The Craftsmanship of Meat in the Carpathian Basin

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A Historic Overview

Composition of meat
Meat is a sophisticated compound consisting of muscle- and connective tissue. Chemical composition of lean meat, free from visible fat and connective tissue: 18 to 22% protein, 70 to 75% water, 1 to 3% fat, 0.5 to 1.0% connective tissue, 0.6 to 1.0% minerals. Besides that, carbo-hydrates, lactic acid and small-molecule nitrogen compounds are also contained in meat.

Meat consumption
It is of utmost importance for human life, how much and what type of protein gets into the organism regularly. Without proteins of animal origin, we cannot live in healthy condition for a prolonged time. So-called Essential Amino Acids (EAAs) may be recovered only by intake of food. Meat is a protein source containing all EAAs in sufficient quantity. Meat is stimulating gastric juice production, helps digestion and utilisation of food in human body.
Findings of burnt animal bones with the Beijing Man show that meat was consumed roasted even 350 thousand years ago.

Age of the Árpád Dynasty
Our forerunners were raising animals and cultivating plants well before conquering the Carpathian Basin, where Hungary lies now. The conquered new homeland was excellently suited for both animal husbandry and plant cultivation. Our ancestors lived at that time mainly of livestock-raising and fishing, partly of hunting. In that part of the Carpathian Basin populated by Hungarians, composition of meat consumption was - according to bone findings - the following:

	11th century (%)	12th - 13th century (%)
Horsemeat	24 - 27	18 - 25
Beef	31 - 34	29 - 34
Lamb	9 - 16	10 - 19
Pork	15 - 21	15 - 23

These bone-findings prove that Hungarian meat consumption level was high above European average at that time. In previous centuries meat consumption amounted to 130 kg per capita annually or even more.

The Middle Ages and the Evolution of Trade Guilds
Butcher's trade may be interpreted in a very broad sense as processing of meat right from the beginnings until today. It included purchasing and keeping of livestock (livestock trade), slaughtering and processing (meat craft) and selling of meat products (meat trade). One master butcher kept and grazed 20 to 200 cattle and even more sheep depending on his clients number.
Trade Guilds were evolved in the medieval towns. Trade Guild privileges may have been granted by the King, the Queen, the Palatine of Hungary and certain peers.
There is documentary evidence on Butcher's Guild from the second half of the 14^th century. From the 17^th century on until their fading a large number of Butcher's Guilds were founded, one even in 1852.
Butcher's activity was under strict legal control. New members were admitted to the Guilt first of all by being the son of a Guild Master or an assistant marrying the daughter or the widow of a Guild Master, but only after passing the difficult examination and completing a masterwork. An outsider could be admitted only after 6 years of practice and passing the examination including completing his masterwork, if he was found to fit.
Trade Guilds were taking utmost care of their honour and reputation. The masters appointed by the Guilt were inspecting the quality of meat sold in butcher's shops. On those selling meat not meeting quality demands, heavy fines were imposed. To control unfair competition, Guilds put an upper limit on livestock purchase by one single butcher.
627 butcher Masters were registered altogether in Hungary in 1777 that is 4.5% of all tradesmen.

Operational Regulations
The slaughterhouse has to be situated either above or beside water.
Only flawless and healthy animals may be slaughtered.
"Meat sighters" or inspectors should inspect both live slaughtered animal as well as meat. In the butcher's shop selling of meat is allowed only when fresh.
Butchers and apprentices are allowed to the street from the slaughterplace only after washing themselves.
From the end of the 16^th century, meat had to be put on ice in summertime.
Slaughtering of cattle was allowed exclusively in municipal slaughterhouses.
Some places and dates of slaughterhouse openings: Sopron - 1526, Kolozsvár - 1516, Miskolc - 1562. Apprentices were obliged to learn to read and to write from 1560 on. During slaughtering and meat cutting use of an apron was compulsory from 1599.
Meat should be made available in a sufficient quantity regularly. Craftsmanship and knowledge of slaughtering and cutting should be examined or proved on the so called Master's examination. The first of this written Regulations was launched in 1573.

Cattle Trade
In the town of Sopron 3 out of the 10 largest taxpayers were butchers in 1440. Some decades after this date largest taxpayers in Pest, Székesfehérvár, Debrecen, Szeged, Nagykároly and Temesvár are also butchers. Their outstanding welfare was established not so much by meat production and trade but by cattle trade.
Cattle were mainly raised for trade. At the turn of the 14^th - 15^th century foreign demand for Hungarian grey breed cattle increased substantially, mainly in Venice and in the evolving southern German towns. Cattle trade was carried on at that time by civic town butchers and those villain butchers who became livestock traders.

