost to the shore, and over this scrambled through the maddened waves most of those who were saved.

It was a terrible sight to witness for the hundreds of spectators who had by this time collected on the beach, but it was almost impossible for them to render any assistance.

At last, when all hands seemed to have left the ship, two stout-hearted Methodist local preachers—Mr. Tobias Roberts, of Helston, and Mr. Foxwell, of Mullion—made an attempt to reach her, so as to see if anyone remained on board. They succeeded and were soon followed by others, who found several people, including two women and as many children. The women and some of the men were safely conveyed ashore, but the children were drowned. There were altogether upwards of a hundred drowned, including the captain, who stood by the frigate to the last. The exact number was never known, as many of the soldiers deserted on reaching the shore.

The survivors salved a good deal from the wreck, amongst which were watches, jewellery, and many articles of considerable value. They were placed all together in a bedroom of the old inn at Porthleven, with a soldier with drawn sword on guard. One of the beams that bent under such an unusual weight may be seen bowed to this day. A local militia sergeant was soon afterwards sent to Helston in charge of a wagon-load of these valuable goods, and when halfway to his destination was accosted by a Jew, who offered him £50 in exchange for his load. “Here is my answer,” said the sergeant, presenting a loaded pistol at his head, and the fellow hurriedly took his departure.

Much indignation was raised at the time by the way in which the victims of the disaster were buried. They were bundled in heaps into large pits dug in the cliff above, without any burial service being performed over them. It was customary everywhere at that time for all bodies washed ashore to be interred by the finder at the nearest convenient spot. But as a result of the indecent methods of burial of the Anson victims, an Act of Parliament was framed by Mr Davies Gilbert, and passed on 18th June 1808, providing “suitable interment in churchyards and parochial burying-grounds” for all bodies cast up by the sea.

The Anson was a sixty-four gun frigate cut down to a forty-four and had seen much service. Among many fights, she figured in Lord Rodney’s action on 12th April 1782, formed part of the fleet which repulsed the French squadron in an attempt to land in Ireland in 1796, helped in the seizure of the French West Indies in 1803, and in 1807 took part in the capture of Curaçao from the Dutch. It was not long after her return from this latter place that she left Falmouth for the cruise on which she met her fate.

In 1902 the hull of the Anson, after having been submerged for ninety-five years, came to light again. She was found by Captain Anderson of the West of England Salvage Company, whose attention had been directed to the wreck by a Porthleven fisherman. Unfortunately at the time, the weather was so stormy that Captain Anderson could not proceed with any efforts of salvage, and with the exception of one visit of inspection the interesting relic was left untouched. But in April 1903, with a bright sky and a light breeze from the northeast, he proceeded to the spot and inspected the remains. The hull of the vessel was not intact, and several guns were lying alongside. One of these, about 10 ft. 6 in. long, Captain Anderson secured and hoisted on to the deck of the Green Castle by means of a winch, and afterwards conveyed it to Penzance. It was much encrusted. Amongst the mass of débris also raised were several cannon-balls.

But to return to Henry Trengrouse, who had stood on the beach watching the wreck, the rescue of some and the perishing of others.

Drenched with rain and spray, and sick at heart, Henry Trengrouse returned to his home and was confined to his bed for nearly a week, having contracted a severe cold. The terrible scene had made an indelible impression on his mind, and he could not, even if he had wished it, drive the thought away. Night and day he mused on the means whereby some assistance could be given to the shipwrecked, some communication be established between the vessel and the shore.

He was a great friend of Samuel Drew, whose life was devoted to metaphysics, and it was perhaps the contrast in the two minds that made them friends—one an idealist, the other practical.

Trengrouse had a small competence, besides his trade, and he devoted every penny that he could spare to experiments, first in the construction of a lifeboat, but without satisfactory results.

The King’s birthday was celebrated at Helston with fireworks on the green; and as Henry Trengrouse looked up at the streak of fire rushing into the darkness above and scattering a shower of stars, it occurred to him, Why should not a rocket, instead of wasting itself in an exhibition of fireworks, do service and become a means of carrying a rope to a vessel among the breakers? When a communication has been established between the wreck and the shore, above the waves, it may become an aerial passage along which those in distress may pass to safety.

Something of the same idea had already occurred to Lieutenant John Bell in 1791, but his proposal was that a shot with a chain attached to it should be discharged from a mortar. Captain George William Manby had his attention drawn to this in February 1807, and in August of the same year exhibited some experiments with his improved life-preserving mortar to the members of the Suffolk House Humane Society. By the discharge of the mortar, a barbed shot was to be flung onto the wreck, with a line attached to the shot. By means of this line a hawser could be drawn from the shore to the ship, and along it would be run a cradle in which the shipwrecked persons could be drawn to land.

Manby’s mortar was soon abandoned as cumbrous and dangerous; men were killed during tests; notwithstanding which he was awarded, £2000. The great merit of Trengrouse’s invention was that the rocket was much lighter than a shot from a mortar, and was, moreover, more portable, and there was a special line manufactured for it that would not kink, nor would it snap, because the velocity of the rocket increased gradually, whereas that from a discharge of a mortar was sudden and so great that the cord was frequently ruptured.

The distinctive feature of Trengrouse’s apparatus consisted of “a section of a cylinder, which is fitted to the barrel of a musket by a bayonet socket; a rocket with a line attached to its stick is so placed on it that its priming receives fire immediately from the barrel”; whereas a metal mortar could not be conveyed to the cliff or shore opposite the scene of disaster without being drawn in a conveyance by horses, and where there was no road with the utmost difficulty dragged over hedges and ploughed fields by men. Not only so, but a shot discharged by Captain Manby’s mortar was liable to endanger life. Wrecks generally happened in the dark, and then the shot would not be visible to those on the wreck. But Trengrouse’s rocket would indicate its track by the trail of fire by which it was impelled and could be fired from either the ship or the shore.

Trengrouse expended £3000 on his experiments and sacrificed to this one object—that of saving life—his capital, his business, and his health. He cut off the entail on Priske, which had belonged to the family for several generations, and sold it to enable him to pursue his experiments. There was much that was pathetic in his life: there were the long and frequent journeys to London from Helston, four days by coach, sometimes in mid-winter and in snowstorms, with the object of inducing successive Governments to adopt the rocket apparatus, meeting only with discouragement. Nor was this all. After all his own means had been exhausted, he received a legacy of £500 under a brother’s will, and this sum he at once devoted to further endeavours with H.M. Government for the general adoption of his rocket apparatus.

The Russian ambassador now stepped forward and invited Trengrouse to S. Petersburg, where he assured him that, instead of rebuffs, he would experience only the consideration due to him for his inventions. But Trengrouse’s reply was, “My country first”; and that country allowed him, after the signal services he had rendered to humanity—to die penniless.

His original design was to supply every ship with a rocket apparatus; as vessels were almost invariably wrecked before the wind, the line might the more easily be fired from a ship than from the shore.

Trengrouse once met Sir William Congreve, who also claimed to be the inventor of the war-rocket; and Trengrouse said to him in the course of their discussion, “As far as I can see, Sir William, your rocket is designed to destroy life; mine is to save life; and I do claim to be the first that ever thought of utilizing a rocket for the saving of human lives.”

Trengrouse moreover invented the cork jacket or “life preserver.” This was a success and has never been improved on. It has been the means of saving many hundreds of lives. He also built a model of a lifeboat, that could not be sunk, and was equal to the present lifeboats of the Royal Lifeboat Association in all respects except the “self-righting” principle. It was not until February 28th, 1818, after many journeys to London, and much ignorant and prejudiced objection that he had to contend against, such as is found so usual among Government officials, that Trengrouse was able to exhibit his apparatus before Admiral Sir Charles Rowley. A committee was appointed, and on March 5th it reported favourably on the scheme.

In the same year the Committee of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House reported in high terms on the invention, and recommended that “no vessel should be without it.”

Thereupon Government began to move slowly; in the House, the matter was discussed and haggled over. One speaker exclaimed: “You are guilty of sinful negligence in this matter, for while you are parleying over this invention and this important subject, thousands of our fellow-men are losing their lives.”

At last, Government ordered twenty sets of the life-preserving rockets, but afterwards resolved on making the apparatus itself, and paid Trengrouse the sum of £50, the supposed amount of profit he would have made on the order. Fifty pounds was all his ungrateful country could afford to give him. In 1821, however, the Society of Arts pronounced favourably on his apparatus and presented Trengrouse with their silver medal and a grant of thirty guineas.

Through the Russian ambassador, the then Czar sent him a diamond ring, in consideration of the great advantage his apparatus had proved in shipwrecks on the Baltic and the Black Sea. Even this he was constrained to pledge, that he might devote the money to his darling project.

With these acknowledgements of his services, he had to rest contented, but ever the news of lives having been saved through his invention was a solace to an even and contented mind.

Henry Trengrouse died at Helston on February 19th, 1854.

As he lay on his deathbed with his face to the wall, he turned about, and with one of his bright, hopeful smiles said to his son, “If you live to be as old as I am, you will find my rocket apparatus all along our shores.” They were his last words; in a few minutes he had passed away.

The rocket apparatus is along the shores at 300 stations, but not, as he had hoped, onboard the vessels. He had despaired of obtaining that, yet that is what he aimed at principally.

In April 1905, owing to the loss of the Kyber on the Land’s End coast, questions were asked in the House of Commons relative to wireless telegraphy between the lighthouses and the coast. On that occasion one of the most valuable suggestions was made by a shipping expert, who considered that the Board of Trade should make it compulsory that a light rocket apparatus should be carried by all vessels, so that, when in distress if near the coast, the crew could send a rocket ashore. This marine engineer said: “On shore the rockets must be fired by practised men, such as coastguards because they have to strike a small object; but on a vessel, they have only to hit the land, and if people are about, the line will quickly be seized and made fast. At present, too, horses and wagons have to be used, and sometimes it is difficult to find a road leading down to the spot from which help must be rendered. Probably for twenty pounds an appliance could be kept on board a vessel which would send a line ashore in less time and with more certainty than at present. When a vessel is being blown ashore, I have seen rockets fired from the land return like a boomerang to the cliff on account of the strength of the gale. In my judgment, mariners should assist in their own salvation.”

On this Mr H. Trengrouse, grandson of the inventor, wrote to the Cornishman, 24th April 1905:—

“Your suggestion in the Cornishman of the 15th instant … that all vessels should be compelled by the Board of Trade to carry this apparatus, is very practical, and should, and I trust may be soon adopted.”

It may interest your readers to learn that the inventor, my grandfather, the late Mr. Henry Trengrouse, of Helston, urged this upon successive Governments without any encouragement whatever, and I on two occasions have also suggested it to the principals of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, who have informed me of a strong opinion always entertained, that on the occasion of wreck, there would probably not be any one on board possessing sufficient knowledge of the use of the apparatus to render it of any value; which seems very strange indeed, and might be readily obviated by, at least, the captain and officers of vessels being instructed in its use—surely simple enough. My grandfather devoted much time to make it so; and the advantage of an appliance for use on board is so palpable, and the loss of life during many years by its absence so considerable, that it is extremely gratifying to observe a renewed and increasing interest in the subject, which I hope, Sir, as you state, being so important, may now be kept to the fore.”

I am, Sir,

“Your obedient servant,”

“H. Trengrouse.”

That this admirable letter to the Cornishman should at the time produce no effect on the Board of Trade is what every one who has had any dealings with that Board would predicate.

At length, however, some goading has roused that obstructive, inert body into inquiring into this matter. I read in the Daily Express of 27th January 1908: “The question whether the carrying of rockets for projecting lifelines should be made compulsory on all British ships is being investigated by a special committee appointed by the Board of Trade. One witness before the committee said that he had seen fifty men drowned within sixty yards of the shore in a gale, and that all might have been saved had the vessel been equipped with line-throwing guns.”

So—after the lapse of eighty-six or seven years, and the loss of thousands of lives that might have been saved had not the Board of Trade been too inert to move in the matter—an inquiry has once more been instituted. Let us hope that after this inquiry the matter may not be allowed to fall again into neglect.

That the rocket fired from the shore has been already the means of saving lives, the following report on it made to the Board of Trade, for the year ending 30th June 1907, will testify:—

“During the year ended as above, 268 lives were saved by means of the life-saving apparatus, that is to say, 127 more than the number saved by the same means during the previous year, and 67 more than the average for the previous ten years. The total number of lives saved by the life-saving apparatus since 1870 is 8924. This number does not include the large number of lives saved by means of ropes and other assistance from the shore.”

After the loss of the Berlin, belonging to the Great Eastern Company, in 1907, the attention of the Dutch Government was called to the advantage of having the rocket apparatus on board ship, and legal instructions were drafted, making it obligatory upon all vessels of over two hundred tons gross to carry rocket apparatus.

Henry Trengrouse’s noble life was a failure in so far as that it brought him no pecuniary results—covered him with disappointment, reduced him to poverty. He received, in all, for his life’s work, and the sacrifice of fortune and the landed estate of his ancestors, £50 from Government, £31 10s. from the Society of Arts, and a diamond ring that in his time of need he was constrained to pawn, and which he was never able to redeem.

Russell Lowell puts these lines into the mouth of Cromwell, in his Glance behind the Curtain:—

My God, when I read o'er the bitter lives
Of men whose eager hearts are quite too great
To beat beneath the cramp'd mode of the day,
And see them mocked at by the world they love,
Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths
Of that reform which this hard toil will make
The common birthright of the age to come—
When I see this, spite of my faith in God,
I marvel how their hearts bear up so long;
Nor could they, but for this same prophecy,
This inward feeling of the glorious end.

Henry Trengrouse married Mary, daughter of Samuel and Mary Jenken, 19th November 1795. She was born at S. Erth, 9th September, 1772, and died at Helston, 27th March 1863. By her he had one son only who reached manhood, Nicholas Trevenen Trengrouse, who died at the age of seventy-four; and one daughter, Jane, who married Thomas Rogers, solicitor, of Helston; Emma, who married a Mr Matthews; and two, Mary and Anne, who died unmarried, the first at the age of eighty, the latter at that of ninety-four.

To Mr. Henry Trengrouse, the son of Mr Nicholas T. Trengrouse, I am indebted for much information relative to his grandfather, as also to a lecture, never published, delivered in 1894 by the Rev. James Ninnis, who says in a letter to Mr H. Trengrouse, junior: “Most of the detail I have taken from notes of my father, dated 1878; he got them from a conversation with your respected father.”

Mr J. Ninnis’ grandfather had stood on the beach by the side of Henry Trengrouse, watching the wreck of the Anson.

A portrait of the inventor, by Opie the younger, is in the possession of the family at Helston, as is also the picture of the wreck of the Anson sketched at the time by Mr. Trengrouse. For permission to reproduce both I am indebted to the courtesy of the grandson of the inventor.

Note 6: Effect of Singeing on the Texture and Histological Appearance of Pig Skin


References

 The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 – 1931) ,Thu 24 Dec 1908

De Beer, G., Paterson, A., and Olivier, H.. 2003. 160 Years of export. The History of the Perishable Products Export Control Board.

Dommisse, E.. 2011. Sir David Pieter de Villiers Graaff: Sakeman en Politikus aan die Kaap 1859 –1931.

Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, Vol. LXXIV July to December 1866

Ice & Refrigeration, Vol 20, Jan – June, 1901

The Jewish Voice, St. Louis, Missouri, Friday, December 04, 1908

Jewish Herald (Vic. : 1879 – 1920) Fri 22 Jan 1909

Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, no 3078, Vol LX, 17 November 1911

Lebrecht, N. 2019. Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947. Simon and Schuster

Molander, E.. 1985. Effect of Singeing on the Texture and Histological Appearance of Pig Skin. Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Department of Meat Technology and Process Engineering, 11 Howitzvej, DK-2000 Copenhagen F, Denmark

1894, New Zealand, Patents, Designs and Trade-Marks

The Standard, London, Greater London, England, Saturday, November 16, 1889

The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia)16 Jun 1936, Tue

The Waikato Argus, Friday, November 22, 1901


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Chapter 13.04: Finally – nitrate, nitrite, nitric oxide as valuable molecules and the triumph of nature over foolish strawman positions

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


Finally

October 1960

Bacon & the Art of Living

When I say that it was my study of bacon that taught me the essence of the art of living, the reality is that in the first place it taught me to accept who I am in life. As important as my hopes and aspirations are, I am not my ideals and dreams. I am not the most current fad of the ever-changing mental world we live in. I am in the first place the physical being who lives in a physical world, connected to the bountiful earth that brought me forth. Despite the fact that I am in my mental world the centre of the universe, I am not! Life is not the life I live in my brain minus the physical world. It is all one thing and my mental world is only my perception of the real world I live in. In reality, I am nature!

I am Nature

My brain is a very complex physical event and my consciousness, as I define it with my human mind is here today and gone tomorrow. My thoughts, my thinking, is predicated upon my memory and indoctrination (learned information and past experiences). What is fundamental and what bacon taught me is that my connection with the earth itself is not primarily through my brain. The billions upon billions of atoms that form the molecules and the amino acids and bacteria and proteins and synapsis and organs that make up my body by its most basic essence is my connection to nature. My essential nature is my oneness with the universe and the universe is nature. Bacon curing is not a study of any food in that it mimics natural physiological processes essential for life. Nitrogen plays an essential role in it irrespective of the current thinking on the benefits or dangers of its consumption.

My initial resistance against eating bacon was initially not restricted to the question of nitrites. I had to work out for myself if I am comfortable eating other animals. Like the question about nitrogen, the fact that I eat other animals is a fact of my existence as a human being whether it is fashionable to do so or not. We only perceive this as a moral dilemma because we have departed our natural environment and so we think that in the plant kingdom the same predatory behaviour does not exist. If we see all living organisms as essentially the same, we will understand that to arbitrarily choose to eat one group and not another is non-sensical.

The Zambian Revelation

During my second trip to Zambia, I’ve spent days in the forests in the north of the country close to the Kongolese border with a remarkable man, Richard Horton. He looks at the trees and plants and knows every one of them by name. Which one is related to which. The basic characteristic of each individual fruit and flower. The locals call him “Capenta Mabullo,” meaning “The Man who Counts Leaves.” It was through the eyes of Richard and walking the forests of Zambia that I discovered that in the plant kingdom we find the same struggle for life and death as we find in the animal kingdom and the same predatory behaviour of many plant species. Walking with him through the woods becomes the same experience as seeing a lion hunt in the Kruger National Park or crocodiles hunting wildebeest in the great migrations on the Serengeti plains of Kenia.

It is here that I learned that to think that plants are different from mammals or other animals is a view based on our removal from the forests of our youth. Humanity lost its perspective on our essential nature. In the first place, the plants and trees of the forest are just as much alive with struggles and pleasures as the world of animals and insects. Both are living. Both have intellect – yes, not as we would define it in our human-centric worldviews of intellect. Choosing one over the other – to assign intellect and emotions as we understand it arbitrarily to the one group and not the other is supreme foolishness. In the Zambian forests, I have seen plants behaving like animals. They strive and compete; they weep and reach out in joy.

Evaluating the effect of the human intellect on the natural world, I am at a loss to see the benefit of our version of intellect and I fear that if we don’t come to our senses, our time as a species is short and nature will remove the element poised to destroy its world from the universe. Then, again, saying that we evolved intellect for a particular reason beyond simply survival is an assumption I can not make. That our intellect is not superior to that of plants and animals and insects and microbes is clear when we evaluate the effect our intelligence have on the natural world. The most we can say, it seems to me, is that our intellect is different in degree and an effective means to dominate. It manifests in a different way but I fail to see its superiority in quality or the result of its “differentness.” So, at least, it seems to me. Superseding everything is nature and it is nature that dictates that we eat in order to live and as a food source, nature feeds itself from all it brings forth, including humans as part of the world of animals.

I Consume and Will be Consumed – the Same Eternal Sycle for All

Before I could engage the issue of nitrites in meat I had to come to grips with the fact that no matter what I assign to animals and plants – the fact is that I consume both natural “forms” just as I will be consumed by them one day is the natural cycle of everything. The micro-world and insects will feast on my body one day long with plants. The possibility still exists that my initial end may be brought about by an animal if I continue to venture into forests. This does not make the animals or trees or microorganisms or insects immoral. It is life. Nature does not care about my view of morality. Nor yours!

When I transfer my view of emotion, righteousness or morality to non-human living beings (plants, animals, insects, microorganisms), it is supreme foolishness. These are mental constructs that operate solely in the mind-space of humans and within the ambit of human culture. It is natural in the sense that it is from nature (being our natural brains), but what we think and dream up is not a result of nature and is not inherently “natural.” It does not represent nature automatically.

One of the best recent developments in our mental world is the fact that we start to value the animals and plants who share the world with us. Abusing and mistreating them becomes cruel and unnatural. Inflicting suffering on nature for the sake of our own comfort is the most unnatural thing we can do and recognising this is a sign of a maturing understanding. Mistreating our food source becomes physical harm we do to them and mental harm we do to ourselves! However, to assign more to them than what nature intends is unnatural. I consume living beings that I share this world with. It took me years to understand this and it came to me through the understanding of the curing of bacon. I struggled with the fact that I am making my living through the death of other animals. The first lesson I had to learn was that it is unnatural to try and be more natural than nature itself.

The Basic Problem – Our Evolving Culture

As human populations increased and our culture developed we changed our natural habitat. We urbanised and had to design our own food sources. Humans incorporated the preparation of food into our culture and changed it for the sake of distributing it to the cities and towns we started living in. Food, in its most natural form, is best suited for our bodies as this is how we initially evolved. In so doing we did not always understand the implications of what we were doing. One of the most important lessons we had to learn, not just related to additives but also food sources themselves, like red meat, was the issue of “how much.” Including many additives at the wrong inclusion ratio becomes unhealthy and even poisonous. Red meat, for example, must be consumed in moderation. Too much will have serious health consequences. Not just ingredients and types of foods must be carefully considered, but also methods of preparations. Science is invaluable in a continual investigation into these matters so that we can improve our health.

A curious position emerged in particular related to the use of nitrites in foods. Despite the fact that nitrogen is an inherent constituent of animal and plant proteins and despite the essential role it plays in human physiology, there exist among parts of our population a perception that nitrite is one of the key villains in modern food. This group of our population further see the presence of nitrite restricted to cured meat and bacon in particular.

The advice from the WHO that intake of cured meat must be limited as is the case with red meat, alcohol, fatty food, refined carbohydrates and sugars, in particular, is something that every food scientist will agree with. In general, humans per capita consume more food than ever with the accompanying diseases of obesity and the impact on our general health. For some reason, the perception still exists that bacon or possibly cured meat should be singled out. Some go as far as to equate the consumption of these products with cigarette smoking.

Understanding why this is the case and dealing with this issue brought me to the greatest realisation about life namely the value of using nature itself as our guiding principle in the design of our food and our lives. Right at the outset then I can reveal that the greatest lesson I learned from bacon over many years is that if we want to be safe, we must strive to use the ratios and proportions of various compounds naturally found in the human body and in plants. This extends much further than only food. Over the years I have taken these lessons and applied them to every area of my life including things like exercise, water intake and stress. I learned to limit my mental activity during the day by quieting my mind whenever the flurry of mental activities goes out of hand. The blueprint of nature became the essence of my goals.

How I discovered that nitrate and nitrite have key physiological functions in the body and that it is by no means a villain to be avoided at all times in foods came to me through the contemplation of and search for the original location on earth where nitrate curing of meat most probably developed into an art form. I will deal with nitrosamines and the fact that most nitrosamines are cancer-causing in animals, but before I do so, let me start by giving you the chronology of my own discovery that nitrate, nitrite and nitric oxide are three absolutely essential molecules for our existence on earth.

How I discovered the Value of Nitrate, Nitrite and Nitric Oxide to Human Health

It was my search for the original location where meat curing was turned into an art form that made me look at the use of salt in meat preservation which predates the use of nitrogen salts. The general consideration of salt led me to mummification which took me natural deposits of nitrate in the Atacama Desert in South America and the Turfan Depression in the West of China. In searching for supporting evidence of the general development of technology related to nitrates, I happened upon a very clear and effective remedy from this region which used nitrate, a cure so revolutionary that it was only finally understood by science in the 1980s which unlocked the reality of the absolutely key role of nitrate, nitrite and nitric oxide in human physiology. So, in re-capping the progression of my search for the location of the birthplace of nitrate curing of meat, I am actually telling the story of my discovery of the value of nitrite, nitrate and nitric oxide to human existence and health.

The Story at a Glance

My quest started with a consideration of salt which is older than humanity itself. My interest is in its use as a meat preservative. When did this start and how and what are its functional benefits? Most of this has been dealt with in Chapter 12.10: Meat Curing – A Review, but I left an important link out in that discussion namely a realisation that studying mummies and mummification technology through the ages may be a very productive way of searching for the oldest known meat preservation technology and the use of salts at a time before writing was invented. I applied this thinking and did a survey of the oldest mummies on earth which yielded the most startling two results.

atacama-mummy-570x427.jpg

A semi-natural mummy in Chile’s Atacama Desert

The oldest mummies on earth, dating from around 7000 BCE are the Chinchorro mummies from the one place on earth that is at the same time the dryest and is replete with the highest concentration of natural sodium nitrate, the Atacama Desert from Chile and Peru!  What makes this startling is that sodium nitrate has been the curing agent of choice for meat until it was replaced after World War 1 by sodium nitrite. I always thought that the use of sodium nitrate in meat curing became popular due to the cured colour it imparts to meat and that its preserving ability was a secondary application. I also thought that its widespread use was a very recent development that reached a height in Europe at the end of the 1800s.  Following my logic about mummification technology, I was certainly not expecting a date of 7000 BCE for a probable use of sodium nitrate in meat curing.

