Military Meat Processing Workshops, Integrated Production during the First World War

Meat products were an essential part of soldiers’ rations during the First World War. Faced with the challenges of food security, armies modernised their supplies, making massive use of industrially processed, frozen and tinned meat products. The French army took part in this rationalisation drive, reducing its dependence on beef while ensuring the acceptability of meat substitutes, an essential command tool. Through an integrated approach to meat processing, which was gradually becoming more global and prescriptive, it developed refrigerated abattoirs that were better suited to mass supply, harnessed butchers’ expertise to create new products, and processed inedible by-products. These initiatives contributed to the Allies’ food supply advantage, but in France, where many obstacles to the transformation of the meat industry persisted after 1918, modernisation of the sector remained limited.