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From handcrafted butchering to assembly line slaughtering. The German municipal Slaughter Industry in the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr area) and Allgäu, 1945-1990

• Phd project
• Researcher: Philip Kortling
• Supervisor: Juliane Czierpka & Nina Kleinöder (Bamberg)

The project examines the socioeconomic changes in the German Slaughter industry from the perspective of municipal slaughterhouses. Since the late nineteenth century, these municipal slaughterhouses were the central places for livestock trade and meat production, preferably located on the outskirts of towns. Here, in the urban space, municipal slaughterhouses acted as gatekeepers of sanitary standards and as economic hubs for farmers and butchers – a function, they retained until sometime beyond the end of the second world war. Within a timeframe of 45 years – from the foundation of the German Federal Republic until the reunion of both German states – the municipal slaughterhouses lost their dominant position in the meat market. Private slaughterhouses took over the majority of meat production and became a driving force of change, most vividly depicted with the change in distribution channels: instead of selling and buying livestock, as it was a tradition in the municipal system of animal slaughter, the so-called „Totvermarktung“ prevailed in the second half of the twentieth century, which is the practice of marketing slaughtered animals (respectively meat) to butchers and supermarkets.
The presented project analyses the causes of these changes in the meat market by focusing on the decline of municipal slaughterhouses as central processing facilities. To be more specific, the project questions why municipal slaughterhouses were displaced by the private industry of meat packing plants. Which strategic paths did the management take in producing and selling meat? Against the background of new private competition, did differing regional conditions enable different development paths? To what extent was the traditional trade of butchering part of the economic considerations and in what way did these traditions limit the considerations? Vice versa, what effects did company policies have on the transformation of the butchering craft?
To answer these questions municipal slaughterhouses need to be understood and analysed as a phenomenon, which is bound by their specific time and context. Therefore, utilizing the neo-institutional methods, path dependencies need to be revealed and, additionally, slaughterhouses conceived beyond profit aggregating undertakings but as culturally confined agents, which are part of a social system and a (strict) internal rule set. Following this line of thought the development of the municipal slaughterhouse will be analysed through socio-cultural and -economic terms while also dissecting the internal structures and customs of the butchers as explanatory forces for the changes in the industry. Because these developments were affected by the conditions of the specific regions, in which the slaughterhouses were located, the project is conceptualised as a regional study, which compares municipal slaughterhouses in urban centres (Ruhrgebiet/ Ruhr area) and rural areas (Allgäu). Under the premise that the increase in efficiency of slaughtering animals became the primary goal in an ever more competitive meat market, the development of slaughtering techniques, technological innovations, and labour organization constitute the focus of this analysis. Therefore, the study combines micro, meso, and macro approaches.