I turned my attention to Asia from where, in an iconic review article from Binkerd and Kolari (1975), they claim that the use of nitrates in the curing of meat was first used as meat preservative “in the saline deserts of Hither Asia and in coastal areas.” They say that “desert salts contained nitrates and borax as impurities” and the discovery was accidental when they actually thought they use ordinary sea or bay salt (sodium chloride).  I wanted to examine the veracity of their claims.

What I discovered was the most startling possibility, that curing technology was developed into an art form between a particular location in China and another one in Austria. Even more than that, following the mummy trail, I managed to identify one particular geographic location which is a prime candidate for the exact location where the technology of curing was discovered, developed and spread across the rest of Asia and into Europe.  This is an amazing possibility and the fact presented by themselves are startling!

The oldest mummies in China are found in the Taklimakan Desert, in the Tarim Basin. Right here, in the region where the mummies are found, in the Turpan-Hami Basin, massive nitrate ore fields, close in proximity to the Tarim Basin exists.  Nitrate deposits, so massive that it is estimated to be at least 2.5 billion tonnes and comparable in scale to the Atacama Desert super-scale nitrate deposit in Chile.

tarim_32

A Tarim mummy

At the graves near Loulan, one of the bodies were subjected to radiocarbon dating which indicated that she died about 1200 BCE.  In the oldest cemetery so far discovered, the Small River Cemetery, mummies were discovered which carbon tests, done at Beijing University, show to be 3980 years old. This takes the known date for meat preservation, by our logic of linking it with mummification, to almost 4000 years ago in China.

The two areas in the Atacama Desert and the Taklimakan Desert in China share a striking similarity in weather. They are both some of the aridest regions on earth.  A second factor that plaid a role in the natural mummification is rapid freezing due to extreme cold conditions in the winter and then, of course, the very high sodium chloride content of the soil.

I honed in on this region in China for its geographical importance as being on the important Silk Road connecting Asia with the Middle East and Europe. I asked if there is any evidence of the development of sophisticated thinking pertaining to the use of sodium nitrate salt from this particular region.  My reasoning is that if meat curing as an art developed here, that would have been a springboard for the development of related applications.

The results of my enquiry have been nothing less than startling and leave me with little doubt that I have identified one of the exact locations on earth from where the art of curing meat developed and was spread into Europe and back into Asia.  Not that they were the only ones who would have discovered this. I am convinced the ancients in the Atacama Desert would have easily made the same link with meat preservation but it was here, in China’s Western front, on the Silk Road, where a level of sophistication in thought related to the application of sodium nitrate developed that is unrivalled, as far as I am aware off, by any other location on earth.

The first factor in favour of the Tarim Bason for the birthplace of curing technology that was spread into Europe is then the enormous natural deposits of sodium nitrate. Secondly, you have the mummies which are something that observant ancients would have noticed almost immediately. It won’t take you 4000 years to realise that something extraordinary is happening with the corpses. The third fact relates to the level of sophistication in the application of sodium nitrate.

The clue of such sophistication of thought comes to us in the discovery of an ancient medical prescription dating from some time between CE 456 and 536, during the life of the famous Daoist alchemist and physician Toa Hongjing in a cave close to the city of Dunhuang, right in our area of interest.

The text describes the treatment of a condition identified as a case of severe angina, i.e. restricted blood flow due to the narrowing of the cardiac arteries.  The treatment was to place saltpetre (potassium nitrate) under the tongue.

The basic curing pathway that alleviates the condition by the ancient prescription is a reduction of the nitrate through bacteria under the tongue to nitrite and in the tissue, transported there by the blood, the nitrite is converted to nitric oxide.  The role of nitric oxide as a vasodilator was, amazingly, only discovered in 1987 simultaneously by a group of researchers at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Beckenham led by Professor Salvador Moncada and by a group in the USA led by Professor Louis Ignarro. So momentous was this discovery that the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded for the work.  Once nitric oxide was identified as playing a role in physiological processes, it was found to be involved in many processes from inflammation to crying. So, here we have a text, detailing a medical prescription in the 5th and 6th decade of the Christan Era, from China, that has only been fully understood by modern science in 1987!  This by itself is an astounding fact!

It gets even more startling. It turns out that this exact reaction sequence of nitrate ion that is reduced to nitrite through bacterial reduction and changed to nitric oxide, along with the influence of acidity and various reductants on the speed of the process is something that is well known in meat science. Humphrey Davy, in 1812 (cited by Hermann, 1865) was the first one to note the action of nitric oxide upon haemoglobin. On 7 May 1868, Dr Arthur Gamgee from the University of Edinburgh, brother of the famous veterinarian, Professor John Gamgee (who contributed to the attempt to find ways to preserve whole carcasses during a voyage between Australia and Britain), published a groundbreaking article entitled, “On the action of nitrites on the blood.” He observed the colour change brought about by nitrite.  He wrote, “The addition of … nitrites to blood … causes the red colour to return…” Over the next 30 years, it would be discovered that it is indeed nitrites responsible for curing and not the nitrates added as saltpetre.  It was Polenski who first speculated that saltpetre is reduced to nitrite in the curing of meat in 1891 and 1901 Haldane showed that nitrite is further reduced to nitric oxide (NO).  (Fathers of Modern Meat Curing)

Meat curing has been known to follow this exact pathway since 1901. The tantalising possibility, now presents itself that the preserving nature of the salt was recognised from things like the natural mummification in this exact region in China. The salt was applied to meat in which it had an amazing preserving impact as well as, what must have been, a mysterious reddening effect. To the ancients, it probably looked as if the meat was coming to life again. The Chinese alchemists in all likelihood gravitated to this as a possible key component of the elusive elixir of immortality. Finding such an elixir was the goal of Chinese alchemy. They probably applied its preserving power to all kinds of ailments and in a process of trial and error, a treatment for angina must have been especially effective.

Such experimentation takes many centuries and if this was a known cure and part of a medical prescription by CE 400 or CE 500, it means that curing of meat must have been very advanced in terms of it being practised in this region by this time.  From here, in terms of its key position on the Silk Road, the curing technology would have spread across Asia and into Europe.

Mummification – Key to Preservation Technology

The use of salt in embalming is an obvious application of the preserving power of salt to meat. It also seems reasonable to speculate that salt for preserving meat for domestic consumption came first and the application of the technology to mummification was probably a later development. One obvious reason for this is that meat preservation for consumption would have been a daily requirement. An immediate need, for a large group of people. So, many people, over a long time would have been engaged in experiments with various salts and ingredients to determine by a simple process of observation which salts ingredients and combination of factors preserved meat best. Burying the dead and mummification, on the other hand, was a far more infrequent event, with very few people working on solving the problem resulting in a much slower development trajectory. It is far more probable that techniques for meat preservation in general use would have been applied to the preservation of human bodies after death and in the art of mummification.

If one assumes this logic, it becomes an important tool to establish a date by which food preservation with salt was done by a society. The use of salt in embalming leaves us with clear records with precise dates and exactly what was used in meat preservation. If one assumes that meat preservation for general consumption would have predated the use for embalming, we can fix precise dates by what time a society used which salts to preserve meat.

I found support for this reasoning from Valerie Wohl. She writes, “While we do not know exactly how embalming began, it is likely that methods common at the time for preserving meat, fowl or fish probably suggested a clue for early techniques. One might bleed a fish, for example, then preserve it by salting, smoking, sun drying or otherwise heating it to prevent decomposition and store it for a later time. By the time of the very earliest documentation of the process of embalming (in about 500 BCE), it had become a sophisticated technique that had been evolved over hundreds of years.” (Wohl, V.)

The Chinchorro Mummies of the Atacame Desert

This line of reasoning yielded the most surprising results imaginable. Not in my wildest imagination did I think that the oldest mummies and their preservation would be linked, not with sodium chloride, but with what has been the curing salt of choice up until at least 1905, namely sodium nitrate. I have always thought, based on research on the subject, that sodium nitrate was used for preserving meat from the 1600s and reached its height in Europe in the 1700s and 1800s before it was replaced with sodium nitrite from around 1905 and in particular after World War 1. I thought it was used in isolated places around the world where various cultures re-discovered the reddening effect it had on meat, independently and over a long time and that this slowly filtered through to Europe where it gained popularity over time until it became a general practice.  Never did I expect sodium nitrite to have been used for meat preservation since between 5000 and 7000 years BCE and not due to its reddening effect, but for its preserving properties. Let’s look at this case.

It turns out that the oldest mummies on earth are the Chinchorro mummies from the Atacama Desert in Chile and Peru, dating from as early as 7000 BCE. (Guillén, S. E.; 2005) Gypsum, a sulphate mineral, was later used with clay (3000 – 1300 BCE), but mud and clay played an important role from as early as 5000 BCE.

The fascinating link is between this region and sodium nitrate. Nowhere on earth are such large natural deposits of this salt found. The soil here is rich in sodium nitrate salt which is known as Chilean Saltpeter to distinguish it from potassium nitrate or regular saltpetre. A war was fought over these deposits and securing it was a major consideration of Germany going into World War 1. The second important factor is that the Atacama desert is the dryest place on earth. The soil is so rich in saltpetre and it is so dry that mummification occurred naturally, leaving mummies that exist since 7020 BCE.

Two of the most important ingredients in meat preservation namely heat/ drying and saltpetre were present in the mummifications rituals of the Chicharro people of the Atacama Desert since as early as at least 5000 BCE. I do not think that it is too far a stretch to assume that these people knew about the meat preserving ability by drying in combination with their special salts (sodium nitrate).  Even though it is complete conjecture, I am comfortable to say that preserving meat through sodium nitrate salt and drying was probably known since at least 5000 BCE in Chile and parts of Peru. It is then not a stretch to say that this was likely to be known in the other two main regions in the world where saltpetre is found naturally namely in China and India. This is, of course, a fascinating possibility since this particular salt became the curing agent of choice in the 1700s which gave rise to the food category of cured meats and directly resulted in our use of sodium nitrite in meat curing today. This date of between 5000 and 7000 BCE is completely in line with a date proposed by Binkerd and Kolari.

Despite this tantalising possibility, the actual sodium nitrate concentrations at the burial sites in the Atacama Desert has never been studied. The degree of mummification varies tremendously (Aufderheide, A. C.; 2003: 141) which will indicate that various factors have been present in varying degrees.

The Tarim Mummies of China

A date of between 5000 and 7000 BCE is completely in line with a date proposed by Binkerd and Kolari. According to their iconic 1975 review article about the history and use of nitrates and nitrites in the curing of meat, “it appears that meat preservation was first practised in the saline deserts of Hither Asia and in coastal areas. Desert salts contained nitrates and borax as impurities. However, the reddening effect of nitrates was not mentioned until late Roman times.” (Binkerd, E. F. and Kolari O. E.; 1975: 655)  A probable time for this discovery is however not given.

I first thought that what they were talking about was salt preservation generally, but the more I look at events in the Atacama desert, the more I wondered if the particular preserving power of sodium and potassium nitrate was not known from the earliest times and the discovery, focusing on its preserving power and not on its reddening effect on cured meat.

A further elaboration of what Binkerd and Kolari may have been talking about comes to us from a 1977 newspaper article. According to it, the suspicion is that prehistoric nomadic hunters in Western Asia began carrying salt, containing nitrate with them to preserve the hunting catch. (The Indianapolis Star;  1977) The focus was indeed on nitrate and its preserving ability and not just on salt generally. I learned that nitrate deposits occur and precipitate as an efflorescent crust in amongst other the Egyptian and Namibian deserts, the Abu Dhabi sabkhas, and deserts of the Mojave, Death Valley and of course, the Atacama Desert and the Gobi Desert.  (Warren, J. K.;  2016: 1278)

It is, however, the largest desert in China, the Taklimakan Desert of Western China that offers the biggest surprise when I find the oldest examples of natural mummification in China, right in this desert region, replete with natural nitrate deposits. The conditions are almost identical to those of the Atacama desert.

Like the Atacama desert, the Taklimakan Desert is at the same time one of the aridest regions on earth and massive nitrate ore fields exist in the Turpan-Hami Basin, close in proximity to the Tarim Basin, in the Xinjiang province, where the oldest mummies in China was found. The nitrate deposits are so substantial, that an estimated 2.5 billion tons exist, comparable in scale to the Atacama Desert super-scale nitrate deposit in Chile. (Qin, Y., et al; 2012) The mummification happened, as was the case with the mummies of the Atacama Desert between 5000 BCE and 7020 BCE,  spontaneously.

The initial discovery was made in 1939 by the Swedish archaeologist Bergman Folke. A set of tombs were discovered in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, known as the Xiaohe Tombs. For 60 years the tombs were forgotten until in 2000 a researcher, head of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, found the tombs again. It wasn’t until 2005 that the excavations were complete. (www.ancient-origins.net)

The size of the area is unprecedented. So far there have been 330 tombs found in multiple different layers. The tombs include adults and children as well as 15 intact mummies. About half of the tombs were looted by grave robbers. It is the first time anywhere on Earth that so many mummies have been found.  (www.ancient-origins.net)

“Several bodies have been excavated from graves near Loulan, a site that once bordered a still shrinking lake fed by the Kongi River. Among these is the body of a young female with remarkably well-preserved facial features, whose radiocarbon date indicates that she died she died about 1200 BCE.” Subsequently, more than 500 tombs have been studied.  Dr Wang Bing Hua, director of the Ürümxi’s Archeological Research Institute, attributes the spontaneous mummification to three factors:  arid climate, salty soil and shallow, winter burial. Average salt content of the desert soil near Turpan is about 10g/ L but in the very surface layer, it can be five times greater. At Hami the soil contains layers of gypsum and at Cherchen actual salt blocks are obvious within the soil, especially near the surface.  Most burials are only about a meter below the surface.  (Aufderheide, A. C.; 2003: 268, 269) In the oldest cemetery so far discovered, the Small River Cemetery, mummies were discovered which carbon tests, done at Beijing University, show to be 3,980 years old. This takes the known date for meat preservation, by our logic of linking it with mummification, to almost 4000 years ago in China. The nitrate in Xinjiang Lop Nur exists in two forms: natural sodium nitrate mine and natural potassium nitrate. (en.cnki.com.cn)

The Turpan Basin is a “fault-bounded trough located around and south of the city-oasis of Turpan, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in far western China, about 150 kilometres (93 mi) south-east of the regional capital Ürümqi.” “The surrounding mountain ranges are the central Tian Shan in the west, the Bogda Shan in the north-west, the Haerlike Shan in the north-west, and the Jueluotage Shan in the south. Beyond the surrounding mountain ranges lie the Junggar Basin in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south.” (www.revolvy.com)

“Some geographers also use the term Turpan-Hami Basin, which is understood as including the Turpan Depression along with the Hami Depression (located to the east of the Turpan Depression, and to the southwest of the city of Hami) and the Liaodong Uplift separating the two depressions.” (www.revolvy.com)

One of these mummies may hold a further clue to their preservation. She became famous for her “excellent preservation and beauty and it is known as the Beauty of Xiaohe. It is a white person with round eyes, perfect eyelashes, and long hair and has features that are more similar to a European person than a Chinese person.” (www.ancient-origins.net)

According to Elizabeth Wayland Barber, her “beautiful eyelashes finally proves an earlier hypothesis, deduced from little detail at Zaghunluq, that those bodies that mummified had to have died in early winter, flash freezing and gradually freeze-drying over the next few months whereas other bodies decomposed.” She was dismayed at people’s acceptance or refutation of his arguments without dealing with the arguments posed.  In the Beauty of Xiaohe she, at last, had hard evidence. “Eyeballs, being wet, cause rapid decomposition of both themselves and the eyelash-holding eyelids when warm; but by the same token, being wet, cause rapid decomposition of both themselves and the eyelash holding eyelids when warm, but by the same token, being wet, both they and the thin overlaying eyelids will freeze rapidly when being very cold, thus securing the eyelashes in place.  Unlike putrefaction, the gentle process of freeze-drying will not dislodge eyelids.” (Mair, V. H., Hickman, J.;  2014:  35)

It has been known from the earliest times that meat curing could be done only in the winter in the absence of refrigeration. If not, the putrefying and decomposing forces would overtake the preserving action of saltpetre and decomposition would be unstoppable. It is the combination of cold and dry conditions along with the use of sodium nitrate to preserve and ordinary salt (sodium chloride) to aid in drying out the meat, that forms a link between the earliest forms of mummification and modern meat-curing techniques. It seems unreasonable to think that the result of these forces, in combination, would have gone unnoticed. I further suspect that the power of these forces would have been practised in relation to fish, fowls, game and domesticated animals for centuries before they found inclusion in the earliest mummification practices.

The Silk Road

The location of the Turpan-Hami and Tarim Basins are very important. Crossing the Taklimakan Desert is possible at the foot of the mountains surrounding the Turpan-Hami Basin or along its streams such as the Tarim, “that spring from the mountains to enter the desert from its periphery but soon vanish into the sand. As ancient caravans from Eastern China approached Dunhuang at the edge of this segment of what eventually came to be part of the Silk Road to the Mediterranean, the near absence of water in the desert’s centre forced them to make a choice. The southern option skirts the desert along its southern edge at the foot of the steep Kunlun slopes descending from Tibet’s high plateau. Alternatively, the northern route passes through Hami and those communities living along the Kongi and Tarim rivers that lead to Loulan and Lop Nor.  It is along these routes that mummies from the Tarim Basin have been found.”  (Aufderheide, A. C.; 2003: 268, 269)

The caravans on the Silk Road approached Dunhuang, crossing vast sodium and potassium nitrate deposits. If the knowledge of its power was developed in this region and exported to Europe, I am sure that there should be remnants of this ancient knowledge in this city.

“One of the people who has extensively studied the Caucasian mummies of China, Professor Victor Mair of Pennsylvania University, said that he believes that early Europeans long ago spread out in different directions. He believes that some of these peoples travelled west to become the Celts in Britain and Ireland, others went north to become the Germanic tribes, and still, others journeyed east to find their way to Xinjiang. These ancient European settlers are believed to represent some of the earliest human inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, and Mair has stated that from around 1800BCE the earliest mummies to be found here are exclusively Caucasoid or Europoid rather than Chinese in origin.”

The origins of the mummies have been studied extensively using DNA technology.  Writing in the journals BMC Genetics and BMC Biology, Chunxiang Li, an ancient DNA specialist at Jilin University, and colleagues report on their analysis of human remains from the Xiaohe tomb complex also on the eastern edge of the basin.

They conclude that by reconstructing a possible route by which the Tarim Basin was populated, Li and colleagues conclude that “people bearing the south/west Asian components could have first married into pastoralist populations and reached North Xinjiang through the Kazakh steppe following the movement of pastoralist populations, then spread from North Xinjiang southward into the Tarim Basin across the Tianshan Mountains, and intermarried with the earlier inhabitants of the region, giving rise to the later, admixed Xiaohe community.” (Killgrove, K, 2015)

“The populations from the Russian steppe seem to have contributed more genetically to this population than did the populations from the oases of Bactria. “The groups reaching the Tarim Basin through the oasis route,” the researchers note, “may have interacted culturally with earlier populations from the steppe, with limited gene flow, resulting in a small genetic signal of the oasis agriculturalists in the Xiaohe community.””  (Killgrove, K, 2015)

A New York Times article on the origin of these people presents the picture clearly. It reads that “all the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.” (Wade, N; 210)

It is however not the origin of these people who interest me as much as their destination and the destination of the traders who passed through this region. The Silk Road that ran through this region reached into the heart of the Middle East and Europe to the West and into the rest of China and India to the East. There is an interesting possibility that comes up and that is if it is possible that the Europeans brought the technology with them. Of course, this is a possibility but then there is the matter of the unique level of sophisticated insight into saltpetre from this exact region. Such a level of understanding of saltpetre did not exist in Europe for many centuries. It seems more likely that the transfer of technology went from Tarim, East, into Europe, rather than the other way round. The next section explains what I mean by this.

Dunhaung

The question is if there is any evidence that anything was done with the nitrate deposits and the clear evidence of its preserving power in the mummification. If this was the region where curing of meat was progressed into the art that we know it as today, is there any evidence of this? Any ancient document or reference, not just from China generally, but linked to this region. These were the actual questions I asked myself as I was searching. This is not a device I employ after the fact for the sake of creating drama.

I knew my general geographic area of focus was the one I show below featuring the Tarim Basin.

IMG_0132[1].PNG

I started plotting the important points.

IMG_0134[1].JPG

Looking at the images above, the saltpetre deposits are the largest at Yuli, marked as NO3-. Loulan is the city where many of the mummies have been found. Dunhuang is a major city before the trip past or across the desert was undertaken on the Silk Road past the Tarim Basin.

I did a search for any reference to saltpetre from the city of Dunhuang which would have been a key trading city in the area and important in terms of its location on the Silk Road. Not in my wildest imagination did I expect to uncover what I found!

It is here, in the Mogao Caves, where a remarkable find was made by the Daoist monk, Wang Yuanlu on 25 June 1900. The mix of religious and secular documents date from the 5th to the early 11th centuries.  One text is of particular interest to us, the Dunhuang Medical Text. “The text has been carefully studied by China’s leading experts in traditional Chinese medical literature and ancient manuscripts. The text is attributed to the famous Daoist alchemist and physician Toa Hongjing (CE 456 – 536).” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005) There is evidence that it relies on earlier traditions from the Han and Sui Dynasties. “The original was decorated with images of the Three Daoist Lords and the Twelve Constellations, indicating links with Doist traditions.  In Translation, it reads as follows:

Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts 1
Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts 2

(Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

Until the 1500s this is the only script of its kind that we know off. “The symptoms described by the patient, as described in the Dunhuang manuscript, suggests an advanced case of cardiovascular distress. The colour of the fingernails (cyanosis) indicates ischaemia (lack of oxygen in the tissue) due to restricted blood flow.  Cold hands and feet are additional symptoms of this condition. Also, acute pain suggests that the patient may be suffering from severe angina, i.e. restricted blood flow due to the narrowing of the cardiac arteries.”  (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“Modern treatment for angina is glyceryl trinitrate or isosorbide dinitrate. So, at first glance, there seems to be a similarity in treatment. All three remedies contain the all important nitrate. Salpeter is, however, an inorganic compound that exists as a positively charges potassium cation (K+) and a negatively charged nitrate anion (NO3-). Concerning organic nitrate, such as glyceryl trinitrate, there is a covalent bond or a molecular bond between the nitrate moieties (NO3) where they share electron pairs which form the bond with the rest of the molecule (CH2). Where glyceryl trinitrate relaxes the muscle lining of the artery to relax, enlarging the vessel and so allowing more blood flow, saltpetre by itself will have no effect on the treatment of angina. (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

This is however not the full story. The remarkable feature of the Dunhuang text is that the combination of the use of saltpetre, not on its own, but when applied according to the dictates of the text, becomes a remedy for exactly the condition described. “The thing about glyceryl trinitrate is that this too, in itself, is not a vasodilator (relaxing of the arterial lining). It is transformed, probably in the arterial wall, into a chemical species which is the vasodilator. Under very special circumstances, exactly as detailed in the Dunhuang text, the nitrate ion from saltpetre also converts to exactly the same species which is the vasodilator. Despite the fact that glyceryl trinitrate has been in use for over a hundred years, the identity of this species has only been discovered in 1987.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“Lining almost all blood vessels on the inside is a layer of cells known as the endothelium. A very important function of the endothelium was first reported in 1890 by Furchgott and Zawadzki. The presence of acetylcholine (a small biologically active molecule) in the bloodstream affects vasodilation and it was generally assumed that acetylcholine acted directly upon vascular muscle. However, this was found not to be the case. Furchgott and Zawadzki showed convincingly that acetylcholine acted, not upon the muscle of the artery, but upon the endothelium and the endothelium produces a “second messenger” which then acts upon the muscles to effect relaxation. This second messenger was christened “the endothelium-derived relaxing factor” (EDRF).” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

During the 1980s, an intense effort was effected to identify the EDRF. It was initially assumed that it would turn out to be a complex molecule like a hormone. This speculation enhanced the surprise when the chemical nature of the molecule was finally determined. It turned out to be a small diatomic molecule called Nitric Oxide (NO).  “That it had a physiological role, in a process as important as vasodilation, came as a complete surprise.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“The discovery was made simultaneously by a group at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Beckenham led by Professor Salvador Moncada and by a group in the USA led by Professor Louis Ignarro. The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded for this discovery. Once nitric oxide had been detected in one physiological process it was found to have roles in many others, from inflammation to crying. That it should have remained undetected during a hundred years of intense scrutiny of human physiology is astonishing. Glyceryl trinitrate is a vasodilator because it is transformed by an enzymatic process (possibly by the enzyme xanthine oxidoreductase) into nitric oxide.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

Let us now return to the Dunhuang text. Is there any way that the inorganic nitrate could be transformed into nitric oxide?  “In a healthy body it is very unlikely, that nitrate which is present in the blood plasma, is converted to nitric oxide. However, there is a species, nitrite (NO2-), very closely related to nitrate (NO3-), for which conversion into nitric oxide is quite possible. Do humans ever convert nitrate into nitrite? Such a conversion can occur in the mouth and it is this aspect of the Dunhuang prescription that is so interesting. The saliva contains many bacteria, some of which contain the enzyme nitrate reductase, which converts nitrate into nitrite.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“Experiments on rats have shown that reduction of nitrate to nitrite is confined to a specialised area on the posterior surface of the tongue. If the same applies to humans, the Dunhuang procedure, which specifies that the saltpetre should be placed under the tongue will maximise the conversion of nitrate into nitrite. The retention of saliva as described would also enhance nitrite production.  Unlike nitrate, nitrite is physiologically active.  t is an antiseptic and a vasodilator, although not a powerful one. It has been suggested that animals, particularly cats, lick wounds because of the antiseptic effect of nitrite in the saliva. Although not a powerful vasodilator, there is now direct evidence that rat hearts, when subjected to global ischaemia, generate nitric oxide and that a significant proportion comes from nitrite present in the tissue. Ischaemic tissue is very acidic and the acid affects the conversion of nitrite to NO via the following equilibria:”

reaction of NO2 to NO.png

(Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“Calculations, assuming only a modest level of nitrite in ischaemic tissue, show that enough nitric oxide from the above equilibria to activate guanylate cyclase, the enzyme responsible for the initiation of the cascade of reactions which lead, eventually, to vasodilation. So, if nitrite enters the plasma, as a result of administration of sublingual saltpetre, it could generate nitric oxide in ischaemic tissue. Because of the abundance of blood vessels under the tongue sublingual administration of a drug is a good way of getting a drug into the bloodstream and bypassing the stomach. Also, the tongue, in traditional Chinese medical theory, is linked to the function of the heart.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

“The interaction of saliva and nitrate to generate nitrite before conversion to nitric oxide in ischaemic tissue gives considerable credence to the Dunhuang procedure as a treatment for cardiovascular distress.” (Cullen, C, Lo, V.;  2005)

Here, in the Tarim Basin, we have three things present. One of the world’s largest natural saltpetre deposits. Natural mummification dating back to just over 3000 years ago. From these, the preserving power of these soils would have been evident to all since the mummies existed then already. The longevity of the corpses would have been evident to the ancients. We have a record of very sophisticated use of saltpetre from very early in the Christian Era from this exact region. In fact, some of the most sophisticated use of the salt on record and the exact mechanics is even today mirrored in the act of curing itself which has been until the early 1900’s when the direct addition of sodium nitrite replaced saltpetre as curing agent of choice.