Livestock Export
At the beginnings only some thousand cattle were driven towards west, their number exceeding a hundred thousand from the thirties of the 16^th century on.
Pig export went up in the 19^th century heading mainly to Vienna and Prague from pig farms in Pest and Győr. Largest traders and meat processors were Hillbert, Pfeifer, Gassner and Halbritter.

The Role of Market
Towns Large-scale cattle trade was promoted in the towns by obtaining the right of holding nationwide fairs. Bigger country towns acquired the right one after the other , very often by heavy expenditures.
For two-and-a-half centuries taxes from cattle traders were a main source to the treasury. To illustrate the huge incomes of the traders here is only one example: Albert Asztalos, a butcher-trader granted 200 000 gold coins to the University of Nagyszombat in 1636.
In the second part of the 18th century butcher-traders were cattle trade and export forbidden gradually in all towns and counties because of domestic shortage. This way by 1 800 butcher trading ceased to exist.
This butcher-trader layer was slowly integrated into the middle classes and helped in forming a modern bourgeois society.

Ceasing of Trade Guilds
Clause 83 Section 4 of the 1872 Act No. 8 declares ceasing of trade guilds. Preamble: trade guilds obstruct development of industry by their obsolete rulings. At this time 9 700 butchers were active officially. The number of those employed by them amounted to less than five thousand. At this starting point to free competition, no real slaughtering and processing factories existed. At the same time the importance of the meat branch was decreasing because of changing conventions: meat consumption of 40 to 70 kg per capita in 1850 went down to 35 to 50 kg per capita annually by 1890.

Forming of Trade Associations
Butcher Masters of the former Pest-town Butcher Trade Guild declared to the founding of the Pest-town Butcher Trade Association in a statutory meeting on 8^th July 1872, very soon after the 1872 Act No. 8 came out. The constitution of the Association was printed in Hungarian and German and approved by the Hungarian Royal Ministry for Agriculture, Industry and Trade. The Association had selected a new seal with the following legend: Viribus Unitis - With Efforts United. The Guild Ceasing Act mentioned declares that if the Trade Association is founded within 9 month, properties of the Guild pass to the Association. This was one reason of the hurry.
Entry to the Association was voluntary in contrary to previous practice of the Guilds.

Founding of the Butcher Trade Corporation
According to the 1884 Act No. 17 the Budapest Butcher Trade Corporation was founded on 25^th October 1886. Membership was compulsory to those active in the business.
Also, appropriate qualification was required from professionals to permit their operating.

Company Registration
The 1875 Act of Commerce compels all firms and companies to register themselves in the Commercial Register.

Industrial Development from the End of the 19^th Century
Most of the private slaughterplaces did not meet contemporary quality and hygiene requirements in the mid-19^th century. Therefore official trend showed toward controlled central slaughterhouses where slaughtering would be inspected by a veterinarian and carcasses processed by well-trained professionals.
Public slaughterhouses of this kind started operating in the last quarter of the 19^th century. In Budapest the new public slaughterhouse for cattle was finished by 1872. New public slaughterhouses were erected in Győr in 1877 and in Miskolc in 1892.
Construction of the pig slaughterhouse started in 1897 and was finished in 1902 in Budapest, in spite that large-scale butchers obstructed its construction.
In 1937 there existed 893 public slaughterhouses and 3 556 slaughterplaces in Hungary. That year 470 000 cattle, 1.4 million pigs, 220 000 sheep and goats and 16 000 horses were slaughtered in them.
From the beginning of the 20^th century, export of livestock started to flourish again slowly and export of processed meats commenced. Processed meats export reached more than 2 000 tons in 1913. Domestic consumption decreased drastically and export ceased practically during World War I.
After the war and in the carved-up country continue high inflation affected meat industry rather badly. Price fall was stopped finally by living-up livestock export.
Following the global economic depression, Hungarian livestock and meat products were exported to 30 countries of the world on a regular basis. World War II spoiled this positive trend entirely. Before World War II in Hungary 8 000 butchers, in Budapest 2 200 members of Trade Corporation were active.
In the war 70% of cattle, 74.7% of all pigs, sheep and 81% of all horses were lost or killed. Considerable percentage of the remainder was taken away after war as "war damage compensation".