Even with poultry which is "freshly killed" there is frequently a period of several days between the time of slaughtering and sale. Not only is it dangerous, but it is repugnant to our sense of decency, that the flesh we are to eat shall lie for several days in close contact with putrefying animal matter.
Undoubtedly undrawn poultry, fish, and game have caused many cases of poisoning which have been wrongfully attributed to other sources. The poisoning resulting often resembles that caused by other poisons administered by persons or taken with suicidal intent. Many sufferers from digestive troubles--headache, nausea, colic, and diarrhea after eating, owe their ailments to tainted foods.
We are advised that the reason for slaughtering poultry without thorough bleeding is the saving in the weight of the fowl, and this reason is doubtless also one for the storing of poultry and offering it for sale without removing the viscera. There is, however, no reason why the consumer should be compelled to purchase a large percentage of excreta, offal, and refuse with his poultry. We would not tolerate the addition of a certain percentage of weight in the form of entrails of the steer with each beefsteak we buy. The consumer purposes to buy edible food and not the disgusting waste which should be eliminated in the process of slaughtering and dressing. It is just as reasonable to ask the consumer to buy hogs, calves, and lambs without the intestines removed as to solicit his purchase of undrawn turkeys and chickens.
After the appearance, in "The Century Magazine" of November, 1911, of my article on Ungastronomic America, in which I denounced the practice of offering the public undrawn, cold-storage poultry, I was bombarded with abusive letters from packers and others, and a periodical, called "The Steward," fancied that it had completely demolished me by quoting the results obtained by Dr. Mary E. Pennington, in collaboration with Evelyn Witmer and H. C. Pierce, during a series of observations described in a circular entitled "The Comparative Rate of Decomposition in Drawn and Undrawn Market Poultry" published in 1911 by the Department of Agriculture. This result of these observations was that "undrawn poultry decomposes more slowly than does poultry which has been either wholly or partially eviscerated."