Until that happened, curing was done by the addition of saltpetre which was reduced, through bacterial action to nitrite which diffused into the muscle for the purpose of preservation. The similarity in the curing action and the mechanism relied on, in the utilisation of saltpetre in the Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts is startling, to say the least. Of course, I am not suggesting that the full or even a partial understanding of the mechanism was known to the ancients, but the application did suggest a much more detailed understanding of saltpetre and its efficacy on meat muscles which could easily have originated from the experience with curing! Seeing the preserving power of the salt and the reddening effect of the meat could have led them to an application of the salt for heart conditions even though the reduction steps may not have been fully understood.

This is without a doubt the best possible location from anywhere in the world where the curing of meat could have originated in an art form which would have been preserved and transmitted to successive generations through societies which later became known as guilds. The picture is not of wondering hunters who stumbled upon the salt and early farmers using it for preserving meat – or at least, it could have started like this. But if it happened in this exact region, it soon found itself in the most advanced society on earth of its time with the most sophisticated thinking about chemistry. The Chinese alchemists in all likelihood gravitated to this as a possible key component of the elusive elixir of immortality. Finding such an elixir was the goal of Chinese alchemy.  They probably applied its preserving power to all kinds of ailments and in a process of trial and error, a treatment for angina must have been especially effective.

Here, at a key location on the silk road, the knowledge of curing and the power of saltpetre could easily have been spread through India and China to the East and right into the heart of Europe to the West.

This is a remarkable find!

The Fascinating Link between Turfan and Salzburg

The possibility that the art of meat curing was developed in Turpan and spread around the world is most promising. Despite this not being my main point under discussion here, it is important to note that Europe may also have influenced the community around Turpan. Influences certainly did not only go one way.

A fascinating link has been discovered between the mummies in Turfan and the Austrian city of Salzburg. Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania was committed to trace the ancestry of the mummies. “In Xinjiang, a Chinese colleague had slipped him a . . . gift: a swatch of blue, brown, and white cloth taken from a twelfth-century-bc mummy. The fabric looked like a piece of Celtic plaid. Mair passed it over to Irene Good, a textile expert at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Good examined it under an electron microscope. The style of weave, known as a “two over two” diagonal twill, bore little resemblance to anything woven by Asian weavers of the day. (Indeed, it would be almost another two millennia before women in central China turned out twill cloth on their looms.) But the weave exactly matched cloth found with the bodies of thirteenth-century-BCE salt miners in Austria. Like the DNA samples, the mysterious plaid pointed straight towards a European homeland.” (Tocharians: The Whites of Ancient China)

This startled me. The thread that ties it all together is salt and meat curing. Is it possible that a mummy found in the region which I believe may have been pivotal in spreading nitrate curing of meat across the world may have some direct or indirect link with the Austrian salt mines? It unlocks the possibility that work done on the use of nitrate salts was influenced by work done in Austria.

In my mind, the fact that nitrate and nitrite did not only have negative effects on human health was discovered by contemplating the possible location where the art of meat curing with nitrate originated. Today students learn this from textbooks but I somehow like the journey of discovery that I took much more.

Villifying Nitrite: A Drama for Fools

After telling the story of my own discovery that nitrate, nitrite and nitric oxide is far from evil molecules, tantamount to poison being added to meat, I return to the primary subject at hand. Is bacon safe to consume? Is the use of nitrate and nitrite in meat curing irresponsible? What about the claims that it causes cancer?

There is no greater illustration of willing enslavement to an incomplete understanding of nature than the drama related to the use of nitrites in meat processing. Humans happened upon a natural phenomenon that special salts containing nitrate change the colour of meat and has the power to preserve it. Since the start of the use of nitrites in meat curing, it was viewed with great suspicion due to its inherent toxicity. Much of Bacon & the Art of Living is dedicated to chronicling the unfolding of the great saga of nitrate and nitrite and the discovery of its essential nature and role in meat curing. There is no need to repeat any of what has been written by me earlier in this work except to point the reader specifically to the following chapters. The first two deal with the initial objection against the use of nitrite in food as a poison. This dilemma was resolved through science and legislation.

Chapter 12.03: The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – the Master Butcher from Prague

Chapter 12.04: The Direct Addition of Nitrites to Curing Brines – The Spoils of War

The use of a substance that is, in high concentrations, poisonous is, after all, nothing new to humans. Alcohol is one of the best examples. Aspirin is another example where, in high dosages, it is dangerous despite its positive benefits at low dosages. Ultra-high dosages of ascorbic acid are equally likely to have adverse effects, cause diarrhoea and nausea. Vinegar is another good example which in moderation is beneficial but consuming too much over a long period of time will have serious detrimental health implications. There are hundreds of other examples we can give. I heard of a well-known speaker in the Uk who addressed a group of meat processing professionals and started his talk by accusing them of poisoning the public through the use of nitrites. Statements like this show a serious lack of understanding not just nitrites but almost every other food ingredient customarily used in food production.

A far more serious issue was discovered in the late 60s and early 70s related to the formation of n-nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are cancer-causing. We have already dealt with the matter in great detail in Chapter 12.06: Regulations of Nitrate and Nitrite post-1920’s: the problem of residual nitrite where we outlined the scientific, industry and government response to the issue.

A friend of mine who is a 3rd generation German Master Butcher tells the story of his grandfather who used to buy nitrites from the pharmacy in the early days and made the most beautiful rich pink bacon. There were no limits on ingoing nitrites in those days and the role of ascorbate was poorly understood and sadly he passed away from colon cancer. This anecdotal account has been subsequently confirmed by countless studies and indeed it is true that at the wrong concentrations, without the use of ascorbate or erythorbate, the high nitrite levels used in curing meat is tantamount to poisoning the consumers. The chapter which I just mentioned deals with the international response to the subject and the combined legislative framework for the use of nitrites in food. The minuscule amounts of nitrites used in bacon curing today along with the use of ascorbate render bacon a safe product to consume in moderation. Of course, the caveat should always be remembered that this should be done in moderation as is the case with any other processed food, red meat, beer, cheese, milk, alcohol, dried milk powder, etc.

What has been said before should settle the issue, but over the years a number of other factors occurred to me which must be added to the discussion to un-vilify nitrite.

Nitrosamines – A Much Broader Issue than Bacon

At the outset, I want to apologise to the reader because the issue becomes wonderfully complex almost right from the start. You don’t have to remember all the terms used and all the intricate connections. I chose an article as the basis for our discussion which broadly introduces you to enough of the important factors so that you will be able to see that the issue with bacon is the same issue with beer, cheese, fish, red meat and many other foods. You will see that it even extends to packaging and food preparation. So, don’t be intimidated by the technical discussion which follows.

I firmly believe that despite the fact that a mammoth amount of work has been done on bacon and cured meat since the 1970s; despite the fact that I am absolutely convinced that based on the preponderance of the latest scientific data on nitrite in meat showing that it is a completely safe food to consume, the responsible producer will continue to work on doing even better by limiting residual nitrite in its products after it has been prepared by the consumer even further so that the consumer will be satisfied that concerns, valid and non-valid are being taken seriously by the producer.

Having said all this, let’s now delve into the issue.

a. What is N-nitrosamines?

Nitroso compounds refer to non-organic compounds containing the NO group. This immediately will get the readers attention because we know that it is NO (nitric oxide) which is responsible for the pinkish/ reddish colour in cured meat. The NO group in nitroso compounds for example directly binds to the metal via the N atom, giving a metal–NO moiety. A nonmetal example is the common reagent nitrosyl chloride (Cl−N=O).

If you combine nitroso with amines, you get nitrosamines or as they are more formally called, N-Nitrosamines. So, the next question is: what is an amine. Amines are compounds and functional groups with a nitrogen atom and a lone pair. Amines are formally derivatives of ammonia (NH3). Nitrosamines then is a group of organic compounds with the chemical structure R2N−N=O, where R is usually an alkyl group. An alkyl group, very simply stated, refers to hydrogen and carbon atoms arranged in a tree structure in which all the carbon-carbon bonds are single. The nitroso group (NO+) binds to a deprotonated amine. The reader with no background in organic chemistry will be able to spot the nitrogen in the three structures below.

The important point for our discussion is that most nitrosamines are carcinogenic in animals.

b. How are they formed in Food?

Look at the three structures of amines represented above. Nitrosamines are formed by the reaction of secondary or tertiary amines with a nitrosating agent, such as nitrite from which nitric oxide and an R-NO group formes. When water is eliminated from a compound, we say that an anhydrate is formed. This describes the formation of NO (nitric oxide) from NO2 (nitrite). So, in food, NO is formed from nitrite in an acidic, aqueous solution. The nitrosating agent is usually then a nitrous anhydride, formed from nitrite in an acidic, aqueous solution. This is, for example, the condition found in our stomachs or in the mouth and if we ingest nitrites, we run the risk of nitrosamine formation after we swallowed the food.

Another culprit for nitrosamine formation is the frying of bacon. Nitrite in combination with fats (lipids) seems to be the nitrosating agent during the frying of bacon. “The formation is related to the relatively high internal temperature of bacon during frying and the relatively low moisture content of bacon as compared to other cured meat products. When bacon is cooked by other methods, particularly in a microwave oven, considerably lower amounts of nitrosamines are found.” (Scanlan, 2003) 

c. Bacon is not the only Product of Concern

From the point just made about the frying temperature of bacon in an environment where there are lipids and low internal water content which leads to nitrosamine formation, it should be a clue to the fact that processing techniques are also responsible for its formation. This was indeed shown and since the late 70s and 80s, it has been known that processing techniques, as well as packaging procedures, are responsible for introducing these carcinogens into food. Hotchkiss (1984) writes that these processing and packaging “procedures include drying foods in direct flame heated air, migration from food contact surfaces and direct addition as contaminants. In addition, other reports of N-nitrosamines in foods have less well defined routes of contamination.”

Hotchkiss (1984) cautions that despite the presence of nitrosamines in food, it is actually “occupational exposures” which may be responsible for “the highest individual exposures (Fine and Rounbeh1er, 1981).” Still, “the largest numbers of people have been exposed to exogenously formed N-nitroso compounds through the diet.”

There are three abbreviations I want to introduce at this point namely NA (N-nitrosamines), NVNA (non-volatile NA) and VNA (volatile nitrosamines where “volatile” refers to those compounds amenable to gas chromatography without derivatization). VNA includes for example “N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), N-nitrosopyrrolidine (NPYR), N-nitrosopiperidine (NPIP) and N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), which occurs generally at low levels <5 µg kg−1 but levels up to 20 µg kg−1 has been reported (Hill et al, 1988, Massey et al, 1991). NDEA has been evaluated as the most potent carcinogen among the known meat related VNAs (Peto et al., 1984).” (Herrmann, 2015) NVNA include “the N-nitrosamino acids, e.g. N-nitrosohydroxyproline (NHPRO), N-nitrosoproline (NPRO), N-nitrososarcosine (NSAR), N-nitroso-thiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid (NTCA), N-nitroso-2-methyl-thiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid (NMTCA), generally occur at significantly higher levels than the VNAs, i.e. up to several thousand microgram per kilo (Herrmann et al, 2014a, Massey et al, 1991, Tricker, Kubacki, 1992).” (Herrmann, 2015)

Hotchkiss (1984) continues that “several groups have demonstrated that a number of foods can contain trace quantities of VNA. To date nearly all types of foods have been analyzed for VNA and, hence, some important generalizations can be made. Most importantly is that the use of nitrite as a curing agent is not solely responsible
for the VNA content of foods. Several foods to which nitrite has not been intentionally added have now been shown to contain trace levels of VNAs. Equally significant is that the N-nitrosamine content of foods has decreased as a result of research in this area. He classified the routes and mechanisms by which foods can become contaminated. “The routes of contamination can be divided into 5 groups: Additives; drying processes; migration from contact surfaces; addition of performed NA; and those for which the route is not clearly defined.

Additives

This is the class where cured meats fall in. We are already familiar with the story as we discussed it in Chapter 12.06: Regulations of Nitrate and Nitrite post-1920’s: the problem of residual nitrite. Let’s recap what we said by quoting Hotchkiss (1984). “The suspicion that the use of nitrite in foods might result in the formation of NA stems from an incident in which animals fed nitrite preserved fish meal developed liver necrosis. The causal agent was determined to be NDMA and it was shown that the compound resulted from the nitrosation of the amines in the fish by nitrous
acid formed from nitrite (Ender et a1., 1964). Nitrite is an economically and technically important food additive in the curing process in order to fix color, develop flavor and inhibit toxigenesis by C1. botulinum.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Since the late 1960s, a substantial research effort has resulted in a body of information concerning the occurrence and formation of VNA in cured meats. This has resulted in the knowledge that the addition of nitrite to meat is not, in most cases, sufficient to routinely cause the formation of VNA. In order for cured meats to consistently contain more than 1 μg /kg VNA6 the product must be subjected to temperatures greater than 100 C in a low moisture environment. The only cured product which meets these criteria is bacon. Other cured products only sporadically contain VNA in excess of 0.1 μg /kg (Gray and Randall, 1979). In a recent large survey, only 6 of 152 cooked sausage products had a VNA content greater than 5 μg /kg and only 4 of 91 dry sausages had similar VNA contents. In the same study, however, 11 of 12 dry-cured fried bacons contained VNA, some as high as 280 μg/kg. The fact that fried cured bacon consistently contains detectable VNA has been observed by numerous workers (Scanlan, 1975).” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Efforts have been directed at determining the chemical mechanism and precursors to the major VNA, NPYR, found in fried bacon. While several potential precursors to NPYR have been identified, including collagen, ornithine, hydroxyproline, citrulline, putrasine and arginine, it is generally accepted that the major precursor is proline (Gray, 1976). While the free-radical mechanism proposed by Bharucha et a1. (1979) is often cited as the mechanism which best fits observations, the steps of the reaction have not been clearly elucidated. At least two possible routes exist; proline could be nitro sated to form NPRO which is subsequently decarboxylated during frying to NPYR, or proline is first decarboxy1ated to the amine pyrrolidine which is then subsequently nitrosated. Both decarboxylation and nitrosation, regardless of order, must occur during frying because uncooked bacon does not contain NPYR or sufficient preformed NPRO (Hansen et aI, 1977). Nakamura et al. (1976) have suggested that the mechanism is temperature dependent; at temperatures above o 175 C decarboxylation precedes nitrosation and at lower temperatures nitrosation precedes decarboxylation.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“In addition to NDMA and NPYR, Kimoto et a1. (1982) and Gray et a1. (1982) each have reported that fried bacon also contains NTHZ. This VNA was likely missed by many researchers due to its long retention time or its on-column decomposition. We have also confirmed this VNA in fried bacon and have further identified the compound in the fried-out fat from bacon. NDMA and NPYR are, under most frying conditions, found in higher concentration in the fried-out fat than in the edible portion. However, in our experiments NTHZ consistently occurs in higher concentrations in the edible portion regardless of the frying conditions. The mutagenicity of NTHZ has been demonstrated (Sekizawa and Shib, 1980) but the compound has not been tested in whole animals for carcinogenicity. The formation of precursors of NTHZ have also not been studied in fried bacon but thiazolidine has been identified as a browning product in a glucose-Cysteamine model system (Mihara and Shibamoto, 1980).” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Nitrate may be added to certain cheeses to retard the growth of microorganisms which might cause defects. Concern has been expressed that the nitrate might be reduced to nitrite by reductase containing microflora and that this nitrite could nitrosate amines endogenous to the product. The Danish government has published the results of a large survey of cheeses in which no correlation between the use of nitrate and concentration of VNA in the product could be made (Anon. 1980). Only very small amounts (less than 0.7 μg/kg) were found in any cheese. Sen et al. (1978), however, found 21 of 31 cheeses imported into Canada contained VNA up to 20 μg/kg. These apparent discrepancies with regard to the use of nitrate in cheese have not been resolved.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

Drying

“In addition to the use of nitrite and nitrate as additives, a second general mechanism by which foods may become contaminated with NA is through the drying of foods in air which has been directly heated in an open flame. The highest levels of VNA resulting from this common method of food processing have been in the kilning of malted barley. Concentrations of NDMA -in the dried malt of over 100 μg/kg have been reported (Hotchkiss et al. 1980; Preussmann et al. 1981). A number of workers have shown that the NDMA in the malt survives the brewing process and can be detected in the resulting beer in concentrations expected from the dilution of the malt (Havery et al. 1981). This widespread contamination was shown to be the result of the formation of oxides of nitrogen in the air as it is heated in the flame. Oxides of nitrogen have been demonstrated to be effective nitrosating agents over a wide pH range (Challis and Kyrtopoulos, 1978).” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Scanlan and coworkers have extensively investigated the formation of NDMA in malt. They have demonstrated that the plant alkaloids hordenine and gramine are effective precursors of NDMA in model systems and that it is likely that NVNA may also be present in direct fired kiln dried malt (Mangino et a1. 1981).” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“The first reports of NDMA in beer indicated average concentrations in the range of 2 to 6 μg/kg (Spiegelhalder et a1. 1981). While these levels seem, at first, low it is possible to consume 1 to 2 kg of beer at a single serving. This represents more NDMA exposure than from any other food source. Spiegelhalder et a1. (1980) have estimated that 64% of a West German’s dietary NDMA came from beer. There is recent evidence, however, that the VNA content of beer has decreased sharply (Mangino et a1. 1981). This decrease is due to the widespread use of sulfur dioxide or indirect heating of the drying gases in the malting industry. The application of sulfur dioxide during the early part of the kilning process may be either by direct injection of gaseous sulfur dioxide or by burning elemental sulfur in the drying air. The inhibition by sulfur dioxide is most likely due to the formation of bisulfite which may react with the nitro sating agent in a redox reaction.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Other foods which are dried in direct flame heated air have also been shown to contain trace amounts of VNA, albeit at lower levels than malt. Most notable is the finding that nonfat dried milk may contain traces of NDMA. Several reports have shown NDMA levels of 0.1 to approximately 5 μg/kg (Libbey et al. 1980; Lakritz and Pensabene, 1981). In a recent nationwide survey of 57 nonfat dried milks conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration, an average NDMA level of 0.6 μg/kg was found with 48 samples being positive (Havery et al. 1981). Apparent NPYR and NPIP were also detected in sub μg/kg concentrations. Because nonfat dry milk is diluted lOx before consumption some have onsidered it not to be a significant problem while others have been concerned because of the widespread use of this product by the young.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Other dried foods have been shown to sporadically contain detectable VNA. Sen and Seaman (1981) analyzed nonfat dry milk, dried soups, and instant coffee and found VNA in all dried milks, 3 of 20 dried soups and 5 of 10 instant coffees, most at levels of less than 1 μg/kg. Perhaps more importantly, 3 of 8 dried infant formulas contained detectable VNA. Fazio and Havery (1981) have observed VNA in soy isolates and concentrates and dried cheeses.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

Migration

“In addition to formation from direct additives or from the direct flame drying process, recent evidence indicates VNA may enter foods through migration from food contact surfaces. In 1981 Spiegelhalder and Preussmann (1981) reported that a number of rubber products including nursing nipples contained substantial levels of VNA and that these compounds could migrate to water and milk. Later Havery and Fazio (1982) investigated one brand of nipple available in the US. They confirmed the presence of VNA in this product and demonstrated that when inverted nipples were sterilized in milk or formul, migration occurred.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“We have investigated the VNA content of 8 types of rubber nipples available in the US from several domestic and foreign manufacturers (Babish et al. 1982). One or more VNA were detected in all nipples tested and when each nipple was boiled for 3 minutes in 150 ml water or incubated 3 hours at 37oC, 6 to 44% migration occurred. Total VNA contents ranged from 42 to 617 μg/nipple (nipple weight is approximately 5 gm) and most nipples contained more than one VNA.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Direct food contact paper and paperboard packaging may also be a source of VNA and nitrosatable amines in foods. Analyses of 34 food packages by GC-TEA revealed 9 to be contaminated with NMOR. Perhaps more importantly, all packaging materials examined had levels of the parent amine morpholine ranging from 98 to 842 μg/kg (Hotchkiss and Vecchio, 1982). Morpholine is easily nitrosated and there is evidence that it may be nitrosated in the stomach to produce the carcinogenic N-nitroso derivative (Mirvish, 1975). Two experiments indicated that both the NMOR and morpholine may migrate to dry foods. First, when a food package was found to contain NMOR and morpholine, the food closest in the package often also contained NMOR and morpho line (Hoffmann et ale 1982). Secondly, when paperboards which contained NMOR and morpho line were incubated at elevated temperatures in closed vessels with dry foods migration could be demonstrated. Further research is needed to determine the extent of the contamination and degree of migration under normal conditions.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

Direct Addition

“When agricultural chemicals or food additives contain preformed VNA, it is conceivable that a portion of the VNA contaminate could be added to food. For example, meat curing premixes which contained salt, sugar, spices and nitrite and were designed to facilitate the mixing of curing brines were shown to contain relatively high levels of VNA including NPIP (Sen et ale 1974). This VNA resulted from the nitrosation of piperidine ring containing compounds in the spices. The NPIP was then added along with the cure solution to the meat and could be detected in the product.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Certain agricultural chemicals were shown at one time, to contain mg/kg quantities of VNA (Ross et al. 1977). Although current levels have been greatly reduced (Oliver, 1981) it has been demonstrated under laboratory conditions that when these mixtures are applied to food crops, absorption of the VNA either directly through the plant or indirectly through the soil is possible (Khan, 1981). For example, Dean-Raymond and Alexander (1976) have shown that radio labeled NDMA incorporated into soil could be taken up by edible plants. A recent survey of dried waste sludge also indicates most sludges contain small amounts of VNA (Mumma et al. 1982). If sludge is incorporated into soil uptake may be possible. It should be noted that no confirmed report of VNA in foods as a result of the use of pesticides or sludge in actual field use has appeared. On the contrary, Ross et al. (1978) analyzed soil, run off water and edible plant tissue after the application of a commercial herbicide containing NDPA and failed to detect the VNA in any sample. As pointed out by Oliver, (1981) it is difficult to draw conclusions about the VNA contamination of foods based on laboratory experiments.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

“Another potential source of direct addition of NA to food maybe through the use of processing water which has been deionized by anion exchangers. Kimoto et al. (1980) have shown that NDMA and NDEA at levels of less than 1 μg/kg can be detected in water which has been passed through an anion exchange column. This is a common treatment process in food plants.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

Miscellaneous

“In addition to the above four mechanisms by which food may become contaminated with small amounts of VNA, other less well defined or uncorroborated contamination processes have been reported. For example, one group of Japanese workers have reported that broiling fish under a gas flame may result in substantial increases in the VNA content of the food (Matsui et al. 1980). The average NDMA content of 20 fish and seafood products increased 3 fold after broiling under a gas flame and one dried squid sample increased in NDMA from 84 to 313 μg /kg. When broiled under an electric element or covered with aluminium foil smaller increases in NDMA content were seen. Presumably, VNA is being formed by a mechanism similar to that occurring in dried foods such as malt and nonfat dried milk. Further work is needed to evaluate this source of dietary NA. Smoking fish has also been reported to result in the nitrosation of the amines associated with fish (Kann et aL 1980).” “Another potential source of direct addition of NA to food maybe through the use of processing water which has been deionized by anion exchangers. Kimoto et al. (1980) have shown that NDMA and NDEA at levels of less than: 1 μg/kg can be detected in water which has been passed through an anion exchange column. This is a common treatment process in food plants.” (Hotchkiss, 1984)

The Occurance and Benefit of Nitrate in Our Diet

So far we have looked at the occurrence of nitrite and the dangers associated with nitrosamines. I deal with it directly because it is the main charge levelled against the curing industry that poison is used to cure the meat. The second, and equally important consideration is the benefit of nitrate in our diets. The reader should be well familiar by now that nitrite is converted through bacteria from nitrate. Such bacteria occurs for example in our mouths and when we ingest nitrate much of these are converted into nitrite. So, in a way, when we talk about nitrate, we also talk about the occurrence of nitrate in our food.

