Day 8 - “What the $·”% is a Public Abattoir (Slaughterhouse)”
reflections while photo-editing …

So while I was cycling along the Canal du Midi, I took a wrong turn and came across this old public slaughterhouse in the town of Valence d’Agen. It made me wonder - what the $·”% is a public slaughterhouse? Would it work like a bike co-op does - bring your own animal and DIY slaughter it?

As someone who avoids eating meat, I thought it could be a neat initiative to curb meat consumption - if you want to consume animals - KIY (kill it yourself). That way, surely less people would be inclined to eat meat if those were the preconditions. But imagination aside, I was left wondering -  what did a public slaughterhouse actually entail? 

So, naturally, I turned to google for answers and found a journal from the University of Windsor (Canada) that cleared up some of my doubts:

The first public slaughterhouse appeared in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the French word abattoir was introduced to refer to a specific place where animals are slaughtered for human consumption (Brantz 2008; Otter 2008; Vialles 1994). Public authorities in other Western European countries tried to concentrate the slaughter of animals outside town walls (Thomas 1983, 294) in larger, public slaughterhouses, although it was not a uniform process (Young Lee 2008a). One common theme that linked these developments was an interest in making animal slaughter less visible. Ironically, the new slaughterhouses, which were labeled as “public”, increasingly removed animal slaughter from the view of the general public.

- A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary Implications , A. Fitzgerald (2010)

So apparently it seems these “public” slaughterhouses were created to shield the public from the slaughtering process, interesting…

In my page 1 of googling, I also came across an interesting article called “Recollecting the Slaughterhouse” in Cabinet - a NYC-based arts & culture magazine. According to the article, France’s public slaughterhouses have a history dating back to the French Revolution, when the freedom of commerce led to butchers being able to practice their art wherever they please, which included right in the centre of Paris. 

In late 18th-century Paris, animals were slaughtered right in the back of butcher shops all over the city, and especially in the city’s center at Châtelet, which Louis-Sébastien Mercier, one of Paris’s most avid observers, described as “by far the worst-smelling place in the whole world." And Mercier was not alone. Many Parisians complained about the pestilent stench, disturbing noises, and continuous flow of blood in the streets. Attesting to the changing sensibilities that accompanied the onset of Paris’s urban growth, bystanders increasingly criticized the public display of slaughter. Mercier asked: "What can be more revolting and distasteful than the butchering of animals and the dismantling of their bodies in public view?”

Most critics agreed that slaughtering needed to be removed from the streets of Paris to clean up the environment and to protect the health and morality of the public. Numerous reformers demanded that slaughterhouses be relocated, preferably to the outskirts of town. However, nothing was implemented during the ancien règime, in part because the government was unwilling to take an initiative, but also because Paris’s powerful butchers guild strongly opposed any such interventions into their business. In the course of the French Revolution, all guilds were abolished to grant freedom of commerce. Yet this mandate produced unintended side effects. Meat could be sold anywhere, and animals were slaughtered right in the streets without supervision or any kind of inspection. Meat had become the domain of the people, but also the curse of the city. 

So, in summary, public opposition to the public slaughtering of animals led to public slaughterhouses in France.

Photo of former Abattoir Public taken in Valence d’Agen, Tarn-et-Garonne (July 2016) It now serves as a public resting area for people traveling along the Canal.