Steve James and Chris James on the history of frozen meat.

Modern commercial meat freezing has a surprisingly long history. It is believed that the first modern meat freezing works were established at Darling Harbour in Sydney, Australia in 1861 (Critchell & Raymond, 1912). In the next decade, there were a number of attempts to transport frozen meat.  However, the first entirely successful frozen meat shipment was that of the S.S. Paraguay from Buenos Aries to Havre in 1877.  Due to a collision the ship took seven months to complete her journey, however the 5,500 mutton carcasses were still reported to be in ‘in tip top condition’ when the ship arrived at Havre.  A second voyage was planned but never happened and to quote a Dr Bergés (Critchell & Raymond 1912) “As has often happened in the history of industries, it has been the French who have made the discoveries, and the English have turned them to account to their profit”. Thus it was that the arrival of the S.S. Strathleven in London on December 8th 1880 with its cargo on 40 tons of frozen Australian beef and mutton may be said to have truly started the International frozen meat trade. This meat was sold for up to three times its value in Australia and as stated in the Daily Telegraph at the time “It has been tested by the ordinary method of cooking, and found to be in such good condition that neither by its appearance in the butchers’ shops, nor by any peculiarity of flavour when cooked for the table, could it be distinguished from freshly killed English meat” (Critchell & Raymond 1912).

Despite this glowing report, soon frozen meat began to suffer from a perception that it’s eating quality was not as “good” as that of “fresh” chilled meat. In the middle 1950s Swift and Company tried to introduce frozen red meat to the consumer but found that “the consumer indicated she was not interested in purchasing frozen red meats” (Bernholdt 1974).  24% of respondents in a survey of Australian consumers  in 1986 considered that freezing “definitely affected quality” and a further 13% felt it would “under certain circumstances” (Walker & Mitchell 1986).  Today some retailers and media still pedal this perception.  For example, one online store in the US quotes that “When you are buying steaks online, you want to get a good value, and you want to get great quality, right?  We do to!  That means we want unfrozen steaks”.  However, contrary to this consumers appear happy to purchase chilled meat and freeze it as home.  A US survey found that approximately 80% of a major retailers customer’s did this (Payne et al., 2002). While a similar New Zealand survey reported that while the majority of red meat (84.6%) purchased by consumers surveyed was fresh (rather than frozen) approximately 64% of the fresh meat they purchased was subsequently frozen in the home (Gilbert et al., 2007).

References

Anonymous (2008) Fresh vs. Frozen Steaks, USDA Prime Beef and Black Angus, Online. Buy steak for mail order delivery. MyButcher.com. Accessed 14 October 2008.

Bernholdt, H. F. (1974) Merchandising frozen meats and consumer attitudes in purchasing and preparation. In Meat Freezing – Why and How? Meat Research Institute Symposium No 3, edited by Cutting, C. L.  pp4.1-4.7. Langford, UK: Meat Research Institute.

Critchell, J. T. & Raymond, J. (1912) A history of the frozen meat trade. 2nd ed. London: Constable and Company Ltd.

Gilbert, S. E., Whyte, R., Bayne, G., Paulin, S. M., Lake, R. J. & van der Logt, P. (2007) Survey of domestic food handling practices in New Zealand. International Journal of Food Microbiology.  Vol. 117:3, pp306-311.

Payne, K. R., Brooks, J. C., Morgan, J. B. & Ray, F. K. (2002) The effect of fresh and frozen storage on palatability, oxidative rancidity and colour of modified atmosphere packed beef steaks. Animal science research report, Oklahoma Agricultural Experimental Station, USA.

Walker, C. M. & Mitchell, G. E. (1986) Beef handling practices at the retail and household levels. The findings of two surveys. Livestock and Meat Authority of Queensland, Research Series, Research Report No. 22, Brisbane, Australia.