Nitrate has been shown to be beneficial to our health and occurs naturally in, for example in beetroot. It has been credited with a speedy recovery after a strenuous workout, thus enhancing our exercise performance as well as lowering our blood pressure. Nitrates are the active ingredient in medicine for the treatment of angina where blood flow is restricted causing chest pains.

It is reported by the BBC that “only around 5% of nitrates in the average European diet come from cured meat, while more than 80% are from vegetables. Vegetables acquire nitrates and nitrites from the soil they grow in – nitrates are part of natural mineral deposits, while nitrites are formed by soil microorganisms that break down animal matter.” BBC

Uddin (2021) published an extremely helpful list of fruits and vegetables containing nitrate and the mg/kg which they typically contain all of which should be the end of the debate about nitrite in bacon.

Mean concentrations of nitrate in the tested fruits and vegetables.
From: Study of nitrate levels in fruits and vegetables to assess the potential health risks in Bangladesh

The Guiding Power of Nature

My life has been guided by invisible forces from my birth. I believe this force to be nature itself. The biggest thing I have learned is that what I believe is completely irrelevant. Nature does not care for my belief! It is not swayed by it! What IS will prevail, irrespective of my personal belief or even our universal belief as humans. Every step of life was crafted by nature itself in a way that I don’t understand.

I came to realise that my own intellect and our ability as humans to perceive life through the matrix of our minds is not the most important aspect of our lives. I examined the most important mental constructs very carefully and realised that they are all bankrupt. The first quest was to understand God.  I wrote a book about it, The Anatomy of a Sceptic.  This magical time in my life introduced me to the amazing world of the human mind and the gods we create! We first create them and then we worship them just as we do with all our mental constructs. We do the same with concepts such as democracy and the free market system and yes, even with the idea of science! We first created these mental concepts and then we worshipped them.

It was my quest to understand bacon that brought me back to nature and to understand that I exist as a living being, in the first place not in my mind, but in my body as every bodily need and desire and instinct and drive is connected in the first place to nature. I eat to live and I eat that which I share this earth with. My quest to understand the secrets of bacon taught me that life is infinitely interconnected and I am nature itself!

Bacon evolved over millennia in a way that my quest only briefly introduced. Living life excellently means that I re-connect with nature. This is the art of living! It is why so many people who looked deeply into this tell us that the problem is not that we think too little. The problem is often that we think too much and the art of reconnecting with life is to become quiet and to stop thinking! It is that simple.


(c) Eben van Tonder


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References

Herrmann, S. S., Duedahl-Olesen, L., Christensen, T., Olesen, P.T., Granby, K.. 2015. Dietary exposure to volatile and non-volatile N-nitrosamines from processed meat products in Denmark. Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 80,
2015, Pages 137-143, ISSN 0278-6915, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2015.03.008. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691515000873)

Hotchkiss, J. H.. 1984. Sources of N-Nitrosamines Contamination in Foods. Adv Exp Med Biol. 1984;177:287-98. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4684-4790-3_14.

Scanlan, R. A.. 2003. Nitrosamines. Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and Nutrition (Second Edition).

Uddin, R., Thakur, M.U., Uddin, M.Z. et al. Study of nitrate levels in fruits and vegetables to assess the potential health risks in BangladeshSci Rep 11, 4704 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84032-z

Chapter 13.02: Eskort Ltd.

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


Eskort Ltd.

October 1960

Durban strand, 1890’s, supplied by Nico Moolman.

Over the years I have written letters to my kids telling them what I learn and about my experiences. They followed my quest to produce the best bacon on earth through these monthly communications. When I returned home I found that they kept every letter. When they were here last December, they gave me the draft of a book where they are including every letter. They even contacted Dawie and Oscar who both sent them my letters. They asked me to write the introduction to every county and the “Union Letters” as they called the letters I sent them from Cape Town.

I asked them if I can add three accounts of companies who achieved perfection in the large-scale production of bacon. This is the second of the three good examples of people who achieved what I sought. I think that for a time at Woody’s we achieved the same and when Duncan and Koos took over, things took a dip, but they are recovering beautifully. What makes this an insanely exciting story is the fact that Wynand Nel, the legendary production manager of Eskort is a good friend!

These stories begin much in the same way. A very close tie with England. A young nation that is trying to find its place in the global village; visionary farmers and politicians and one man who made all the difference!

Background

In the Natal Midlands, on the banks of the Boesmans river lays the largest bacon plant in South Africa, that of Eskort Ltd.. A few months ago I visited Wynand at the factory. I was 30 minutes early and instead of reporting to reception, I decided to drive a few hundred meters further and up the hill, right next to the bacon plant to Fort Dunford. The Fort is situated exactly 500m away from the bacon plant which is nestled between the Boesmans River and the Fort.

It was built by Dunford in response to the Langalibalele Rebellion in 1873. The location of the old military site at Bushmans River drift, overlooked by Fort Dunford is where the Voortrekker leader Gert Maritz originally set up camp along the river.

The curator, Siphamandla, saw me driving up. I was the only visitor and he came running up to give me a proper welcome. I told him I will be at Eskort but when we are done, I’m coming back to see the Fort.

While waiting in reception at Eskort, I took a photo of a stone that was laid by J. W. Moor in 1918. He was the first chairman of “The First Farmers Co-Operative Bacon Factory Erected in South Africa”, the Eskort factory. I was intrigued!

IMG-0974.JPG

I saw Wynand, visited the Fort briefly and was on my way back to Johannesburg. As soon as I got home I started digging through piles of information on the subject of Eskort and an amazing story emerged. All the information was firing through my mind as connections started to form between the new facts I learned and old history. When I finally fell asleep, I kept waking with every new connection made. Bits of information jolted me from deep sleep to a light slumber. Here is what I discovered.

Introduction

The origin of the Eskort Bacon factory is tied up with the story of the development of the Natal Midlands in the mid-1800s to the early part of the 1900s. It is embedded in the broader context of the existence of a very strong English culture in Natal. The Natal colony was created on 4 May 1843 after the British government annexed the short-lived Boer Republic of Natalia. A unique English culture continued. This bacon factory became one of the cornerstones of the creation of a meat industry in South Africa and contributed materially to the establishment of a meat curing culture in the country. The historical importance is seen in the fact that the South African roots of large scale industrial meat curing are English and not German.

The broader international context of its establishment in a cooperative can be traced back to Peter Bojsen who created the first cooperative abattoir and bacon curing plant in the world in Horsens, the Horsens Andelssvineslagteri, in 1882 in Denmark. By 1911 the first such cooperative factories were built in England, namely the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory, modelled in turn after the factory at Horsens. The 1918 development in Estcourt, Natal would, no doubt, have been a continuation of the model.

In terms of curing technology, the bacon plant produced its bacon in the most sophisticated way available at the time, using the same techniques employed by the Harris Bacon operation of Calne in Wiltshire. Following WW1, its curing techniques progressed from the Wiltshire process of the Harris operation (and through Harris, to Horsens where the technique was developed) to the direct addition of sodium nitrite to curing brines through the work of the legendary Griffiths Laboratories.

The great benefit of the dominant English culture of the Natal Midlands was in the fact that they had access to the Harris operation in Calne and the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory more so than the fact that the English population of the Midlands could have provided a possible market for their bacon. The population in Natal at the time and even in South Africa remained relatively small and the goal of creating such a sophisticated operation was to export.

In terms of access to local markets, I have little doubt that they relied heavily on the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company Ltd. of Sir David de Villiers Graaff (1859 – 1931) who was a contemporary of JW Moor (1859 – 1933). They were born a mere 6 months apart with David in March 1859 and John (JW Moor) in September of the same year.

One can say that David with his Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company in Cape Town was a follower of Phillip Armour in Chicago with the establishment of refrigerated rail transport and cold storage warehouses throughout Southern Africa (just as Phil Armour did in the US). David probably met Phil in Chicago in the mid-1880s and possibly again in the early 1890s, who, in all likelihood, showed him his impressive packing plant and gave him the idea of refrigerating railway carts. John (JW) Moor, on the other hand, was in technical detail and broad philosophy, a follower of the Dane, Peter Bojsen in his creation of the first farmer’s coop for slaughtering and production of bacon and its marketing in England and the English operations of C & T Harris with their Wiltshire bacon curing techniques.

The location of the plant in Estcourt is in all likelihood closely linked to the existence of Fort Dunford and the close association with the military of the Moor family as is evident not only through the heritage of their grandfather but through their close involvement in the schooling system and the introduction of cadet training. The possible involvement of the Anglo Boer War hero, Louis Botha is fascinating.

The context of its creation is, more than anything, to be understood by two realities. One was the first World War. The second, the Moor family of Estcourt with a wider lens than a focus on JW Moor. To understand the Moor family, we must understand their heritage and how they came to South Africa.

Immigrating to South Africa

Immigration back then was done, as it is today, through entrepreneurs who made money by facilitating movement to the new world and who sold their products through colourful displays and exciting tales of success and a new life. Between 1849 and 1852, almost 5000 immigrants arrived in Natal through various schemes. One such agent was Joseph Byrne, who chartered 20 ships to ferry passengers to Natal between 1849 to 1851. One of the 20 ships was the Minerva, which set sail on 26 April 1850 with 287 passengers from London. A festive atmosphere must have prevailed on the voyage to Natal and the promise of a new life. (Dhupelia, 1980)

On 4 July 1850, they arrived in Durban and the Minerva was wrecked on a reef below the Bluff. All occupants and cargo ended up overboard. Two of the passengers aboard were Sarah Annabella Ralfe who was travelling with her family and Frederick William Moor. (Dhupelia, 1980)

Romance and Settlement

F.W. Moor lifted the young Sarah Annabella Ralfe from the waters and carried her to the safety of the shore. It is not known if they were romantically involved before this event, but romance bloomed afterwards and the couple was married in June 1852. (Dhupelia, 1980) They settled in the Byrne valley, which Byrne cleverly included in the total package he was selling back in England.

The Moors and the Ralfes were interested in sheep farming, and the wet conditions at Byrne, close to Richmond, were not favourable. In 1869 F.W. Moor moved to a farm Brakfontein, on the Bushman’s River at Frere close to Estcourt. Here the conditions were more suitable. “The farm was some five miles (8 km) southwest of Estcourt, and he obtained it from the Wheeler family in settlement of a debt. This farm has some historical interest. It was the site of the Battle of Vecht Laager in 1838 when Zulu impi of Dingaan clashed with the Voortrekkers who had settled there. It was on this farm that F.R. Moor and his wife settled on their return to Natal, his father having moved to Pietermaritzburg. Moor and his wife stayed for some years in a house built by the Wheelers until he built a larger house which he called Greystone. It was on this property that Moor’s seven children were born and it was here that he carried out his adventurous farming activities.” (Morrell, 1996)

Sara and FW, in turn, had 5 children. Two of these were F. R. Moor, born on 12 May 1853 in Pietermaritzburg and J. W. Moor born in September 1859 in Estcourt.

Strong Military Traditions

The Moor family had strong military connections going back to the father of F.W. Moor (FR and JW’s grandfather). FW was the youngest son of Colonel John Moor. Col Moor was an officer in the Bombay Artillery in the service of the British East India company. FW was born in Surat in 1830 and returned to England after the death of his father. “He and his mother settled first in Jersey and later in Hampstead while he trained to be a surveyor and, not entirely satisfied with his position in England, he decided to emigrate to Natal.” (Dhupelia, 1980) His mother followed him to Natal and passed away in 1878 on the farm of FW, Brakfontein, aged 85. (The Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, Ireland; 18 Oct 1878)

The military connection of the Moor family is highlighted when one considers that when FR Moor was in high school, he and other students considered it desirable that the school should have a cadet corps. FR attended the Hermannsburg School situated approximately 15 miles (24 km] from Greytown and founded in the early 1850s by the Hanoverian Mission Society.

Moor, as a senior student at the school, was deputed to write to the Colonial Secretary seeking permission for the school to initiate the movement. Permission was granted and in 1869 a cadet corps of 40 students, between the ages of 14 and 18 years, was formed with a teacher, Louis Schmidt, as the captain and 16 years old F. R. Moor and John Muirhead as the first lieutenants.

Moor thus played a role in the establishment of the cadet movement and in giving Hermannsburg School the distinction and honour of being the first school not only in Natal but in the British Empire to have a cadet corps. Though the Hermannsburg cadet corps lasted only until 1878 its example was followed by Hilton College and Maritzburg High School in 1872. Yet another pupil of this first boarding school in Natal who was to make a name for himself in politics and was to be later closely associated with Moor was Louis Botha.” (Dhupelia, 1980)

Initial Capital

The Moor family became one of the large landowners in the Natal Midlands. Some of these families brought wealth from England and some, as was the case with the Moor family, made their money in other ways. The two most likely ways to make a fortune in those days were in Kimberley on the diamond fields or riding transport between Durban and Johannesburg.

After school, in 1872, the young FR Moor went to Kimberly to make his fortune. JW was still in school when FR left for the diggings where he remained for 7 years. The 19-year-old Moor made his first public speech on behalf of the diggers while in Kimberley “standing on a heap of rubble”. “Later he was twice elected to the Kimberley Mining Board which consisted of nine elected members representing the claim holders for the purpose of ensuring the smooth and effective running of the mines and diggings. This experience probably gave him confidence as well as experience in public affairs.” (Dhupelia, 1980) He later served as Minister of Native Affairs between 1893–1897 and 1899–1903. He became the last Prime Minister of the Colony of Natal between 1906 and 1910.

“While FR Moor was in Kimberley he met Cecil John Rhodes, another strong personality with outstanding leadership qualities. There is some indication that the two men were closely associated during these years for the Moor and Rhode’s brothers belonged to an elite group of 12 diggers who were teasingly named “the 12 apostles” and who associated with each other because of their common interests. Moor’s daughter, Shirley Moor, claims that her father would not have associated with Rhodes for he disliked him and in the 1890’s he abhorred Rhodes’ role in the Jameson Raid and held him responsible to a certain extent for the Anglo-Boer war of 1899.” (Dhupelia, 1980)

“After Moor got married, he felt that there was no security in remaining in the fields. He consequently sold his claims to his brother George, and returned to Natal in 1879 to take up farming has been very successful financially at the diamond fields.” (Dhupelia, 1980)

Dhupelia states that FR was “later joined (in Kimberley) by two of his three brothers.” As far as I have it, he had only two brothers with his siblings being George Charles Moor (whom we know took his diggings operation over); Annie May Chadwick; John William Moor and Kathleen Helen Sarah Druwitt. (geni.com) If both brothers joined him, this would mean that JW also spent time on the diggings. (This needs to be corroborated.) It would explain why JW shared the wealth that his brother obtained in Kimberley.

Success in Farming

FR’s success in farming related to JW, the main focus of our investigation, in that they conducted many of their farming activities as joint ventures. This is why I suspect that JW joined FR for a time on the diggings. Morrell (1996) states that “Moor displayed a considerable initiative and a pioneering spirit in his farming activities, making a name for himself as had his father who was one of the first in the colony to introduce imported Merinos from the valuable Rambouillet stock in France. Estcourt was one of the four villages in Weenen County and most farmers kept cattle, sheep, and horses. By 1894 Moor, in partnership with his brother J.W. Moor, was engaged in farming ventures over an area of 20 000 acres [8097,17 ha]. Their stock consisted of 6000 to 7000 sheep and they were among the largest breeders of goats in Natal possessing 1200 goats. Moor, in fact, acquired the first Angora goats in Natal where the interest in the mohair industry was considerable in the 19th century. In addition to the sheep and goats, Moor engaged in ostrich farming, for he believed there was a good market for the sale of ostrich feathers. He also kept horses and cattle and imported Pekin ducks.” (Morrell, 1996)

The British Market in Crisis

Walworth reported that by 1913 in the UK, “imported bacon had largely secured the market.” This was according to him one of the reasons for a rapid decline in the pig population with a 17% reduction in numbers from 1912 to 1913. (Walworth, 1940) Conditions in 1917 and 1918 were desperate in the UK with meat supply falling by as much as 30%. Stock availability increased prices, and war rationing all played a role. Canada responded to the shortage of pork in 1917 and their export of bacon and ham increased from 24 000 tonnes to 88 000 tonnes in 1917. Corn was in short supply during the war, but it was in reaction to meat shortages that rationing was finally introduced in the UK in 1918. (Perren) The 1918 situation related to bacon in England was reported on by The Guardian (London, Greater London, England), 6 July 1918. The meat situation was generally better than it has been in a while. In the article, they report that Bacon is being imported into the country in large quantities and that the import “will be maintained at the same rate throughout the year.” It is interesting that the article also reports that “the intention is to build up a big reserve of bacon in cold storage for later use.” (The Guardian, 1918, p6) The article oozes with planning and deliberateness happening in the background.

It is clear that the two countries well-positioned to respond were Canada and South Africa. New Zealand was focussing on exporting frozen meat, as was Australia. Walworth leaves the South African response to bacon shortages out (except one comment that South Africa was one of the countries that eventually responded) but it is clear from the Estcourt case that the response was there.

The immediate context of the establishment of the bacon company is the war but in the early 1900s, the pork industry in the UK was in a bad state in terms of industrializing the process of bacon production. Producers were unable to compete in price or quality with imports. The reasons are interesting. Much of the curing in the UK was done by small curing operations or farmers who used dry curing. A large variety of pig breeds made it difficult. Small volumes or a large variety of pigs vs a large variety of a standard pig – the latter suits an industrial process. Fat was highly prized in many of the curing techniques, as it is to this day, but for lard to be cured takes a year. Again, it does not fit the industrial model. The main reason for the high-fat content in bacon was due to imports from America who generally produced a much fatter pig on account of its diet. (Perren)

Market trends moved away from fat bacon and a leaner pig was required which the UK farmers were unable to deliver in the volumes required. The consumers also called for a milder bacon cure that was achieved with the tank curing method. The predominant way that bacon was cured in the UK was still dry curing which resulted in heavily salted meat.

In April 1938, at the second reading of the Bacon Industry Bill before the British Parliament, the minister of Agriculture Mr W. S. Morrison summarised the conditions in the bacon market in the UK pre-1933 as follows. “As far as the curers (in the UK) are concerned, lacking the proper pig as they did, and a regular supply, they could not achieve the efficiency in large-scale production and the economies which were within the power of their foreign competitors. Nor could they achieve adaptation to the changed taste of the public, and the change in taste was, indeed, largely the result of the foreign importation.” The change of taste he was talking about was a movement away from fatty bacon to lean bacon and a milder cure (less salty). The solution in terms of fatty bacon was to breed fewer fatty pigs but the UK market failed to deliver such pigs. My suspicion is that this was not due to a technical inability or ignorance of the British farmers, but due to the deeply entrenched nature of the specialized, small scale dry-curing operations. Having gotten to know butchers from the UK, now in their 70’s, who stem from such traditions, I understand that they hold their trade in such high esteem that they would rather amputate a limb than compromise the dry curing traditions they were schooled in.

The fact is that for whatever reason, the UK pork and bacon market pre-1933 was fragmented and Morrison stated that “the factories in this country worked to a little more than half of their capacity with consequently high costs. The cheaper and quicker process of curing bacon (i.e. tank curing) made little headway and the whole industry was in a very weak position to stand competition even of a normal character.”

In response to the enormous size of the UK bacon market and the inability of local curers to convert to tank curing, foreign curers moved aggressively to fill the void. This aversion of the British to convert from dry curing to tank curing did not disappear after the war and would continue to be the basis of bacon imports into the UK following 1918 when the war ended. Mr Morrison continued that “what was in store for the industry was not competition of a normal character. In the years 1929 to 1932, there ensued a scramble for this bacon market.” “In 1932 the importation rose to 12,000,000 cwts. or more than twice as much as it had been in the five-year period preceding the War.”

The British market started to respond after major government programs to change the bacon production landscape in the UK and tank curing was adopted to a large extent. Even though I have little doubt that the potential to export to England was a major driving factor in the creation of the company, as it was in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, and the USA, a further mention must be made of the very robust local bacon market. An interesting comment was made in an article published in The Gazette (Montreal, Canada) on 24 January 1916. In the article entitled “Trade for Canada in South Africa”, the comment is made about bacon that “good business can be worked up in Canadian bacon brands if attention is paid to the packaging.” The first interesting point to take from this comment is that the demand for bacon in South Africa by 1916 was sizable and, secondly, that the standard of packaging was very high, pointing to high technical competency.

Agricultural Operations and the Establishment of a Bacon Cooperative

Back in Natal, farmers saw the benefit of various forms of cooperation precisely due to their small numbers and the fact that cooperation gave them access to larger markets and more stable prices. The children growing up in the Natal Midlands were encouraged after completing their schooling, to join one of the many farmers’ associations (FA). “The “reason for being” of these agricultural societies was to hold stock sales. As Nottingham Road’s James King (founder member of the LRDAS in 1884) said. “The worst drawback was the lack of markets”. (Morrell, 1996). It was this exact issue that JW addressed with his bacon cooperative.

“Their function was thus primarily marketing and their fortunes were generally judged by the success or failure of sales. The sale of stock differs markedly from that of maize (the product which sparked the cooperative movement in the Transvaal). In Natal. the market was very localised with local butchers and auctioneers generally dealing with farmers in their area.” (Morrell, 1996)

“A variety of factors increased the importance of cattle sales particularly in the late and early twentieth century. Catastrophic cattle diseases, particularly Rinderpest (1897-1898) and East Coast Fever (1907-1910) reduced herds dramatically making it all the more important for farmers to realise the best prices available for surviving stock. The number of cattle in Natal was reduced from 280 000 in 1896 to 150000 in 1898. This amounted to a loss of £863 700 to farmers.” (Morrell, 1996)

“It was only in the area of stock sales (sheep, cattle and to a lesser extent, horses) that cooperative marketing operated. Foreign imports began to undercut local products, particularly once the railway system was developed. In 1905, on behalf of the Ixopo Farmer Association, Magistrate F E Foxon objected to the government allowing imported grain.” (Morrell, 1996)

In other domains (such as dairy and ham products), cooperative companies were formed. These were joint-stock companies, generally headed by prominent and prosperous local farmers (JW Moor and George Richards of Estcourt, for example), who raised capital from farmer shareholders. The members of the Board were generally the major shareholders. Farmers who joined were then obliged to supply the factory/dairy with produce, in return for which they got a guaranteed price and, if available, a dividend.” (Morrell, 1996) This was the basis of the operation of the Farmers’ Cooperative Bacon Factory.

“The small size of the local market put pressure on farmers to export. The capacity of Natal’s manufacturing industries was minuscule. It began to expand around 1910 yet by 1914 there were no more than 500 enterprises in the whole colony.” “So it happened that many prominent farmers were also directors of agricultural processing factories.” (Morrell, 1996)

Generally, it seems that as FR’s political involvement increased, his attention to farming decreased and he relied increasingly more on JW to take care of their farming interests. JW himself was politically active, but never to the extent of FR. JW Moor became MP for Escort while he was director of Natal Creamery Limited and Farmers’ Cooperative Bacon Factory.”

It is interesting that, as was the case around the world, pork farming followed milk production. This was what spawned the enormous pork industry in Denmark and to a large extent, sustaines the South African pork farming industry to this day.

“It was Joseph Baynes, a Byrne settler and dairy industry pioneer who established a milk processing plant in Estcourt under the name of the Natal Creamery Ltd. where JW was a director. “This factory was located adjacent to the railway station. Baynes died in 1925 and in 1927 the factory, which by this time was owned by South African Condensed Milk Ltd. was bought by Nestlés. Today the factory produces Coffee, MILO and NESQUIK.” (Revolvy)

In 1917 a group of farmers, including JW Moor, met in Estcourt to discuss the establishment of a cooperative bacon factory. The Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917 and the building of the factory started. When the plant opened its doors, it was done on 6 June 1918 by Prime Minister General Louis Botha. We can not overstate the massive symbolic nature of the leader of a country in the midst of war opening a food production facility.

