Liebig's Extract of Meat Company
It was named after Justus Freiherr von Liebig, the 19th-century German organic chemist who developed and promoted a method for industrial production of beef extract.
Liebig clearly stated of his process that "the benefit of it should ... be placed at the command of as large a number of persons as possible by the extension of the manufacture, and consequently a reduction in the cost.
"[4][5][6] A variety of companies produced small batches of meat extract based on Liebig's ideas, often using his name on their products.
[1] In 1862, George Christian Giebert, a young German railway engineer visiting Europe, read Liebig's Familiar Letters on Chemistry.
Convinced that the process could be industrialized, he wrote to Liebig to suggest opening a manufacturing plant in South America.
He visited Max Joseph von Pettenkofer's Royal Pharmacy in Munich, and Friedrich Mohr's laboratory in Koblenz, where small amounts of extract were being produced.
[1] The extract was originally promoted for its supposed curative powers and nutritional value as a cheap, nutritious alternative to real meat.
[1] However (wrote Mark R. Finlay), beginning in mid-1865the assumption that Liebig's Extract of Meat was extremely nutrituous came under heavy attack.
[17] With the introduction of freezer units, the company was eventually able to produce and export frozen and chilled raw meat as well.
[23] The company also worked with English chemist Henry Enfield Roscoe to develop a cheaper meat extract product which it commercialized some years after Liebig's death.
[7]: 230 Liebig also produced a line of biological products under the Oxoid name (starting in 1924), in particular glandular extracts and later dehydrated culture media.
The plant played a major role in the development of Uruguay's cattle sector, which is still one of the country's main sources of export products.
Investigations into the 1964 Aberdeen typhoid outbreak revealed that the cooling water used in the canning process at the plant was not being consistently chlorinated.
[27][28] In the 1920s, the Liebig's Extract of Meat Company acquired the Oxo Tower Wharf on the south bank of the river Thames in London.
The company's assets included over 2-3 million hectares of farm land and herds of cattle in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Southern Rhodesia, Kenya and South Africa.
When it was shut down, the municipality decided to create a museum which would display the original machinery, as well as social and cultural artifacts of the technological revolution in Fray Bentos.
Dr. Sue Millar, president of the International Cultural Tourism Committee (ICOMOS), said: “Thus there is the chance to save time and massive expenditure on conservation, to retain the exceptional scope and variety of the 19th and 20th century British manufacturing and engineering machinery.” The site has been proposed as a possible UNESCO World Heritage Site.
[25] The museum is open for tourism and education, displaying the machinery used in the meat and extract of meat processing, the buildings, an 1893 Merryweather water pumping machine, a complete canning plant, a meat-cooking plant, and laboratory full of chemicals and chemistry jars, flasks and stoves.
The museum collection contains hundred of photos and glass negatives detailing working life at Liebig's.
[7]: 237 Many famous artists were contacted to design those series of cards, which were first produced using true lithography, then litho chromo, chromolithography, and finally offset printing.
