Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1889 — What Berliners Eat. [ARTICLE]

What Berliners Eat.

The amount of animal food disposed of in the German capital is such that, divided up equally among the population of the city, it yields an allowance of two and a half pounds of meat a week to every man. woman and child in the place, including infants in arms, members of the legislature and paupers. In other words, says the London Telegraph, each and every Berliner, irrespective of age, or sex or political opinions is officially credited with the consumption of 141 weight of beef, mutton, veal, pork, lamb and horse-flesh per annum. No fewer than 7,000 horses are slaughtered yearly for the Berlin meat market, their flesh being partly sold as “butcher’s meat,” in shops specially affected to the retail trade iu “pferdefleisch,” and partly “worked up” into sausages,a popular variety of which is hawked “all hot” about the streets late in the evening and during the smaller hours of the earlv morn. Poor Prussians are much addicted to horse-flesh stewed in a savory sauce; nor do the well-to-do disdain it as as occasional viand served under its own name. In Germany. Italy and even. France the flesh of horses and asses in unquestionably “converted into sassengers,” like unto the aged hero of one Samuel Weller’s most gruesome anecdotes, in vast quantities, and imparts to them close texture, rich color, and aromatic flavor, in particular to Brunswick “wurst," “martadella of Bologna,” and “saucisson de Lyon.” This bulk of the substance to which these dainties owe their being, however, is pork, fresh or salted; and in all probability the 470,000 pigs that annually pay the debt of nature in tribute to Beninese appetites find their way to the table in the shape of either sausage or ham; for Prussians rarely eat roast pork or fried bacon, whereas they never weary of smoked and cured preparations of pig. Besides devouring this porcine host, Berlin stands accountant yearly for the violent death of 127,500 head of cattle, 131,500 calves, and 346,000 sheep, besides a multitude of minor animals, all of which vanish in due course down her capacious maw.