The products were marketed under the name Eskort. It takes about a year to get a factory up and running and it was no different in the plant in Natal. When they were ready to supply the UK, the war was over but not the shortages. In 1919 the factory started exports to the United Kingdom. The honour went to the SS Saxon who carried the first bacon from the Estcourt plant exported to the United Kingdom, in June 1919. The products were well received.

A fire in 1925 caused significant damage to the factory. Production was relocated to Nel’s Rust Dairy Limited in Braamfontein, Johannesburg while renovations were being done at the plant. Despite this, the company still won the top three prizes at the 1926 London Dairy Show. (openafrica.org)

They were ready with streamlined efficiency when the second World War broke out and supplied over one million tins of sausages to the Allied forces all over the world and over 12 tonnes of bacon weekly to convoys calling at Durban harbour. (Revolvy) “Early in 1948 plans for a second factory in Heidelberg, Gauteng, were drawn up and the factory commenced production in September 1954.” (openafrica.org) In “1967 the Eskort brand was the largest processed meat brand in South Africa. In 1998 the company was converted from a cooperative to a limited liability company.” (Revolvy)

An interesting side note must be made here. This is the story of my travels to Denmark and the UK to learn how to make the best bacon on earth. The purpose of the venture was to export the bacon and supply the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company. The similarity of what we did to prepare for our own bacon production in Woodys and how the bacon plant in Estcourt came about is striking. To raise capital for the venture we relied on investors while I rode transport between Johannesburg and Cape Town. Without any knowledge of JW Moor, by simply looking at the Southern African context of the late 1800s and early 1900s, their course of action was logical. (2)

Technological Context

The technical aspects behind the curing technology employed at the new plant are of particular interest. The establishment of the operation in 1918 placed it right in the transition time when science was unlocking the mechanisms behind curing and an understanding developed (beginning in 1891) that it was not saltpetre (nitrate) that cured meat, but nitrite through nitric oxide.

The second technical fact of interest was the form of cooperation that was chosen to house the bacon plant. From Denmark to England farmers saw the benefit of the cooperative model to solve the problem of “access to markets” and this was no different in South Africa.

Tank Curing or using Sodium Nitrite

In terms of curing brines, the scientific understanding that it was not saltpetre (nitrate) curing the meat, but somehow, nitrite was directly involved came to us in the work of Dr Edward Polenski (1891) who, investigating the nutritional value of cured meat, found nitrite in the curing brine and meat he used for his nutritional trails, a few days after it was cured with saltpetre (nitrate) only. He correctly speculated that this was due to bacterial reduction of nitrate to nitrite. (Saltpeter: A Concise History and the Discovery of Dr. Ed Polenske).

What Polenski suspected was confirmed by the work of two prominent German scientists. Karl Bernhard Lehmann (1858 – 1940) was a German hygienist and bacteriologist born in Zurich. In an experiment, he boiled fresh meat with nitrite and a little bit of acid. A red colour resulted, similar to the red of cured meat. He repeated the experiment with nitrates and no such reddening occurred, thus establishing the link between nitrite and the formation of a stable red meat colour. (Fathers of Meat Curing)

In the same year, another German hygienist, one of Lehmann’s assistants at the Institute of Hygiene in Würzburg, Karl Kißkalt (1875 – 1962), confirmed Lehmann’s observations and showed that the same red colour resulted if the meat was left in saltpetre (potassium nitrate) for several days before it was cooked. (Fathers of Meat Curing)

This laid the foundation of the realisation that it was nitrite responsible for the curing of meat and not saltpetre (nitrate). It was up to the prolific British scientist, Haldane (1901) to show that nitrite is further reduced to nitric oxide (NO) in the presence of muscle myoglobin and forms iron-nitrosyl-myoglobin. It is nitrosylated myoglobin that gives cured meat, including bacon and hot dogs, their distinctive red colour and protects the meat from oxidation and spoiling. (Fathers of Meat Curing)

Identifying nitrite as the better (and faster) curing agent was one thing. How to get to nitrite and use it in meat curing was completely a different matter. Two opposing views developed around the globe. On the one hand, the Irish or Danish method favoured “seeding” new brine with old brine that already contained nitrites and thus cured the meat much faster. (For a detailed treatment of this matter, see The Naming of Prague Salt) The Irish and the Danes took an existing concept at that time of the power of used brine and instead of a highly technical method of injecting the meat and curing it inside a vacuum chamber, a simple system using tanks or baths to hold the bacon and regularly turning it was developed which became known as tank curing.

The concept of seeding the brine did not develop from science around nitrite, but preservation technology that was a hot topic in Ireland’s scientific community at the beginning and middle of the 1800s. Denmark imported tank curing or mild curing technology in 1880 from Ireland where William Oake invented it sometime shortly before 1837. Oake, a chemist by profession developed the system which allowed for the industrialisation of the bacon production system. (Tank Curing was invented in Ireland)

A major revolution took place in Denmark in 1887/ 1888 when their sale of live pigs to Germany and England was halted due to the outbreak of swine flu in Denmark. The Danes set out to accomplish one of the miracle turnarounds of history by converting their pork industry from the export of live animals to the production of bacon (there was no such restriction on the sale of bacon). This turnaround took place in 1887 and 1888. They used the cooperative model that worked so well for them in their abattoirs.

They were amazingly successful. In 1887 the Danish bacon industry accounted for 230 000 live pigs and in 1895, converted from bacon production, 1 250 000 pigs.

The first cooperative bacon curing company was started in Denmark in 1887. Seven years earlier, in 1880, the Danes visited Waterford and “taking advantage of a strike among the pork butchers of that city, used the opportunity to bring those experts to their own country to teach and give practical and technical lessons in the curing of bacon, and from that date begins the commencement of the downfall of the Irish bacon industry. . . ” (Tank Curing was invented in Ireland)

This is astounding. It means that they had the technology and when the impetus was there, they converted their economy. It also means that Ireland not only exported the mild cure or tank curing technology to Denmark but also to Australia, probably through Irish immigrants during the 1850s and 1860s gold rush, between 20 and 30 years before it came to Denmark. Many of these immigrants came from Limerick in Ireland where William Oake had a very successful bacon curing business. Many came from Waterford. A report from Australia sites one company that used the same brine for 16 years by 1897/ 1898 which takes tank curing in Australia too well before 1880 which correlates with the theory that immigrants brought the technology to Australia in the 1850s or 1860s.

Tank curing or mild curing was invented without the full understanding of the nitrogen cycle and denitrifying and nitrifying bacteria and the chemistry of nitrite and nitric oxide. Brine consisting of nitrate, salt and sugar were injected into the meat with a single needle attached to a hand pump (stitch pumping). Stitch pumping was either developed by Prof. Morgan, whom we looked at earlier or was a progression from his arterial injection method. (Bacon Curing – a historical review and Tank Curing Came from Ireland)

The meat was then placed in a mother brine mix consisting of old, used brine and new brine. The old brine contained the nitrate which was already reduced through bacterial action into nitrite. It was the nitrite that was responsible for the quick curing of the meat.

Denmark was, as it is to this day, one of the largest exporters of pork and bacon to England. The wholesale involvement of the Danes in the English market made it inevitable that a bacon curer from Denmark must have found his way to Calne and I am the one who told John Harris about the new Danish system and implemented it at their Calne operation. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)

A major advantage of this method is the speed with which curing is done compared with the dry salt process previously practised. Wet tank-curing is more suited for the industrialisation of bacon curing with the added cost advantage of re-using some of the brine. It allows for the use of even less salt compared to older curing methods. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)

Corroborating evidence for the 1880 date of the Danish adoption of the Irish method comes to us from newspaper reports about the only independent farmer-owned Pig Factory in Britain of that time, the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory Ltd. in Elmswell. The factory was set up in 1911. According to an article from the East Anglia Life, April 1964, they learned and practised what at first was known as the Danish method of curing bacon and later became known as tank-curing or Wiltshire cure. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)

A person was sent from the UK to Denmark in 1910 to learn the new Danish Method. (elmswell-history.org.uk) The Danish method involved the Danish cooperative method of pork production founded by Peter Bojsen on 14 July 1887 in Horsens. (Horsensleksikon.dk. Horsens Andelssvineslagteri)

The East Anglia Life report from April 1964, talked about a “new Danish” method. The “new” aspect in 1910 and 1911 was undoubtedly the tank curing method. Another account from England puts the Danish system of tank curing early in the 1900s. C. & T. Harris from Wiltshire, UK, switched from dry curing to the Danish method during this time. In a private communication between myself and the curator of the Calne Heritage Centre, Susan Boddington, about John Bromham who started working in the Harris factory in 1920 and became assistant to the chief engineer, she writes: “John Bromham wrote his account around 1986, but as he started in the factory in 1920 his memory went back to a time not long after Harris had switched over to this wet cure.” So, early in the 1900s, probably between 1887 and 1888, the Danes acquired and practised tank-curing which was brought to England around somewhere around 1911 if not a bit earlier. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)

The power of “old brine” was known from early after wet curing and needle injection of brine into meat was invented around the 1850s by Morgan and others. Before the bacterial mechanism behind the reduction was understood, butchers must have noted that the meat juices coming out of the meat during dry curing had special “curing power”. It was, however, the Irish who took this practical knowledge, undoubtedly combined it with the scientific knowledge of the time and created the commercial process of tank-curing which later became known as Wiltshire cure when the Harris operations became the gold standard in bacon curing. Their first factory was located in the English town of Calne, in Wiltshire from where the method came to be known as Wiltshire cure. Its direct ancestor was however Danish and they, in turn, capitalised on an Irish invention. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)

It is of huge interest that the Eskort brand of bacon, to this day, bears the brand name of Wiltshire cure. Wiltshire is an English county where Calne is located which housed the Harris factory. (C & T Harris and their Wiltshire bacon cure – the blending of a legend) There is no doubt in my mind that the same curing was practised in Estcourt in 1918, as was done in the Harris factories in Calne and that this is the historical basis for the continued reference on the Eskort bacon packages as Wiltshire Cure. A facinating subject for further inquiry is if Eskort used Auto Curing.

At a time before the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines, the only two ways to cure bacon was either dry curing or tank curing with auto curing being a progression of tank curing. Dry curing requires about 21 days as against 9 days for tank curing. The bacon marketing scheme officially established tank curing in the UK. (Walworth, 1940)

It would not have been possible for the plant to use sodium nitrite in its brine in 1918. Where the Danes and the English favoured tank curing, the Germans and the Americans liked the concept of adding nitrite directly to the curing brines. This was however frowned upon due to the toxicity of sodium nitrite. In America, the matter was battled out politically, scientifically and in the courts. It became the standard ingredient in bacon cures only after WW1. The Germans used it during the war due to a lack of access to saltpetre (nitrate) which was reserved for the war effort and the need to produce bacon faster to supply to the front. The American packing houses in Chicago toyed with its use due to the speed of curing that it accomplishes.

The timeline, however, precludes its use in the bacon factory in Estcourt in 1918. In fact, Ladislav Nachtmulner, the creator of the first legal commercial curing brine containing sodium nitrite, only invented his Prague Salt, in 1915. Prague Salt first appeared in 1925 in the USA as sodium nitrite became available through the Chicago based Griffith Laboratories in a curing mix for the meat industry. (The Naming of Prague Salt)

In Oct 1925 in a carefully choreographed display by Griffith, the American Bureau of Animal Industries legalised the use of sodium nitrite as a curing agent for meat. In December of the same year (1925) the Institute of American Meat Packers, created by the large packing plants in Chicago, published the document, “The use of Sodium Nitrite in Curing Meats.” (The Naming of Prague Salt)

A key player suddenly emerges onto the scene in the Griffith Laboratories, based in Chicago and very closely associated with the powerful meatpacking industry. In that same year (1925) Hall was appointed as the chief chemist of the Griffith Laboratories and Griffith started to import a mechanically mixed salt from Germany consisting of sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite and sodium chloride, which they called “Prague Salt.” (The Naming of Prague Salt)

Probably the biggest of the powerful meat packers was the company created by Phil Armour who gave David de Villiers Graaff the idea of refrigerated rail transport for meat. More than any other company at that time, Armour’s reach was global. It was said that Phil had an eye on developments in every part of the globe. (The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10 May 1896, p2) He passed away in 1901 (The Weekly Gazette, 9 Jan 1901), but the business empire and network that he created must have endured long enough to have been aware of developments in Prague in the 1910s and early ’20s. (The Naming of Prague Salt)

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Drawing of David de Villiers-Graaff in his mayoral robes. The drawing appeared in a newspaper in Chicago on 11 April 1892 when he was interviewed at the World Exposition. He travelled to Chicago for the first time in the mid-1880s when he probably met Armour.

There is, therefore, no reasonable way that the bacon factory in Estcourt could have used sodium nitrite directly in 1918. If Armour’s relationship was with JW Moor, this could have been a possibility since I suspect that Armour was experimenting with the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines as early as 1905, but his relationship, if any, would have been with David de Villiers Graaff, who was a meat trader at heart and did not have any direct interest in a large bacon curing company until ICS acquired Enterprise and Renown, long after the time of David de Villiers Graaff (the 1st). Besides this, where would they have found cheap nitrite salts in South Africa in 1918? This takes the 1918 establishment of the company back to the technology used by the bacon curers in Witshire which was mother brine tank curing, the classic Wiltshire curing method which was later exactly defined in UK law.

At the demise of the Harris operation, many of the staff were taken up into the current structures of Direct Table which is, according to my knowledge, one of the few remaining companies in the world that still use the traditional Wiltshire tank curing method for some of its bacons. It undoubtedly is one of the largest to do so. In the Eskort branding of its bacon, the reference to Wiltshire cure is a beautiful reference back to the origins of the company which pre-dates the direct addition of sodium nitrite.

The Griffith Laboratories became the universal evangelist of the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines. They appointed an agent in South Africa in Crown Mills. Crown Mills became Crown National and Prague Powder is still being sold by them to this day. It could very well have been Crown Mills who converted Eskort from traditional tank curing to the direct addition of sodium nitrite through Prague Powder.

It must be mentioned that the butchery trade was well established in South Africa long before the cooperative bacon factory was established in Estcourt. Bacon curing was one of the first responsibilities of the VOC when Van Riebeek set the refreshment station up in 1652. Swiss, Dutch, German and later, English butchers were scattered across South Africa. The largest and most successful of these companies in Cape Town was Combrink and Co., owned by Jakobus Combrink and later taken over by Dawid de Villiers Graaff who changed the name to Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company. I suspect that most of these operations used dry curing which was not suitable for mass production.

Peter Bojsen and cooperative Bacon Production

The second technical aspect is the form of cooperation that was established and a few words must be said about Peter Bojsen for those who are not familiar with him. Cooperative bacon production was the buzzword in the early 1900s, but where did this originate?

It started in Denmark. The Danes were renowned dairy farmers and producers of the finest butter (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) They found the separated milk from the butter-making process to be an excellent food for pigs. The Danish farmers developed an immense pork industry around it. (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) The bacon industry was created in response to a ban from England on importing live Danish pigs to the island. The Danish farmers responded by organising themselves into cooperatives that build bacon factories that supplied bacon to the English market. (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) This established bacon curing as a major industry in Denmark.

“On 14 July 1887, 500 farmers from the Horsens region joined forces to form Denmark’s first cooperative meat company. The first general meeting was held, the land was purchased, building work commenced and the equipment installed.” (Danishcrown.com) “On 22 December 1887, the first co-operative abattoir in the world, Horsens Andelssvineslagteri (Horsen’s Share Abattoir), stood ready to receive the first pigs for slaughter.” (Danishcrown.com) The first cooperative bacon curing company was also established in 1887. (Tank Curing came from Ireland)

The dynamic Peter Bojsen (1838-1922) took centre stage in the creation of the abattoir in Horsens. He served as its first chairman. He created the first shared ownership slaughtering house. In years to follow, this revolutionary concept of ownership by the farmers on a shared basis became a trend in Denmark. Before the creation of the abattoir, he was the chairman of the Horsens Agriculture Association and had to deal with inadequate transport and slaughtering facilities around the market where the farmers sold their meat at. (Horsensleksikon.dk. Horsens Andelssvineslagteri) Peter was a visionary and a creative economist. The genius of this man transformed society.

In 1911, the St. Edmunds cooperative bacon factory was opened in England in Elmswell, with Danish help. It is clear that the concept of the Horsens plant crossed the English channel. It is plausible that its creation reached the ears of a group of farmers in a very “British” part of the empire, in Estcourt, Natal not just with the Wiltshire Tank curing of the Harris operation, but the cooperative movement in bacon production from St. Edmunds in 1911.

Early Success for Eskort

An article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales), 2 June 1919, p7 entitled “On Land, Livestock in South Africa – Further Competition for Australia.” The article reports on pork production that “pig breeding has been taken up systematically and while in the year before the war imports of bacon and hams were valued at GBP368,112, last year they were reduced to GBP31,590, and there is good reason to think that soon these articles will be exported.” One may think that the reduction in import is due to the war and that in general South African producers were stepping up to the plate to fill the void, but the trend of the article is that something is happening “systematically” and there is a trend that projects that soon the GBP368,112 import figure will completely be supplied by South African producers and that surplus bacon will be exported.

The farmer’s cooperatives were founded in 1917 in Estcourt. Moor laid the cornerstone in January 1918, the report in the Sydney Morning Herald appeared in June 1919, the same month when the first exports of Eskort bacon to the UK took place. Export may have taken place before the local market was completely saturated. Regardless of the actual circumstances, the export of bacon to the UK was not just a major achievement and competing nations took notice. I also suspect that Eskort managed to supply a sizable portion of the 1913 import figure of GBP368,112 in 1918 and that the article may elude to exactly this.

Pulling the Military Connections Together

The location of the Estcourt plant is of interest virtually right next to Fort Dunford, between the fort and the Bushman’s river. My suspicion is that the land belonged to the army and that Moor, either JW or with the help of FR, secured rights to purchase it. This could have been done only by a family who had very cosy relationships with the military and had friends in high places in the persons of Louis Botha and FR Moor himself.

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Fort Dunford is indicated with the red marker. Take note of the position of the Boesmans River, the Eskort plant, the Fort and the Hospital.

Just look at the defences of the Fort. There were three defences. The first would have been the Bushman’s river. Secondly, there was a moat around the fort, 2 meters deep and 4 meters wide. Then, one part of the staircase could be pulled up in case two of the defences were bridged. It is clear from the map that even the hospital was strategically located to be within the general protection of the Fort and the Boesmans River bend.

There is a second interesting contribution that the military post could have made to the establishment of the bacon plant. It is known that men from Elmswell and Wiltshire were drafted into service in South Africa. Could it have been that some of these men actually contributed their knowledge to the cooperative bacon plant in Elmswell? These records can quite easily be checked and will be worth the effort.

Strong circumstantial evidence, however, points to more than just a coincidental relationship between the location of the plant and the military establishment. Probably more important than the affinity of Moor family for the military was the fact that FR Moor was the political leader of the Natal colony until the Union of South Africa was created in 1910 and the fact that the old school friend of FR, General Louis Botha was in 1918, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. Whichever way you look at it, it is hard not to recognise the close proximity of the Eskort plant to the military installations. What could be the uniting thought that pulls all these facts together? (Of course, in part, predicated on the fact that the factory is in the original location)

Looking at the state of the British Empire and wartime circumstances in the UK, I believe offers the answer. The military context goes much deeper than schoolboy comradery, family nostalgia or friends in high places. 1918 was the beginning of the last year of the Great War. On the one hand, it is hard for us to imagine the unified approach that the Empire had towards the war and every citizen in every Empire country. The empathy and support that the war elicited in South Africa generally, but especially in Natal, so closely linked with the UK in spit and culture was enormous. One source reports that in Estcourt school staff subscribed a portion of their salary monthly to the Governor-General’s Fund in support of the war. (Thompson, 2011) It is outside the scope of this article to delve deeper into the unprecedented effort that was being expended by the South African population and the people in Natal in particular in support of the troops but reading the accounts of what was being done in Natal is quite emotional.

On the other hand, directly responding to wartime shortages in the UK was an international effort. Bacon, in those days, was not just a luxury. It was a staple food. The production of bacon was a matter of national importance debated in parliament. It was a key food source sustaining the British navy. Many people only had bacon as food every day. They would boil the bacon before eating it. The parents who had to work the next day had the actual meat and the kids only had the water. Eduard Smith made the remark in his landmark work, Foods (1873), that in this way both the parents and the children went to bed “with a measure of satisfaction.” Bacon had strategic importance to the military and in the first world war, spoke to the general food situation in war-ravaged England.

The fact that the bacon company was established in Estcourt in 1917 shows clearly that South Africa was ready to step in to prop up meat and bacon supply in particular to the UK. Was there direct involvement from the South Africa leader, General Louis Botha who possibly passed on a request from London to all Empire states to assist in the supply of meat and bacon in particular? It is a matter of conjecture, but a tantalising possibility. These are speculations that can be corroborated by looking at the correspondence of Botha. FR Moor himself had direct communication with London and Botha may have simply opened the factory in support of the idea. FR’s letters along with that of JW have to be scrutinised for leads. The one reason that makes me suspects that there may have been a direct request from Botha or some early support for the venture is the location of the factory, right next to the Fort. In my mind, it swings the possibility for direct involvement from Botha from possible to probable. (Facts from correspondence should solve the matter)

Supplying the British market may have been done to build up South Africa, just as much as it was done in support of the Empire. I suspect that the former may even be more of a driving force than the latter. On 13 June 1917, an article appeared in the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, North Dakota), reporting from London that “Developments on an enormous scale are expected in South Africa after the war and plans in this connection are being made as regards the export of food. It is confidently predicted that so far as meat is concerned the Union will be in a position to compete very soon with any other part of the world and in order to assist the expansion of the industry all the steamship lines propose, it is understood, to increase their refrigerated space very considerably and to place more vessels in service.” This report came out in the year when the Cooperative bacon Company in Estcourt was formed. It oozes with deliberateness and purposefulness from the highest authorities.

One person who was clearly involved in the “deliberateness and purposefulness” becomes clear from a pamphlet that was published in that same year. In a document dated 12 Jan 1917 about the South African meat export trade, compiled by A. R. T. Woods to Sir Owen Phillips, chairman of the Union-Castle Line who by this time was carrying meat from South America to Europe in their Nelson Line of Steamers, the following interesting quite is given by Gen. Louis Botha. The background is the delivery of what is described in the document as “by universal consent,. . . probably the best specimen of South African meat (beef) yet placed upon the London market” delivered by the R. M. S. “Walmer Castle” to the Smithfield market in London and inspected by a group from South Africa featured below in 1914. (I will give much to know the names of the men below. Will there be the name of one JW Moor?)

Farmers Tour 1914.png

The party travelled to London by invitation from The Hon. W. P. Schreiner, High Commissioner of South Africa and Mr Ciappini (the Trades Commissioner). The South African meat was deemed comparable to frozen meat produced in any part of the world. The letter was a motivation that the South African meat trade was mature enough to be taken seriously and some helpful advice was given based on experience in South America.

He quotes Gen. Louis Botha who advised farmers that “so far as mealies are concerned the export should not develop, but that the mealies should be used to feedstock in this country, and that the export should be in the form of stock fed in South Africa on South African Mealies.” There is, therefore, good evidence of Genl. Louis Botha involving himself in the details of the establishment of the meat trade from South Africa and, I believe that it is in part this general encouragement that JW Moor followed in creating the Cooperative Bacon Curing Company in 1917.

Beef at Smithfield

I located this pamphlet among documents in the Western Cape Archive of J. W. Moor and his farmers Cooperative where they apply for permission to erect an abattoir and a bacon curing company in East London on the harbour. It is interesting that one of the recommendations given in the pamphlet is that abattoirs and chilling factories be erected in Ports, “along the quays where the ocean-going refrigerated steamers load” as it was done in Argentina. The influence of Botha’s encouragement of Moor can be well imagined.

Application for an Abattoir.jpg

The application for the abattoir was lodged in 1917, the same year when the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917. It is possible that members of the Natal Farmers Co-operative Meat Industries and the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited were the same people. Or that the one owned the other. Whichever way you look at it, John Moor was a key figure in both and the establishment of a bacon company in East London was directly in line with the proposals set out to boost meat exports. It is very interesting that both occurred in 1917 and that only the Eskort factory survived. As someone who established such a venture myself, my initial thoughts were that having a curing company at two such geographically distant sites as East London and Estcourt would have been impossible to manage, especially since both were new ventures. Further documents show that the factory was built on the proposed site and it is telling that only the Estcourt site survived.

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East London’s harbour at the mouth of the Buffalo River. In the absence of facilities ashore, the vessel SV Timaru, fitted with cold chambers, was moored here by the East London Cold Storage Company for an extensive period early in the 20th century. (From Ice Cold in Africa). The businesses of David de Villiers Graaff and Moor were intertwined and mutually dependent.

The stone in Estcourt was unveiled by JW Moor on January 7, 1918, almost a full year before the Armistice. The Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917, 16 months before the end of the War. The factory was opened on 6 June 1918 by Prime Minister General Louis Botha, 6 months before the Great War ended. This is remarkable.

The shortages in the UK in 1917 and 1918 were dire. The end of the war was not in sight and calls went out across the Empire to assist. Meat supply, at this time, diminished by 30% in the UK. In this context, it is easy to see how military land was either made available or that it would have been strategically prudent to locate such an installation close to a military site, but again, it would have required high-level support (involvement?).

For the South Africans, the call for help would have been close to home. Delville Woods took place in 1916, a year before the company was created. In the month when it was founded, August 1917, Lieutenant-General Sir Jacob Louis van Deventer had just taken over command of the mostly South African troops involved in the German East African campaign. His offensive started in July 1917. The entire East African region remained very active for the duration of the war.

When the fighting was all done almost 19 000 South Africans lost their lives. The madness of the time can best be described by the opening sentences of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… Such would have been the experience of the men and women involved in the war while setting up the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory on the banks of the Boesmans River in Estcourt, Natal. (1)

The Best Bacon on Earth

The Farmers Cooperative Bacon Factory at Estcourt has been producing the finest bacon on earth since its inception. The first international endorsement for the quality of the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory in Estcourt, Natal came in 1920 at the British Dairy Farmers’ Association Show in London.

Almost right from the start, the show became the platform where the best produce from around the world was exhibited alongside the best from England. The British colonies used this as a platform to sell into the lucrative English market. The first British Dairy Show was held in Islington in London in 1876. It was initially called the Metropolitan Dairy Show. “At this show, the British Dairy Farmers’ Association was formed and in the following year the first Dairy Show was held at the Agricultural Hall, Islington.”(Pasfield, 1961)

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The Guardian, London, Tue,  Oct 19, 1926

It was never only about dairy. The 1876 show included competitions for Jersey, Guernsey, Shorthorn, Ayrshire, Kerry, Brittany, and any other breed of dairy cow, based on inspection. These were however banned “by order of the Privy Council owing to an outbreak of cattle plague in the country. However other livestock such as goats, donkeys, mules and poultry were exhibited at the first show, together with dairy produce, roots, grain and hops.” (Pasfield, 1961) Bacon soon became a standard feature at the show where they catered for the farming trade as well as the consumers. By 1893, there were 43 bacon and ham exhibits.

The Morning Post (London) of 19 October 1897 reported on the influence of foreign producers. “So much is heard nowadays of the versatility and ability of the foreign producer that attention has been largely diverted from home production and opinion educated to regard as of secondary merit butter, cheese, and other articles emanating from British dairies.” The report stated that “the prominence attained by the imported article is due mainly to the moderate price at which it can be produced, together with admitted uniformity in quality.” The journalist was writing about butter, but for sure, it applied to other produce, including bacon.

The Union of South Africa, which was created in 1910, was represented at the show and was particularly successful in 1920. An advertisement in The Times newspaper from October 1920 indicated that South African bacon was part of the Union Exhibit at stand 121, Gilbey Hall, at the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington.

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The Times, Wed, Oct 20, 1920.

The Age, October 20, 1920, reporting on the poor Australian representation, calls the South African exhibit “magnificent” in all classes of produce. It states that the Union’s exhibition is the “finest of its kind ever seen at the dairy show.

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The Age, Wednesday, October 20, 1920

A report from The Age, the next day, on 21 October, reported that South Africa won all prizes for cheese and bacon produced in British colonies.

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The Age, Thursday, October 21, 1920

British newspapers did not directly report on which South African bacon producers were so successful in 1920, but E. G. Hardy, Assistant Superintendent of Dairying, Pretoria, writing for the Journal of the Department of Agriculture, gave us the detail when he reported on the South African exhibit at this show in 1921. In the category of bacon from a British colony, four sides of bacon had to be entered per participant. “There were nine entries, all from South Africa except one from New South Wales. The Farmers’ Co-operative Bacon Factory, Ltd., Estcourt, Natal, secured the gold medal, scoring 92 points.” This, by itself, is a stunning achievement, but he then compares it with even greater success from the previous year. “This company (The Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory from Estcourt, Natal) therefore repeated their success in the previous two years. Before we look at the 1920 results, he mentions that in 1921 “Messrs. Sparks and Young, Durban, was placed second and awarded the silver medal, their exhibit scoring 90 points, and the Estcourt Factory were third with another exhibit scoring 87 points.” (Hardy)

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Above is the gold medal awarded to them in 1921 by the Royal Agricultural Society of Natal.

The results from 1920 in this same category received his attention. He wrote that “he was given to understand that the quality of the South African (our) exhibits was hardly up to the high standard of last year (1920), when the Estcourt factory’s winning exhibit scored 100 points.” Part of the blame for the poorer showing in 1921 was “to some extent at least, due to faulty smoking of the bacon in London.” (Hardy)

The scorecard of 1920, when the Farmers’ Co-operative Bacon Factory, Ltd., of Estcourt, Natal, achieved 100%, proudly hangs in their Irene Head Office boardroom.

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This is the earliest and clearest endorsement of the superior quality of the bacon that was produced at the Estcourt Factory. It is a tradition that was repeated at subsequent shows stretching well into the 1950s and which is still part of the ethos of this remarkable company. I am planning a separate page where all the achievements from these shows will be detailed.

Subsequent Awards

The Dairy Show in Islington, London, remained the primary showcase of agricultural products in the British Empire. The company continued to win first prizes at this prestigious show. In 1926 they again won the category of bacon produced in British colonies and were awarded this beautiful rose bowl cup with lion masks and rings.

On 21 October 1926, The Age, London, reported on this win.

The_Age_Thu__Oct_21__1926_

A trophy won at the Royal Agricultural Show in Natal for the best exhibit of Hams and Bacon.

The London show remained important for the emerging South African economy for many years and the Co-operative Bacon Factory in Estcourt (Eskort Ltd), remained one of the pillars that the South African drive for international recognition was being built on.

In 1950, the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory achieved second prize at the show.

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As happened many times before, they not only won first prize, but also a second prize.

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In 1953 they again won first prize at the British Dairy Farmers’ Association Coronation Dairy Show. The fact that it was called the “Coronation Dairy Show” refers to the ascension of Princess Elizabeth to the throne, upon the death of her father in 1952. She was formally crowned Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953.

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Finally

The Eskort factory is a historic site where many interesting cross-currents meet. Its uninterrupted existence from a time before nitrite was directly added to brine makes it unique in the world! Apart from Danish Crown and Tulip, I know of very few other companies.

Besides this, tied up in the story of its creation is a romantic immigrant, a family, defining themselves through diamond digging and making powerful friends; re-investing its fortunes in farming and establishing a food company that exists to this day. We see the use of tank curing which predates the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines. The global influence of Griffiths probably converted Eskort to an operation using the direct application of nitrite to curing brines following WW1. We see the influence of the Danish Cooperative system, probably through the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory. Besides any of these, we see hard work, imagination and high character and particular response to a specific call for help.

What is the purpose of this study? Besides the fascinating context of the Eskort operation, is there anything we can learn from the past? I offer a few suggestions.

1. Stay on top of the game. Use the best and latest technology available to stay well ahead of the race. A 1914 US newspaper article, from the Deming Headlight, called the Danish cooperative bacon factory “the last word as to efficient scientific treatment of the dead porker.” The article was entitled A Cooperative Bacon factory. (The Deming Headlight (Deming, New Mexico), Friday 8 May 1914, Page 6.)

2. Use the best corporate structure, appropriate for the time.

3. This point probably dovetails into the previous one – ensure that the business is well funded.

4. Think big! No, think massive! By no account was any of the plans of JW Moor or any of his brothers or their father ever small!

5. The factory was built with a specific market in mind. “It was built for exports”, even though saying it like this may be too specific. Let’s state it this way – “technology was chosen to attract the right clients.” A modern-day example may be investing in a tray ready packaging line for fresh meat for the retail trade or cooked bacon for the catering trade.

6. Things are not as bad today as they were during the world wars. If anything, we have more opportunities. No matter what is happening in our country, this can be our age of wisdom, our epoch of belief, the season of light and our spring of hope!

The last comment must be made about the legacy of the bacon plant. There can be little doubt that it had a large impact on the meat processing landscape in South Africa over the years. It provides a fertile and productive training centre for many men and women to later either set up their own curing operations or work at other plants across the country, thus transferring the skills inherent in the Estcourt plant to the rest of the country. In this regard, the impact of the visionary work of the Moor family is volcanic. It is interesting to talk to executives in Eskort and to realise how many people in top positions in curing operations across the country started their careers at the Eskort plant in Estcourt in the Natal Midlands.

These are some of the obvious lessons I take away from the study. This is insanely exciting!

Aftermath 1:

Botha Cabinet
Back row, left to right: Gen JBM Hertzog, H Burton, FR Moor, Col. G Leuchars, Gen JC Smuts, HC Hull, FS Malan and David de Villiers Graaff. Front: JW Sauer, Gen Botha and A Fischer.

Gen. Louis Botha was the man who pushed for the development of the meat industry in SA. Of course, he found a great ally in David de Villiers Graaff who created ICS. At the end of 1934, the company was in serious financial trouble following the Great Depression. Anglo-American corporation was the largest investor and as it invested more money in the company, while the company worked ever closer with Tiger Oats, which was another Anglo subsidiary. In March 1982 Barlow bought a large share of Tiger Oats and the controlling share in ICS. In October 1998 Tiger Brands (Tiger Oats Limited) bought Imperial Cold Storage and it was taken up in the portfolio of this company’s brands.

Look at this old photo I found. In 1910 the Union of South Africa was created uniting the Transvaal, Free State, Natal and the Cape. Botha was asked to become Prime Minister. Here is a photo of his first cabinet. David was a member of this cabinet. He is in the back row on the right.

FR Moor is 3rd from the left, back row, looking to his right. His younger brother, JW Moor, was the chairman of the farmers cooperative that became Eskort. Botha opened the Eskort factory in Estcourt, Natal shortly before he passed away. The complete list of men on the photo and members of the first Union cabinet is: Back row, left to right: Gen JBM Hertzog, H Burton, FR Moor, Col. G Leuchars, Gen JC Smuts, HC Hull, FS Malan and David de Villiers Graaff. Front: JW Sauer, Gen Botha, and A Fischer.

In a way, both Eskort and Enterprise (at least Tiger Brands) were represented. The individual photos are of De Villiers Graaff and Moor.

The history and impact of bacon, men and women, run deep! What a story!

Aftermath 2:

Arnold Prinsloo, the CEO of Eskort, sent me a message. He has a present for me, a book commemorating the first 100 years of Eskort, Ltd..

It was a day when Paul Fickling, my partner in crime at Van Wyngaardt and I decided to follow Christo Niemand’s advice to stand back a bit and think about our strategy with the business. I was glad that Paul was with me so that I could introduce him to one of the legends in our industry.

What I never had was an image of JW Moor. Arnold showed me his photo.

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JW Moor

Finally, I am looking for the legendary first chairman of the First Farmers Cooperative Bacon Factory to be established in SA in the eyes. We spoke about the history and the Moor family; the industry at large and then Arnold gave us a bit of information that is invaluable to our quest. “Build your company on quality! Nothing less than that will exist for 100 years.”

At home, I could hardly wait to page through the book. Here I saw so many of my friends.

Wynand Nel who worked with me at Stocks Meat Market, Arnold Prinsloo, Melindi Wyma, Bob Ferguson – I know his son, Alex who is heading up Multivac.

This morning Paul Fickling was telling me about a small hotel they stayed over in Natal the previous week, Hartford House. It turns out that the house was owned by JW Moor. Arnold elucidated us and suggested we get in contact with Mickey Goss, the current owner of the estate, for an in-depth discussion of the history of the region and the Moor family.

I will definitely send Mickey correspondence and arrange for a visit to his famed estate. I am thrilled to be part of this incredibly rich history, humbled by the gesture of Arnold and the coincidence of Paul and his family staying at the exact house a week ago. Well, that is just strange!!

Aftermath 3:

I received a mail this morning (14 June 2020) from Bruce, Sally and Phyllis. Bruce writes that “having spent time growing up playing along the Bushman’s river at the back of the bacon factory, your story would not be complete without the mention of Harry Lambert.” He attached an old newspaper clip which reads:

Harry Lambert

“H. W. Lambert is a man who has watched Estcourt grow from “half-a-dozen” and one house and a handful of wood and iron shops and homes.” It was in 1920 when H. W. Lambert immigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland to take up an appointment with the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory.

“Only a small part of the town today resembles the Estcourt of 1920. Mind you, what was then used as the farmers’ hall is still in use as the civic offices.” When Mr Lambert joined the bacon factory, the killing of 300 pigs a week was considered “quite something.”

He was responsible for starting the manufacture of sausages at the factory and, by the time of his retirement a few years ago, he had overseen its growth to a point where 2500 pigs were being processed each week. “

Estcourt has plenty of “local legends,” says Mr Lambert. “One that intrigues me is the belief that the author Rider Haggard used to sit in the saddle between two hills just outside the town, working on his stories. He is said to have written his book “King Solomon’s Mines” at this spot, and the two hillocks have been aptly named ‘Sheba’s Breasts’.”

In 1920, he recalls, Estcourt had no regular street lamps and only the roughest of footpaths.

“Those were the days of horses and traps and wagons. The chief social function of the townspeople was to watch the mail train pass through once a night.”

When sausages were first made at the factory, Mr Lambert remembers how school children would irk the employees by sticking their heads in when they passed and shouted “sausage town” in derogatory tones.

He has given a lifetime of devoted service to Estcourt and spent nine years on the Town Council – two as mayor. One of his chief pleasures was a game of snooker at the club.”

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(c) Eben van Tonder

 


Further Reading

John William Moor’s Short Biography

The speech was given by Mr. W. S. Morris, the Minister of Agriculture at the second reading of the BACON INDUSTRY BILL before the UP parliament on 11 April 1938 3.40 p.m.

History-of-Estcourt

Tank Curing Came from Ireland

Bacon Curing – a historical review

Walworth, G.. 1940. Imperial Agriculture, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

The Mother Brine

A Most Remarkable Tale: The Story of Eskort


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(c) eben van tonder

Bacon & the art of living” in book form
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Note

(1) 1917 and 18 were very interesting years besides for the creation of the bacon plant in Estcourt. On 8 June, two days after the start of production, the South African financial services group Sanlam was established in Cape Town. 1917/ 1918 was the year when the RAF was founded with another interesting South African connection. On 17 August 1917, General Jan Smuts released his report recommending that a military air service should be used as “an independent means of war operations” of the British Army and Royal Navy, leading to the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. (Hastings, Hastings, 1987)

(2) In reality, I did go to Denmark to learn bacon curing. The interesting thing is that Tulip is a Danish company, wholly owned by Danish Crown and a direct outflow of the creation of the cooperative curing plant at Horsens. In the ’70 and ’80, the Danish abattoirs and large processing companies consolidated and formed Danish Crown. The Danes created Tulip in England to, in a way, set up their own distribution company in England for the vast quantities of bacon they produced in Denmark. Essentially, they created their own client. In later years Tulip became involved in every aspect of the pork industry in England and currently is the largest pork farmer in the UK. Exactly as it was logical for my path to lead to Tulip, so, it was logical for JW’s path to lead to the Harris operations and a cooperative bacon plant. Given the same set of variables, the best choices are obvious to all, no matter how far in the future you look back at decisions of the past.

 

References

Dhupelia, U. S.. 1980. Frederick Robert Moor and Native Affairs in the Colony of Natal 1893 to 1903. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Durban-Westville. Supervisor: Dr. J.B. Brain; Date Submitted: December 1980. Download: Dhupelia-Uma-1980

Dommisse, E. 2011. First baronet of De Grendel. Tafelberg

The Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, Ireland; 18 Oct 1878, p1.

The Guardian (London, Greater London, England), 6 July 1918, p6.

Max, Bomber Command: Churchill’s Epic Campaign – The Inside Story of the RAFs Valiant Attempt to End the War, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987, ISBN 0-671-68070-6, p. 38.

Morrell, R. G.. 1996. White Farmers, Social Institutions and Settler Masculinity in the Natal Midlands, 1880-1920. A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Economic History. University of Natal. Durban, March 1996

The Morning Post (London, Greater London, England) · 19 Oct 1897, Tue · Page 2

Pasfield, J. The Royal Dairy Show. Brit. vet. J. (1961), 117, 373, Horsham.

Perren, R. Farmers and consumers under strain: Allied meat
supplies in the First World War. The Agricultural Historical Review. PDF: Richard Perren

The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10 May 1896

Thompson, P. S.. 2011. Historia Vol. 56, no. 1. The Natal home front in the Great War (1914-1918) On-line version ISSN 2309-8392; Print version ISSN 0018-229X. The Historical Association of South Africa c/o Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria.

Walworth, G.. 1940. Feeding the Nation in Peace and War. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

The Weekly Gazette, 9 January 1901

Wilson, W. 2005. Wilson’s Practical Meat Inspection. 7th edition. Blackwell Publishing.

Where I referenced previous articles I did, the links are provided in the article and I do not reference these again.

Chapter 13.00: The Best Bacon on Earth

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


The Best Bacon on Earth
Cape Town, October 1960

The kids visited last December. Is it almost a year ago? Where did the time go! Where does one begin to wrap up an epic adventure? As in Homers Odyssey, you quickly learn that it is all about the journey. The destination is a bonus. What we discover, however, is enriching and life-changing! Still, not even wisdom comes to anything! Our heavenly Jerusalem or Nordic Valhalla is precisely in the fact that we are conscious and in the moment of consciousness, the universe is conscious through us. I am saving a full explanation to the end of the book, yet, I can not progress if I don’t give you this glimpse into the art of living that bacon steered me to. My quest has always been more than bacon, yet, it was never less than. Within this simple culinary marvel, I started to discern the secret of life itself. Bacon curing is the instrument that the universe used to lead me to the answer to life, death and everything there is. Is it not fitting for such a simple thing to hold such rich wisdom!

The secret processes of the creation of bacon have been discovered by humans, yet it was not invented by humans. It mimics natural physiological processes yet in the incorrect understanding of those processes and their limitations we endanger ourselves because we do not appreciate the powers we unleash! Still, the truth is that its processes are natural! Its discovery a fait accompli. Its wonder is both in its taste and the beauty of its processes. Discovering the laws governing its creation is complex and requires the utmost diligence and complete dedication to the quest. Yet, it exists not for this purpose. Its reason for being is the sustenance it gives at the right time. It provides nutrition in the time of want. So is life. Life is simple and the one who never gives a thought as to the purpose of our existence or our ultimate end can enjoy every good gift on this earth, bear all the grief and ends his or her days completely satisfied. Yet, for those, wholly absorbed in understanding the meaning of it all, there are answers – great, profound and satisfying. Still, this quest has the potential of taking the very enjoyment of life away from the investigator in which case it would have been better not to have started the journey!

Dawie Hyaman’s Widsdom

Dawie wrote to me from America. We were discussing the fact that for all our reasoning ability, humans are not very intelligent. He writes, “that is a fascinating thing.. thought of it many times myself. I look at the intelligence in a tree, to take manure and sunshine and turn it into a juicy fruit, or a fragrant flower. Or the intelligence in my body that takes all the food I throw at it and converts it into a human. I can eat all the bananas I want but I won’t become a monkey! Then this other thing, we call intelligence, which is reasoning, and logic, and seeing patterns and following insights over instincts.. and there .. there is NO intelligence there .. or very very little. Seems to me the intelligence in the universe is everywhere except in the reasoning capacity!!” Is this not precisely the point! The reason why we are alive is completely apart from our logic. The very search for the eternal is itself a mirage. It is getting lost in the complexity of the processes of bacon curing without ever curing bacon and enjoying it yourself! Still, there is great value in a pursuit of its secrets. The end must always be to enhance its enjoyment when consumed. Life is exactly the same. We can ask for the eternal and the fixed but if this becomes the end in itself, we are completely missing the point.

To the point, Dawie writes that “there’s nothing wrong with the world as it is. I think it’s heaven. Look at the exquisite beauty, the endless complexity, colour, flavour, possibility. Sure we suffer biological pain because the protection mechanism of the body is not intelligent enough to turn itself off when its no longer doing much (or maybe it is, we just don’t like the settings hahaha) .. and of course we only appreciate pleasure because we know pain.. but my point is .. most of what we suffer is in the constructs of our mind… we suffer our memory and our imagination!!  WE suffer our experience. And that seems to me because we think we are our mind, we think we are our body.. when we are not that.. because when we sleep we still exist, and when we lose our legs we still exist… so the whole thing of freedom to me is to stop suffering the thinking mind, and then just “be” .. and when we are present like that.. we are in bliss .. every single time.” Do you get his point? What he is saying is that the quest is not the goal. When it all gets so frantic, stop and quiet your spirit and just be. Think less!

He concluded by writing: “Seems to me .. we are always Here, Now.  We always have been.  Our thoughts, feelings and perceptions come and go, and are experienced in time .. it has to.. it has conceptual start and end, and a conceptual space.. so it is not always here.. so in that sense, we die.  But beyond perceptions… the Nothing beyond Thinking .. the no-Thing … its nothing to the constructs and perceptions of the mind.. but it is the source of everything.  Where else did forms come from, but from the formless?”

Living in the Real World

Just like the incorrect application or understanding of some of the complex processes in bacon can get us in trouble on many fronts including health and wellbeing, so the incorrect view of reality can create endless misery for ourselves and others. Politics in our beautiful country did not turn out as I would have liked, but it did happen exactly as I predicted! I see us steering the course of conflict as I saw it all these years ago while riding transport. Still, I continue to learn about life and had many years where I could put everything I learned about bacon to good use.

Daily_News_Fri__Oct_7__1960_

Daily News New York, 7 October 1960

The country voted for independence from Britain! It breaks my heart because it was done for all the wrong reasons! I am in full support of independence from Britain, but not for the reason that the referendum was fought over. It ended up as a fight between the white English and Afrikaans speaking people which was merely a rehash of the Anglo-Boer war, contrary to the efforts of Smuts and Botha to unite the groups after the war.

It would have been far better if the discussion included the non-white population of the country and was focused on doing what is right for everybody instead of the selfish ambitions of a few. All South Africans should have been allowed a say in their future as equals. The end result will be untold hardship for many millions of people.

Still, there is an important lesson for me. No matter our circumstances, we can find in ourselves and in things around us reasons to be thankful. This is a tremendous human ability. Amidst the greatest injustice, we can hope! When all hope is lost, we can persevere, and we can hope, against hope! The strange thing that I learned over my life is that this kind of hope never disappoints! This too is part of the art of living! I have no doubt that the Afrikaner and every other race in the country will rise up to take their rightful place as co-heirs of this land as equals. Anything less will be an injustice!

When I left Cape Town for the first time as a young man many years ago, I set out with a single-minded objective to learn the mechanisms underlying the art of curing. We desired to create the best bacon on earth. Did I achieve this? I would like to think that for a time, just before I left Woody’s, that we did just that. We created amazing bacon. Now Koos and Duncan have the company and are facing new challenges. They went through a time of great hardship themselves in the company, but from what I can see on the shelves, the quality is returning to the brand. It makes me incredibly proud of what they have achieved since Oscar, Will, James, Roy, Stanford, Adrian, myself and so many others left. I keep on learning! That making the best bacon on earth, consistently, year in and year out is a very difficult thing and an art in itself.

Many great bacon companies exist around the world. There are three examples of companies that I got to know very well who manage to achieve amazing quality bacon. Two of the companies have been doing it now for over 100 years! I salute them both by concluding the most amazing journey imaginable by focussing not on what Oscar and I manage to achieve, but on others. Others can judge our success or failure in this regard. Three companies who also learned how to make the best bacon on earth stand out! The last few chapters deal with them.

Best Bacon on Earth

Below are photos of some of the best bacon produced on earth by a Master Butcher from Germany whom I have the honour to work with. The best bacon on earth is being created. No compromise! Just quality! Some are cooked fully and some not, depending on where it is made and for what market. The pale bacon is cooked. These are all created in large, high throughput factories in Europe.

Note that all the commercial bacon was produced using a grid system. At Woody’s, we designed, what I believe to be, the best grid system. This can be seen under The Best Bacon System on Earth.

Bacon & the Art of Living focuses mostly on commercial bacon. There is an entirely different discipline around dry-cured, artisan bacon. This is the subject of Chapter 02: Dry Cured Bacon. My mentor here is an Englishman living in Canada, Robert Goodrich.

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The photos below are not all “bacon” but it showcases some of the work of the master!

To prove my point about Robert’s bacon, here are some other examples of his work.

Mild Cure bacon

 

Wiltshire short black bacon

Wiltshire short black bacon

Traditional dry cured Irish Shortback bacon

Stuart WraithShort bacon from a supermarket pork loin

Chris Malek‘s Maple Bacon

Vladimir Medvedev‘s Ayrshire Middle Bacon from Ukrainian pigs

AYRSHIRE MIDDLE BACON from Ukrainian pigs2

I give Vladimir’s recipe to illustrate the difference between artisan bacon and those produced in large high-throughput factories. You can see that time is not an enemy or a factor to overcome in the example below, but an ally to be embraced.

Vladimir’s recipe is given as:

  • Ingredients
    – Nitrite salt – 2.2%
    – Brown sugar – 1%
    – White vinegar (100 ml) and spice (Black pepper, several peas of juniper, bay leaves)
  • Procedures.
    People say that real bacon from Ayrshire should be marinated in a liquid with vinegar. I did not do this.
    – 4 weeks in a vacuum with salt, wine, vinegar and spices.
    – Rinse, dry and tie bacon into a roll.
    – Smoking – 8 hours.
    – 4 weeks of maturation in the chamber at + 10С and humidity 80%

The white vinegar was a surprise!

Companies who Achieve This

Of all the amazing bacon companies out there I have opted for three examples. There can be many as there are amazing companies out there! I close the three because they have unique ties to South Africa.

Chapter 12.01: The Castlemaine Bacon Company

Chapter 12.02: Eskort Ltd.

3rd company is still to be written about.

The amazing thing about these companies, as with so many others, is that they possess real soul. In their DNA are locked up unique qualities which made them and still make them stand out head and shoulder above the rest. One element of this DNA is a pursuit for quality. Another one is that at some point in their history they were led by a group of people who understood the secret of life. That we are here today and gone tomorrow and our greatest joy (purpose) is in being! These companies have the most fascinating stories to tell and the amazing thing is that I bet you it is the same with every good bacon company out there. They all have great stories to tell becasue bacon people, I mean REAL bacon people, understand humility, comradery and friendship. They are what we refer to as salt-of-the-earth kind of people. They know how to make great bacon and the art of living! These stories form the closing chapters of this epic journey!


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Chapter 10.06.01 Oake Woods & Co., Ltd. and their Auto Cured Bacon

Introduction to Bacon & the Art of Living

The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting.  Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.


Oake Woods & Co., Ltd., Rapid – and Auto Cured Bacon

16 April 1892

Dear Lauren, Tristan and Oscar,

In the history of meat curing of the 1800s and early 1900s, one particular group stands out head and shoulder above the rest namely the Wiltshire curers. For a long time, I thought that C & T Harris was the only excellent cure from the area, but I was so far from the truth! There were many legendary companies from Wiltshire and the surrounding counties. When we talk about Wiltshire curers, it is particularly people from this area who cure the entire side of the pork which is referred to as the Wiltshire cut.

Back at our lodge from an unforgettable evening with the Harris family, two men stayed with us from a firm that also cures meat. The firm is Oake ‘ Woods & Co. Ltd from Gillingham located in the neighbouring county of Dorset. They were in Calne to visit service providers who sprang up around C & T Harris. One of the men is an engineer, Will Dean. The other guy is a curing expert. It was this meeting that made me realise that the curing world in England is much bigger than C & T Harris.

I learnt an important lesson namely great industries develop where there is fierce rivalry. It was the case in England related to meat curing. British firms were competing with Irish, Danish, Canadian, Scandinavian and maybe more importantly, with other British firms. This fierce competition created an environment of innovation and competitiveness. Even though John Harris knew about mild curing and the re-use of the old brine it surprised me that C & T Harris were so eager to learn the Danish way of curing of me. My surprise was well-founded when I learned that mild curing arrived in Wiltshire many years earlier through a company whose main method of curing has become, not mild curing but what they call Auto Curing.

Conversation with the two gentlemen from Gillingham was fascinating, and one of the most electric revelations was that the man who brought mild curing to Wiltshire and who invented Auto Curing was none other than William Harwood Oake, the son of Willing Oake from Limerick in Ireland who, as a young chemist, invented mild cured bacon. Our discussion did not start with auto curing. They insisted that we talk about mild curing first. Back at the Harris factory the next morning, I researched both mild cured bacon and auto cured bacon. It allowed me enough background to engage them on the subject for the rest of the week that they stayed in Calne. The information I got from them and what I discovered in my own research painted an amazing picture!

From Worth, R. N.. Jan 1888. Tourist’s Guide to Somersetshire: Rail and Road. E. Stanford

Re-Visiting Mild Cured Bacon

William Oak invented mild cured bacon and the essence of the invention centred around the power of the salts he used in the brine. To my great surprise, I discovered that the information about mild cured bacon was also published in a South African journal, as it was done in Australia and presumably around the world.

From the Cape of Good Hope (Colony), Dept. of Agriculture (1896) they quote the same paper published in Australia in 1889. It refers to a paper that was read at a congress of the South Australian Agricultural Bureau on pig-breeding and bacon-curing by Mr TN Grierson of Bodolla, New South Wales. The report begins as follows: “There is at the present time a new process coming into vogue, which is attracting considerable attention amongst bacon-curers. The process is called the “mild cure.” The discoverer of the new process of curing was, it appears, an eminent chemist – the late Mr William Oake, of Ulster. In the course of an experiment, he discovered that the antiseptic properties of salt were found in nature apart from chloride of sodium (salt) and that the obnoxious effects of dissolving the albumen in the curing process could, therefore, be avoided. This is really the key to the new system of curing. By the new process, it is said that the bacon and hams, although thoroughly cured with the very essence of salt, still retain all the albumen originally in the meat, and yet do not taste salty to the pallet. By the new process, the lean of the cured bacon remains soft and juicy, and natural in colour; and the best proof of the value of the system is in the fact that where mild cure has been adopted the bacon and hams will keep for any length of time in any climate. A great deal of labour, it is said, is saved by the new process, while the article put on the market is declared to be much superior in taste and flavour quality to bacon cured on the old system.” (Department of Agriculture, Cape of Good Hope, 1896)

A definition of albumen from 1896 says that it refers to “a substance found in the blood and the muscle. It is soluble in cold water and is coagulated by hot weather or heat. It starts to coagulate at 134 deg F (57 deg C) and becomes solid at 160 deg F (71 deg C).” It is distinguished from fibrin which is the substance in blood that causes it to coagulate when shed. “It consists of innumerable delicate fibrils which entangle the blood corpuscles, and from with them, a mass called blood clot. Fibrin is insoluble in both cold and hot water.” (Farmer, 1896). Albumin, with an “i”, in the modern use of the term refers to “any of a class of simple, sulfur-containing, water-soluble proteins that coagulate when heated, occurring in egg white, milk, blood, and other animal and vegetable tissues and secretions.” (Dictionary) Albumen, therefore, refers to meat juices in particular. It is the opaque fluid found plentifully in eggs, meats, fish and succulent vegetables, especially asparagus. (Gejnvic) It is the red substance that oozes from our steaks when we fry it and is mostly myoglobin, a protein from muscle tissue.

The reason why the meat juices do not leach from the meat is simply a function of the brine which surrounds the meat and comes down to the matter of partial pressure. Bristow gives us the real reason for the effectiveness of the system in terms of the speed and consistency of curing when he says “the same pickle can be used for many years – the older the better; it only requires, when it becomes somewhat muddy, to be boiled and clarified.” He follows this statement by saying that he has “seen pickle which had been used in one factory for 16 years, and that factory produces some of the best bacon and hams in Australia.”

There is no question that the preservative that William Oake observed is saltpetre, reduced to nitrite. In the detailed process description given, Oake insisted that the blood be drained properly. I give the full system as described by Bristow in note 1. The meat is cut up and notice that Oake’s system called for “the portions [to be] (are) laid on the floor of the factory (which should be made of concrete or flagged), flesh uppermost, and lightly powdered over with saltpetre, so as to drain off any blood.”

Here he does not use salt. He only uses saltpetre. After this step the pork cuts are “placed in the tanks” and he now introduces salt (NaCl) for the first time. He writes, “for salting. . . — sprinkle the bottom of the tank with salt, then put in a layer of sides or flitches, sprinkle saltpetre over them lightly, and then salt and sugar. The next layer of sides or flitches is put in crosswise and served in the same way, and so on until the tank is full. Then place a lid to fit inside the tank (inch battens 3in. apart will do); fix an upright on top of the lid to keep the bacon from rising when putting in the pickle.”

Now let’s consider the makeup of the pickle. He says that it is prepared as follows: “To every 10lbs. of salt add 8lbs. of dark-brown sugar, lib. of spice, and 1/2lb. of sal-prunella. Make it strong enough to float an egg; let it settle for some time, then skim, and it is ready to go on to the meat.” Let us pause for a second and clearly understands what is meant by sal-prunella. Sal-Prunella is, according to Errors of Speech or Spelling by E. Cobham Brewer, Vol II, published by William Tegg and Co, London, 1877, a mixture of refined nitre and soda.  Nitre, as used at this time was refined saltpetre used in the manufacturing of explosives.

Let us again quote Oake through Bristow when he says that “in the course of an experiment he (Oake) discovered that the antiseptic properties of salt were found in nature apart from chloride of sodium (salt) and that the obnoxious effects of dissolving the albumen in the curing process could, therefore, be avoided. This is really the key to the new system of curing.”

Based on these statements I am convinced that what William Oake was testing to identify the exact substance which is responsible for the preservation of the meat. He tested the salt and that is not it. Salt preserves primarily through the drying effect it has on meat. He, no doubt, tested saltpetre and as experiments, almost a decade later from the 1920s confirmed, by itself, saltpeter is a poor preservative. However, Oake must have observed that there is a preserving power that developed in the brine which he clearly did not understand. It is due to this, I firmly believe, that he makes the somewhat enigmatic statement that he “discovered that the antiseptic properties of salt were found in nature apart from chloride of sodium (salt).” He knew it was something that was added to the salt and based on the priority he gives saltpetre in the purity he demanded of it, I believe he had a suspicion that it had something to do with the saltpetre but by itself, he knew that it was not it! Still, he saw that there is an “antiseptic” mechanism at work that is from nature but his vague wording at this point clearly shows that he was uncertain as to what it is exactly. In the cure, “antiseptic properties of salt [are present], (were) found in nature apart from chloride of sodium (salt).”

Before this meeting, I was very reluctant to say that Oake’s main characteristic of his mild cured system is the repeated re-use of the old brine. I could not come to that conclusion precisely because I very dearly wanted that to be the conclusion. I forced myself to find other options besides this and I refused to concede the point until such a time arrives when I am forced by the overwhelming weight of the clear evidence to say that to Oake goes the credit for using the power of old brines in a system of curing where the older the brine is, the better! Such a time has now arrived where I can say that the preponderance of evidence forces me to make this one simple conclusion that William Oake came to the understanding of the power of the repeated use of old brines albeit that being achieved without a full understanding of the mechanisms which was not understood at that time. This is absolutely and comprehensively remarkable!

For a long time since I discovered the work of William Oake, the furthest I was prepared to go in explaining why mild curing worked so well was the overall system that he developed by taking known techniques from his time and ordering it in a better way so that the outcome of the work would be better. You can see how I tried to avoid the conclusion that Oake pioneered the multiple re-uses of the old brine! I now believe that the former statement is still correct related to his ordering of the different components in the work of curing bacon in a better way and that it holds up to evaluation and scrutiny, but after repeatedly looking at the description of the process and having had much time to reflect on it, I am finally prepared to concede that by far the biggest feature in his new system was the repeated re-use of the old brine.

Another point that must be made and which is probably far more important than I ever realised is that the genius of Oake was not just what he used in his brine, but what he omitted. From the Sessional Papers, Volume 34, Page 204, Great Britain, Parliament. House of Commons,1902, we have the statement about Oake’s invention “to meet the increased demand for mild – cured goods without the use of modern preservatives.” This means that Oake is not just responsible for the repeated reuse of the old brine but for omitting any other preservative from bacon. It was then his work that was directly responsible for steering the course of the development of curing technology away of artificial preservatives and keeping the process, unbeknownst to him, close to the natural processes which take place in meat in dead matter and in living animals and humans. Sure, at this time Oake and Harris used borax or boric acid as preservatives in their hams, but Oake identified another preserving principle from nature which we now know as nitrite!

Its Roots

The question comes up about the origins of this practice of re-using brine. The first clue I got that there was something distinctly different to Oake’s system of continued reuse of the brine from anything that was in use at the time came to me from an 1830 edition of The Complete Grazier. The report says that wet cure is more expensive than dry cure unless the brine is re-used. First, the meat is well rubbed with fine salt. A liquor is then poured over the meat and “though the preparation of such brine may, at first sight appear more expensive than that prepared in the common way, yet we think it deserves a preference, as it may be used a second time with advantage if it be boiled, and a proportionate addition be made of water, and the other ingredients above mentioned.” (The Complete Grazier, 1830: 304)

The concept of reusing the power of old brine is something that has been known in England from at least the 1820s or possibly many years earlier. The Complete Grazier (1830) says that liquid brine may appear to be more expensive than if it is done “in the common way” which in the context should refer to dry curing or rubbing a mixture of dry ingredients onto the meat. The edition of the Complete Grazier referred to is from the 5th edition which means that by this time, the description may already be 5 years old if it appeared in the 1st edition. Notice the comment that the brine can be used “a second time.” The continued reuse of the brine was not what the author in the Complete Grazier was describing. The practice of reusing old brine in England of 1820 and 30 was a far cry from the complete system of William Oake from the same time in Ireland where the multiple (continues) re-uses of old brines were part of Oakes complete mild cured system.

I must also add that in the system that Oake developed the brine was no longer boiled after every use which has a major impact on the microorganisms responsible for the reduction of saltpetre which is added before the brine is re-used. By not boiling the brine after every use, a distinct microflora develops. The inspiration to re-use old brine was European with its roots in Westphalia in Germany. William Youatt who compiled the Complete Grazier restates this process in his 1852 work, Pigs: A Treatise on the Breeds, Management, Feeding and Medical Treatment of Swine; with directions for salting pork, and curing bacon and Hams. He says that “the annexed system is the one usually pursued in Westphalia : — ” Six pounds of rock salt, two pounds of powdered loaf sugar, three ounces of saltpetre, and three gallons of spring or pure water, are boiled together. This should be skimmed when boiling, and when quite cold poured over the meat, every part of which must be covered with this brine. Small pork will be sufficiently cured in four or five days; hams, intended for drying, will be cured in four or five weeks, unless they are very large. This pickle may be used again and again, if it is fresh boiled up each time with a small addition to the ingredients. Before, however, putting the meat into the brine, it must be washed in water, the blood pressed out, and the whole wiped clean.”

Youatt repeats the re-use of the brine in the publication just mentioned. He writes, “In three weeks, jowls, &c, may be hung up. Taking out, of pickle, and preparation for hanging up to smoke, is thus performed: — Scrape off the undissolved salt (and if you had put on as much as directed, there will be a considerable quantity on all the pieces not immersed in the brine; this salt and the brine is all saved; the brine boiled down [for re use].” Notice that his 1852 description is far more “matter of fact” and he does not go into all the explanations and caveats he did in the 1830 description and his reference to pickle . . . used again and again is a progression from the 1830 reference.

The incorporation of this facet of curing brines was undoubtedly not as advanced as it was in Ireland in the 1820s and 30s. Mild cured bacon was separately listed in newspapers of the time related to price and market conditions. The very first reference goes back to 1837 to a report from Antrim, Northern Ireland.  It is fascinating that following this initial reference, Antrim completely disappears from the map and Limerick and Waterford takes over. This report simply said about bacon arriving from Ireland and that the Bacon market was dull the past week but (except) for “a small parcel of mild cure.”  (Belfast News-Letter (Belfast, Antrim, Northern Ireland) 21 July 1837)

Before this date, mild cured bacon is not mentioned. Remember that bacon was a commodity with prices daily or weekly reported in newspapers like maize and other farming commodities in certain publications. The second reference is in 1842 reported in the Provisions section of Jackson’s Oxford Journal which would regularly report on bacon prices from Ireland. In a mention about produce from Ireland, it says, “in the bacon market there is no great alterations; heavy bacon is more inquired after, and all fresh mild cure meets a fair demand.”  Heavy bacon seems to be used as opposed to mild cure.  (Jackson’s Oxford Journal (Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) 17 September 1842, p4)

The progression in the references, all related to bacon from Ireland and all focused on amongst other, Limerick and Waterford.  An 1845 report said that “choice mild-cured Bacon continues brisk.” (Jackson’s Oxford Journal (Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) 26 July 1845, p4.)

An 1853 report from Ireland itself is very instructive. From Dublin, a report says “We are glad to observe that several Dublin curers are now introducing the system of mild cure in bacon as well as hams, in consequence of the great difference had in price.  (The Freeman’s Journal, (Dublin, Dublin, Ireland) 11 Feb 1853, p1)

From this, it would seem that we are justified in retaining the most likely place for the invention of mild cure to have been in Northern Ireland, sometime just before 1837.  (see my addendum to this work, Addendum A, Occurrences of “mild cure” in English Newspapers.

Following the Thread of Reports About Oake and his Son: Mild Cured Bacon Arrives in Wiltshire

Report from The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, Dublin, Ireland) 23 Sep 1853, Fri, Page 4

There is a reference in The Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, Dublin, Ireland), 23 September 1853 reporting that the previous Wednesday, letters from London “announced the disposal of the provisions contract for the royal navy, 12 000 tierces (casks) of pork and 4000 tierces (casks) of beef.” The short notice says that “we have the satisfaction to add that half the pork contract was taken for Irish account, and a considerable portion will be made up in Limerick, by Shaw and Duffield, William G. Gubbins, William Oake, and Joseph Matterson.” The article is quoting the Limerick Chronicle and shows that Oake had tremendous commercial success.

We also know that at least one of his sons was involved in the business with him, but not in Ireland. A notice was posted in Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner (Manchester), Saturday, 28 September 1889 of the death of William Harwood Oake from Gillingham, Dorset “elder son of the late William Oake of Limerick“, aged 49.  This means that WH Oake was born in 1840 and if we presume William Oake from Limerick had him when he was 20, William was probably born around 1820. I later revised this estimate, taking more information into account and it seems that he was born around 1807.

So it happened that mild cured bacon arrived, not in Wiltshire at first but in Dorset, a county bordering Wiltshire. It is from here that the technology spread to the rest of the region which later became known as Wiltshire curing. So, Wiltshire cure, as far as the curers in this county are concerned, came amongst other areas from Dorset!

From Daily News (London, Greater London, England) 18 Jul 1885, Sat Page 3 about the dissolvent of the partnership of the firm Oake Woods Waring. The new firm Oake Woods was created from this.

 

The bacon factory was opened next to the station in Gillingham. The Dorset Life reports that “the effect on agriculture was the rise in the number of Gillingham farmers; 12 in 1842; 34 in 1859; 45 in 1875. In 1860 and 1893 the station platform was extended to cater for the vast numbers of milk churns that were brought in each day. Close to the railway was Oake Woods & Co., bacon curers. Pigs arrived in cattle trucks to be delivered just yards away to the bacon factory. Next to Oake Woods was the Salisbury, Semley & Gillingham Dairy which acted as a collection depot and purchased milk from farmers whose production was in small quantities.” (Dorset Life. 2016) This factory became intimately associated with Wiltshire bacon curing. They won first prize as well as the silver medal at the annual Dairy Show held in the Agriculture Hall, Islington. (Cassell, 1894)

Auto Curing

Auto curing was a revolutionary process that reduced the curing of bacon to times that was thought to be impossible. Due to this, it became an immediate success, not just in England, but across the globe. A report says that by 1861 it was already in use in England, Sweden, Denmark, and Canada. 

Let us first understand what auto curing is. The process is described as follows. The pig is slaughtered in the usual way and the sides trimmed and chilled. After chilling, it is laid out in rows on a sort of truck that exactly fits into a large cylinder of steel 32 feet long, 6 feet in diameter and which will hold altogether 210 sides. When the cylinder is filled, the lid, weighing 3 ½ tons (7000lb. Danish) is closed and hermetically sealed by means of hydraulic pumps at a pressure of 3 tons to the square inch.

A vacuum pump now pumps all the air out which creates a vacuum of 28 inches. It takes about an hour to pump all the air out. The brine channel which leads to the brine reservoir, holding around 6000 gallons of brine is now opened. The brine rush into the chamber and as soon as the bit of air that also entered has been extracted again, the curing starts. It happens as follows.

The brine enters the cylinder at a pressure of 120 lbs. per square inch. It now takes between 4 and 5 hours for the brine to enter the meat completely through the pores which have been opened under an immense vacuum. When it’s done, the brine runs back into the reservoir. It is filtered and strengthened and used again. This is very clearly the continued reuse of old brine.

A feature of the system is that it allows the bacon to be shipped overseas immediately, assuming that maturation would happen en route as was usual. The time for the total process is around three days. On day 1 the pig can be killed, salted on day 2 and packed and shipped on day 3.

There are two brine reservoirs. The one is used with a stitch pump to inject brine into the sides as usual before they are placed in the cylinder and the second tank is used. The largest benefit of this system is the speed of curing and many people report that the keeping quality of the bacon and the taste is not the same as bacon cured in the traditional way.

The system cured the meat in a short time, partly because of the vacuum and the penetration of the brine into the muscle, but also because it too used the power of the old brine which is based on the reduction of nitrate to nitrite. The vacuum had an impact in keeping the brine inside the meat and sealing the meat fibres over the areas where holes were created during injection and brine normally leaches out again.

It clearly is a progression of the mild cured system but who invented it? The brine is distributed into the meat through injection and we would later discover that it is not primarily by what they call the “opening of the meat pores.” There is a reference from another source that meat cured in this way is more tender. The system allowed for a 3% to 4% brine pick up which would have added to the bacon being much more tender than with dry curing.

The Gillingham, Dorset Operation and Oake-Woods’ Patent

William Oake’s son and partners were responsible for setting up the curing operation in Gillingham, Dorset, making it clear that they were not just re-selling Irish bacon cured by Oake’s father, but they actually pioneered the auto cure technology.

The Journal of the British Dairy Farmers’ Association (1887) reports that Oake, Woods and Company won a bronze medal for their British Mild Cured Bacon. This being the case, we know for certain that mild cured technology, including the repeated re-use of the old brine which was the cornerstone of the system, was in wide use in Britain by 1887 which hones in on the time when C & T Harris acquired the technology. It must have been well before 1887. The second important point to note is that Oake, Woods and Company not only used auto curing but also mild curing.

An article appears in The Age, Melbourne, Australia in 1898 which describes the proliferation of the system. It reports that the leading factories in Canada, Denmark and Sweden are all adopting the new auto-cure process because the article produced by it supersedes all other brands in the largest market in the world” which at this time was England. The author of the article gives us a date when the curing operation of Oake, Woods and Company, Ltd was started in Gillingham, Dorset using auto curing. He refers to them as “curers of Wiltshire Bacon” which was in operation for 18 months by 1895 taking the establishment of the auto curing line to 1896. We know that by 1861 it was already in use in England, Sweden, Denmark, and Canada. It was, however in the 1890s when international patents were taken out and it would appear as if the expansion plans were global including the Scandanavian countries just mentioned but also the USA, South Africa and New Zealand.

A certain Mr Down, “the patentee of the process” described the process in his own words which are reported in great detail. It is a tedious description and the reason why it was so successful is attributed to incorrect factors, but it is nevertheless instructive and gives the full description of the process. One of the men who stayed with us at the lodge was Will Dean who writes that Mr Down was the managing director of Oake Woods in the 1890s. His full name was Evan Roberts Down.

Stanier elaborates on this information provided by Down. He says that the factory and offices close to the railway station was established in 1847. Vitally he credits William Harwood Oake, son of William Oake from Limerick for the invention of auto cured bacon. He writes, “Oake (referring to William Harwood) invented the ‘Auto-Cure’ method of curing bacon under pressure in cylinders, for which the Danes paid a £4,000 annual royalty. It seems then, that the factory was established in 1847 and sometime between then and 1861 he invented auto curing. Very importantly, the Danes who obtained the system of mild curing which was invented by his dad paid him a royalty for the use of his technology. This fact along with the reference to Mr Down as the patentee, informs us that he very well protected the invention. By 1896 it was in full operation in Gillingham.

Dean who looked at the actual patents told me in private communication that he “had always thought [the process patented by Oake Woods] sounded extremely similar to the “tanalising” process for treating timber – amusingly this is actually mentioned in one of the patents.” He also provided me with copies of the actual patents. This fact would become much more important in our consideration of the routs of the technology which we will look at momentarily.

Capital Structure

Uncle Jeppe taught me that in meat curing, the corporate structure is of the greatest importance as it is a capital hungry operation. The following article appeared in the Morning Post (London, Greater London, England) 23 Nov 1889 reporting on new companies (Limited) which has been registered recently. The firm opted for public funds to finance the imminent international expansion.

The Morning Post (London, Greater London, England) 23 Nov 1889

Below we give links to actual patents taken out around the world. Special thanks to Will Dean who sourced these and sent them to me.

Auto Cure Patents






The fact that Down is clearly listed as the inventor in these patents is of considerable interest. It may be that he takes the place of the inventor, who had to be listed as filing the application simply on account of William Harwood Oake having passed away on 28 September 1889. Down may in fact have been responsible for improvements to the system in addition to the reality that Oake was not around in the 1890s to file the application.

We return to product quality briefly and an observation related to the Gillingham site is in order. We know that water quality was very important to William Oake. Stanier mentions related to this site that water was pumped from a well, and extensive cellars beneath the factory were said to be the best in the country for curing-by hanging bacon in the smoke of smouldering hardwoods. The factory employed 150 people at one point but closed down around the 1980s. He makes it clear that he is talking about the same factory we referred to above when he writes that “the United Dairies milk and cheese factory remains next door along Station Road.”

Food Flavourings, Ingredients, & Processing, Volume 1, 1979 likewise confirms the 1861 date of the invention of the auto cure system. The invention was featured at the Paris show in 1867. The 1897 Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Morocco, Harrison and Sons, mentions that the system was marketed not just by Oake but by his company, Oake, Wood & Co.

American Rapid Cure

It is probable that the Americans were amongst the first to take the process up. In the 1878 work, Meat Production by John Ewart, he records one method of curing used by Americans. It sounds exactly like auto curing. He writes that “a pneumatic process in the salting is [being] adopted, and of which the following is a description, viz.: – the pork is placed in an air-tight vessel in which a vacuum is formed by means of an air pump, and then a saturated solution of salt with a small proportion of saltpetre injected, by which every part of the pork becomes very highly charged with the saturated brine. The exterior of bacon or hams when salted by the process described on being dried becomes covered with re-crystallized salt having the appearance of hoarfrost.” (Ewart, 1878) It is a full 11 years after the invention was featured at the 1867 show in Paris.

Why did it not have the same effect as did the Oake Woods invention of reducing saltiness? Ewart comments that the process just described results in overly-salted meat. He says that “the greater portion of the cured article from that part of the world (the USA) is almost intolerable from its excessive saltness” and describes the vacuum curing process.

It may be that Ewart is misinformed as the overly salty meat was typical of the barrel pork supplied by the Americans to the British. Did he confuse barrel pork and auto cured bacon? His description that after drying, the exterior of the bacon has the appearance of hoarfrost as salt crystals cover the surface of the meat shows that he bases his assertion on more than casual information. So, what could be happening here?

If is referring to Auto Curing, it is possible that they realised that shipping bacon from Denmark vs shipping bacon from America is not the same thing. It is possible that the meat still did not “keep” and the system was adapted to include more salt. It may also be that they are referring to a system that was developed simultaneously with auto curing and that what he describes is a parallel but different process.

It was left to people like the Orthodox Jewish master curer Aron Vecht to combine a mild curing system with the correct temperature to be able to send cured meat from Australia and England. This quest was taken up by all Australian curers. So, either auto curing was in use by 1878 in many packing plants in the US or a similar but independently developed simultaneously or even before Auto Cure was invented in the USA. Can it be that Auto Cure is simply the progression of an earlier invention?

Clues as to the possible origin of the American report comes to us from an 1848 report in the Sydney Morning Herald. The author begins his explanation of a certain American curing system with an interesting statement. He says that “they (we) desire considerable satisfaction in promulgating the discoveries and inventions of our fellow labourers in the field of science, no matter whether they be transmitted to us from the shores of the Neva or the banks of the Mississippi, and we, therefore, hasten to lay before our agricultural friends an important American invention, which promises to with the greatest benefit in a particular branch of domestic economy, as well as in a commercial point of view, and which we are certain requires only to be generally known to be usually adopted.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1848) In this, the author is completely right that adopting and adapting inventions are for the most part not very difficult. It clues us into something of the possibility that Auto Curing may well be an improvement of an American invention.

The author then turns his attention to a certain Mr Davison. Setting the 1848 report in the Sydney Morning Herald aside for a moment, we see if we can find evidence of who this Mr Davison was. A stunning description is given by Paul (1868) who records that Mr. Robert Davison attended the food committee meeting as a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in order to give information on the subject of desiccation as a preservative process which he studied since 1843. So, here we have Mr Davison’s first name given as Robert. He was an engineer by profession and he has been studying preservation since 1843. It definitely looks like the right man!

Paul (1868) gives us more information. He was not originally from the USA, but resided in London. He writes that Robert was of No. 33, Mark Lane, in the City of London, Civil Engineer, and James Scott Horrocks, of Heaton Norris, in the County of Lancaster, registered a patent for improvements in the means of conveying and distributing or separating granular and other substances.” The patent was sealed.

Paul then explains the basis of Roberts method of preservation being through heated air and using the newly emerging science of creating a vacuum. “The importance of hot blast had been discovered in the melting of metals, and it occurred to him that impelled currents of hot air might be advantageously applied to other processes of manufacture, especially as a purifying and desiccating process. In reference to its application to the purification of brewers’ casks, the question arose, in the first instance, as to the effect it would have upon the strength of the wood.” Here we pick up the similarities of Oake’s Auto Cure system with treating wood. “He (Robert) experimented on the subject and found that, so far from deteriorating the wood, it gave increased strength to it to a large extent. He saw that impelled currents of hot air were a valuable thing that had been overlooked, and he then turned his attention to the desiccation (the preservation of food by removing moisture) of vegetable and animal substances.

The key first observation is that his interest was in the removal of moisture and the application of heated air. You may very well wonder how on earth he brought those two together, but hang on. He did it in an interesting way. Paul (1868) writes that “he was successful in the first instance in desiccating potatoes and other table vegetables, which were preserved for a very long time; and he afterwards operated upon a quantity of rump steaks, and by depriving them of all their moisture, they were preserved in a perfectly sweet and wholesome condition for several months.” So far it sounds like standard drying and hot air would not be required. In fact, any air velocity would aid the evaporation process as is done today with fans, for example, in producing biltong. But using hot air which is moved around sounds very similar to what we use in smoking/ drying cabinets today where the air is indeed wam.

For all South African biltong lovers and American Jerky fans, he reveals something extraordinary. Paul (1868) writes that “at the time he was engaged in these experiments an intelligent young man, brother-in-law to Dr Livingstone. . .” Dr Livingston was of course the famous African explorer missionary who resided at the Cape for some time and laboured mostly in Botswana. He had an intimate knowledge of indigenous drying practices and the value of salt.

Paul (1868) continues describing the relationship with the brother-in-law of Livingston and Robert. He does not focus on information about the indigenous practice from Southern Africa but from North America, even though I am absolutely certain that he would have informed Robert about the drying techniques in Southern Africa also. He mentions that Livingston’s brother-in-law was “then his pupil, mentioned to him that he was doing by an artificial process precisely what the North American Indians did with their buffalo meat and venison by the natural heat of the sun in preserving their provisions, and at the same time, he gave him an extract from Catlin’s work on the subject. The Indian method of drying their meat was to cut it up into thin strips, which were hung upon the branches of trees for several days in the heat of the sun. The moisture was entirely evaporated. The meat was then stowed away, and would keep good for years. Salt they never used, notwithstanding the country abounded with it. What the Indians did by natural means, he did by artificial, by the employment of impelled currents of heated air. He cooked some of the steaks desiccated by this process three or four years after they had been operated upon, and they were perfectly good and retained their flavour. After it had been soaked in water the meat recovered nearly its original bulk. In the process of desiccation, nothing but the water was removed, the albumen being all retained in the meat.” (Paul, 1868)

Take special note of his views on the nature of what causes spoilage in meat and vegetables. “By depriving them of all their moisture, they were preserved in a perfectly sweet and wholesome condition for several months.” Mr. Davison said that “he had not entertained the idea of preparing meat in this way (through drying) for the tables of the gentry, but his idea was to have the meat cut into thin slices, thoroughly dried, and packed away for use as we should biscuits. In this way, he thought an excellent article of food might be prepared for shipping purposes, and for the poorer classes.” Not just is it clear that he targeted the moisture of the meat but also his method of work required cutting the meat into smaller cuts and inserting it into the apparatus manually which is similar to what the Indians (and the tribes of Southern Africa) did in cutting the meat into strips before hanging it.

“Mr Davison remarked that three or four years ago an article appeared in the Times, expressing a hope that some plan would be devised for desiccating meat in a better manner than had hitherto been done. The results of the process he had described were decidedly superior to any charqui (drying of meat) that he had seen. He had long since parted with the last portion of the steaks he had experimented upon. The apparatus for desiccation was at present largely in use for other purposes, such as the seasoning of wood, the purifying of casks, &c. It was extensively used for the former purpose in the royal dockyards. He had no doubt he should be able to make the experiment for the satisfaction of the Committee and should have great pleasure in doing so at the earliest opportunity. The heat of the air in his experiments was 180°, but he believed the desiccation would be effected equally well at a temperature of 120°, when the albumen would not be coagulated.”

Let’s now park Davison’s views of preservation which we know he worked on since 1843 for a minute and return to the Sydney Morning Herald’s 1848 article. Davison is described as, “prior to his present occupation, was long connected with the manufacture of salt.” We also learn that he resided in South America for a time, in a country “with greater capacities for the production of the hog and the ox” and his attention was turned to the preservation of meat. Mr Davison drew upon his knowledge of salt and after much investigation invented a method of curing which will sound very familiar to us. He is described as possessing an “inventive genius,” well educated and assisted in the matter of science by Dr Lardner, “whom he consulted upon his arrival in the United States.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1848)

So, we learn that he did travel to the United States and there he solicited the assistance of a certain Dr Lardner. He was an authority on the subject of steam engines and the application of steam in industry.

Peters (1846) describes the system as follows: “The apparatus is very simple, consisting of a cylinder made airtight. It has a “mouthpiece” through which meat is loaded into the machine and closed with a lid that is screwed onto the machine. The lid has two air vents which are opened and closed by screws. Next to the machine is a large wooden vat holding the brine, connected to the machine through a pipe and elevated higher than the cylinder. A lifting pump circulated the brine from the cylinder back to the vat.” I imagine it looking something like the apparatus at the top of the three above which were associated with Auto Curing.

“Meat is cut and placed into the cylinder. Brine is allowed to fill the cylinder which is then closed. Brine is now pumped back into the vat till all the brine is out and a vacuum is formed in the cylinder with the meat pieces in. Blood, air and gasses are thus removed from the meat also. Brine is now run back into the cylinder. The air vents are opened and the liquid brine expels all air from the vessel. As soon as the vessel is full, the air vents are closed again, the brine pumped into the vat again and the meat is left in a vacuum. Again, blood, air and gasses are pumped out. The cycle is repeated. The initial intervals between the cycles are short but eventually, as all the blood, air and gasses have been removed from the meat, the brine is allowed to remain in the cylinder for as long as between 6 and 8 hours. The entire process is completed in about 12 hours.”

It is here where the explanation or the link that Davison found with meat curing and preservation moves from the factual to the fanciful. He believed that the blood, air and gasses in the meat created some kind of a “resisting power” to the brine which had to seep into the meat. The blood had an affinity for the brine and left the meat for brine to fill it. The pressure created by the elevated brine created relative pressure greater than the gasses and air. When the meat is under vacuum, the reporter writes that the meat is “swollen, its fibre distended and pores open and it readily admits the brine even at the pressure of the mere quantity of brine which the cylinder will hold.” One atmosphere was sufficient and where double and triple that was used, it would respectively close and completely close the pores.

So, he abandoned the use of hot air but instead used a vacuum and the pressure of the brine. Whether his explanation is accurate or not, his invention worked. The process cures the meat in hours as opposed to weeks and he patented it. The process is named Rapid Cure.

The principal advantages, besides the speed of curing, are given as:

  • The apparatus is described as “extreme simplicity;”
  • The solution salt and brine is inexpensive to cure both meat and wood;
  • The brine not used is returned to the cistern and re-used;
  • If need be, sugar is used which is also not expensive;
  • The apparatus is made from metal which means it lasts long. It is very easy for any mechanic to fix it if it breaks down;
  • It’s easy to use, even by a boy of 13 years;
  • Producing it is not very expensive.

This means that Mr Davison’s invention or the application of a vacuum and pressure in curing has priority in terms of the Oake Woods invention which is a progression of the Davison invention. In all likelihood, what Ewart refers to in his 1878 publication is the American invention that was widely in use in America. The key object of the invention was the speed of curing and not the production of mild cured bacon as was the case with the Oake Woods patent.

The primary method of obtaining “mild cured bacon” from the USA was through the addition of sugar. Ewart writes that “it should, however, be stated, that American bacon, in its several forms of flitch, roll, and ham, and any of them of small and moderate weights, are also mildly cured in which sugar is in a considerable proportion an ingredient in the curing mixture used; and the article when so prepared is deservedly held in the highest esteem.” (Ewart, 1878)

Ewart also reports the formation of a bluish-green mould upon the flesh-cut portions of the flitches and hams from bacon or ham that are “perfectly cured and becomes thoroughly dried.” He states that the mould “most effectually prevents the rusting of the fat on these parts.” (Ewart, 1878)

It is clear that Aoto Cure for the meat industry is a progression of Rapid Cure, developed by Mr. Robert Davison which had huge success in the USA. Auto Cure quickly developed an impressive list of countries who participated in the technology.

Auto Cure: International Expansion

Having solved the riddle of the origin of the basic system used in Auto Cure namely a vacuum and brine, elevated to exert some pressure, and the repeated use of the old brine which Oake learned from his dad, we return to the matter of the international expansion of Auto Cure. The advantage of Oake’s system was that it yielded mild cure, fast! This was revolutionary in the bacon curing world of the day!

The matter of international sales of this patented system is very interesting. Henry (1897) reports in a section called “A tip to Bacon Curers.” He writes, “since the beginning of May this year experiments have been going on with a new method of curing bacon at the Ystad bacon factory in Sweden, and the results that have been attained have been so successful that it has been adopted at the Landskrona factory also, which belongs to the same owner. Mr Philip W. Heyman, of Copenhagen, the well-known curer of bacon, is adopting the same method, too, at two of his Swedish factories, and five of his Danish factories, and other bacon factories in Sweden and Denmark are making arrangements for having the same method introduced.

He then describes the Auto Cure system again in great detail. he describes the benefits of the system as follows. “The auto-cured bacon will retain the juice of the meat, by which it becomes more nutritious and tender and of milder and more agreeable flavour than bacon cured according to the usual method, and it is easier to digest and keeps for a longer time than the latter so that it need not be ” forced off ” in sale even during hot weather. It will lose no more in weight than other bacon when smoked. Swedish auto-cured bacon has been sent “unbranded” for some time to London from the above-mentioned factory, together with other bacon cured according to the usual method, and has been referred to the latter, having attained about a couple of shillings per cwt, higher price. The first bale of branded auto-cured Swedish bacon, marked “Down’s auto – cure patents, Sweden,” has been forwarded to the official representative for Sweden, Dr Hugo Wedin, of Lancaster Avenue, Manchester, ” for showing, ” having arrived last week, and has been inspected and tested by a number of merchants interested in the bacon trade here. It is expected that this bacon will soon find an increased sale on its own merits.” (Henry, 1897)

Mr Philip W. Heyman according to the Gasconade County Republican (Owensville, Missouri) 08 Jul 1898, from Copenhagen owned nine of the factories that adopted the system. Two was in Sweden and seven in Denmark. An annual royalty of £4,000 was paid by the Danes for the system. The publication in 1897 seems to point to the system being introduced into Scandinavia closer to the end of the 1800s.

There is a report from the Queensland Agricultural Journal: Volume 2, Jan 1898, Queensland Department of Primary Industries which says that “A NEW process of bacon – curing (says the Australasian) has been brought under the notice of the Minister for Agriculture in Victoria, named the “Auto – cure Process of Bacon – curing,” which has been adopted by some of the large bacon factories of Sweden, and by Messrs. Oake, Woods, and Co., Gillingham, Dorsetshire, who have employed it for the last eighteen months in the production of Wiltshire bacon.” The article then makes the interesting statement that “the new process will be used on a considerable scale in Canada and Denmark”

A year later, The Journal, Volume 2 by South Australia’s Department of Agriculture (1899) reports that “in Sweden and Dorsetshire (England), at the factory of Oake, Wood & Co., at Gillingham, a new process under the name “auto cure” has recently been adopted. About seven hours only is required to cure meat, which retains its albumen in an almost unchanged condition, so that the meat is tender, mild, and sweet. The process is carried on in air-tight cylinders of considerable capacity. The meat is then impregnated with brine under considerable pressure. The cost of apparatus to treat 150 sides at a time is said to be £780 in Britain.”

From New Zealand comes information that the same patent was lodged on 3 September 1896 number 8750 E. R. Down from Gillingham, Dorset, Eng. for cylinder or vessel for curing bacon and hams. (Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives of New Zealand) It seems likely that similar applications were filed around the world.

An 1893 reference from the NZ official yearbook mentions that a very definite expectation existed among farmers that the trade of raising pigs will meet the demand of local meat curers and the trade is expected to increase rapidly. It reports that an unnamed firm, referred to as “one of the largest suppliers in the UK of mess pork to the navies of the world and the mercantile marine operations” sent an agent to New Zealand in order to investigate the viability of setting up a branch in the colony. The agent was there a couple of months and was making inquiries as to the prospect of opening up a branch establishment. Reference is made to a trial that he ran to test the quality of the New Zealand pig for their purposes. The trial was done by preparing some carcasses by a process patented by the firm.

I have for a long time thought this was Oake-Woods that is referred to. It was, however a Jewish Dutch curer, Aron Vecht who established the first curing operation in New Zealand. (The Jewish Master Curer and the Prince of Ireland) Oake-Woods in all likelihood entered the New Zealand market based on the patent that was taken out but the particular reference in 1893 was the activities of Aron Vecht. It is interesting that both Oake-Woods and Aron Vecht were looking to New Zealand for bacon production. In an interview, Vecht said that the reason why he chose New Zealand was the raising pigs was possible all year round. Both Vecht’s curing process which was essentially a copy of the patent held by Henry Deeny as well as that of Oake-Woods were protected by patents.

The approach of protecting the process with a patent, followed by appointing local producers to use the system under license is an extremely effective way of expanding internationally. Oake-Woods was one of the only firms that could do it based on the fact that their process was highly patentable. The reason for this is that theirs was not only a process as was the case with mild cured bacon of William Oake but involved very specific equipment. Aron Vecht took a different direction to protect his intellectual property namely connecting it with a particular brand, York Castle. According to the agreement he entered with the licensee is only allowed to sell bacon under this brand which was produced with his curing method. He would then receive compensation from the company for every pig cured with his patented system.

If a particular brand is not connected to the method of curing, the only alternative is to rely on the equipment to differentiate it from other systems. Related to the difference between Auto Cure and the American system of Rapid Cure, the key difference is the scale of the equipment used by the Oake-Woods process. A process on its own is impossible to protect as the case of William Oakes mild cure system illustrated beautifully. The moment unique equipment enters the equation, the entire situation changes and it becomes highly patentable! No other firm had both a totally unique process as well as totally unique equipment which could not easily be copied going along with the process at this time. A process is only protected till your staff leaves. It was true then as it is true today! To my knowledge, Oake-Woods had the most expansive international coverage of any bacon and ham curing company at the time by far!

Vechts agents in New Zealand ran the trails and then shipped the meat to his principals in England. He received a cablegram which stated that the meat and the curing were done to “perfection.” As a result of this, arrangements were made for extensive trade throughout the colony. The English firm was prepared to erect factories at a cost of £20,000 each in areas where they have a reasonable expectation to secure 2,000 pigs per week. (The NZ Official Yearbook, 1893)

Helen Shorrocks contacted me with the following interesting recollection of a South African operation. She writes, “My Grandad worked for them (Oakes William & Co.) all his life, I believe he was head butcher and was offered a job in South Africa as a young family man with the company as they had a factory out there. My Grandmother wouldn’t go.” The same modus operandi would have been used in South Africa where a local company was granted a license to use the technology after it was patented. It is fascinating that the technology was already exported to South Africa

Auto Curing and Mild Curing: Same Result for Both Processes

We now know the link between mild curing and auto curing. Still, the systems are closely related in design and through the Oake family who gave us both systems. Looking through newspapers I realised that the terms were sometimes either confused or used interchangeably. A good case in point is an article that appeared in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) on 25 Jun 1901. In another article dated 12 Jan 1906 from The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), they still refer to the merits of Australian produce. The article reads, “I could tell you now which goods are required in Africa that Australia manufactures. For instance, bacon in 15 lb. pieces would find a market. The market at present is entirely in the hands of one man – an American, I think who sells ‘mild cured bacon’ but when it is put in a pan it nearly all goes to oil. You make good bacon in Australia, but you hardly ever see it in South Africa except at Durban.” The term was definitely known in South Africa and I wonder if the implications of the author’s words were not intended to infer that “the real deal mild cure bacon is made very well in Australia!”

The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) 25 Jun 1901, Tue

Another fascinating article from The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pennsylvania), 08 Feb 1899, which I attach a clipping off (I add it as Note 2), calls arterial injection “mild cured.” It refers to a young man from Denmark who presumably invented it and that by this date the method was well known in England. We, however, know it was the brainchild of Mr Morgan who became Dr Morgan. The author then reports on another method of curing which was created as auto curing. He gives a short description of the process and there is no question that it is the process as marketed by Oake Woods & Co, Ltd from Gillingham, Dorset. He then calls this bacon mild cured! (2) Upon thorough research, I found that the term auto cured was almost never used between 1890 and 1905 and the term mild cured was preferred! It seems as if the public called auto cure mild cure and my guess is that it is due to the fact that the end product was very similar. This being the case, it means that William Harwood Oake achieved the ultimate in product development in that he created a product, equal in the outcome but produced in a fraction of the time compared to the class-leading product!

Lastly

The Oak family is responsible for giving us two powerful and historically significant systems of curing. The first, being mild curing by William Oake and the second was auto curing by William Harwood, his son. The key feature of both systems is the repeated re-use of the brine where the microflora is retained for as long as possible and the brine was only boiled under very specific conditions. The second, auto curing, adds vacuum and pressure with the accompanying befits. This is a remarkable journey and we salute the work of William Oake and his son.

The fact that auto curing has already been introduced to the curers in South Africa is a most significant fact and I will try my best to find more detail about who the company is. The entire experience emphasizes the need for innovation and remaining conscious alert to the latest developments in the field of curing. This is a business where one cannot for a moment lose sight of developments around the world!

It taught me a valuable lesson. The world is much bigger and always more complex than the simple models we build in our minds. We must continue to be students, not just of life and the sciences we employ for our daily bread, but also for the complexity of all these areas we find ourselves engaged in. People, our relationships and nature are complex and the biggest mistake we will ever make is to think we know something. On that philosophical note, I greet you will my next letter!

Lots of greetings and love from Calne,

Your friend and dad,

Eben

(c) eben van tonder


Further Reading

William and William Harwood Oake

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Notes

(1) When I returned to Calne many years later, Michael was still working with them and we conducted an experiment where we added colour to the brine and used one of the smaller autoclaves to evaluate the rate of diffusion. We did not use the injector needle to inject brine as is done in step one. This way we could see the effect of the vacuum on its own. At the end of the 5-hour curing process, we cut the muscle in two and saw that brine entered the meat, but it was not well diffused through the muscle.

We repeated the experiment but this time we injected the meat first as per the prescribed method. When we cut that meat open at the end of the process, we saw that small brine pockets formed in the meat, but not even this distributed the brine evenly. It explains to me on the one hand why there are many problems with bacon cured in this way and on the second hand, it shows the superiority of the tank curing or mild bacon system where brine is allowed to enter the meat over several days. Tank curing, therefore, removes the expensive cylinder and vacuum and it achieves much better brine distribution using time. It can be shown that the distribution of brine through the meat happens through diffusion which is simply the movement of the brine from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

The most important contributor of diffusing the brine through the meat quickly and evenly still remains hot smoking. We concluded our experiment by hot smoking and heating some of the bacon in a pale dry chamber after we injected the meat with colour. The results were exactly as we expected. Proper diffusion of the brine took place during smoking. My guess is that it takes place as the meat heats up. This concept of autoclaving the bacon would later be combined with the concept of tumbling or massaging the bacon to create vacuum tumblers.

(2) The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pennsylvania) 08 Feb 1899, Wed Clipping

References


The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)25 Jun 1901, Tue

The Age. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia29 Mar 1898, Tue, Page 7

APPENDIX TO THE JOURNALS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF NEW ZEALAND. SESSION II., 1897. VOL. III.

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The English Pig, the Kolbroek and the Kune Kune in Bacon & the Art of Living

The English Pig, the Kolbroek and the Kune Kune in Bacon & the Art of Living
By Eben van Tonder
26 June 2021

Introduction

I fell in love with the story of the Kolbroek from the first time I heard it. It is one of the indigenous South African pig breeds, closely related to the Kune Kune from New Zealand. In trying to trace the origins of these breeds I had to go back to the development of the English pig. It’s one of the greatest stories of our trade and here I share the complete work from Bacon & the Art of Living on these amazing animals!

From Bacon & the Art of Living

Below is the list of chapters dealing specifically with the Kolbroek, the Kune Kune and the English pig.

Chapter 03: Kolbroek
Chapter 10.15 The English Pig with links to the Kolbroek and Kunekune
Chapter 11.02: C & T Harris in New Zealand and other amazing tales

Please make contact!

Any contributions or comments can be directed to me at :

Email: ebenvt@gmail.com

Phone Number and Whatsapp: +27 71 545 3029

Cape Town, South Africa.

The complete history of bacon.