Industrialization and the Modern Global Food System

The invention of mechanical refrigeration and its application to ocean shipping in the late nineteenth century transformed global food trade as fundamentally as any development since the Columbian Exchange itself. The first successful long-distance shipment of refrigerated meat, aboard the ship Le Frigorifique from France in 1876, and, more famously, the voyage of the Dunedin, which carried frozen New Zealand lamb and mutton to London in 1882 using a compression refrigeration system, demonstrated that perishable meat, dairy, and produce could survive weeks-long ocean voyages without spoiling. This breakthrough opened enormous new export markets for distant food-producing regions, above all Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, which built their national economies substantially around refrigerated beef, lamb, and dairy exports to Britain and Europe over the following decades, while also allowing urban consumers in the industrializing world to eat fresh meat and produce imported from thousands of miles away, a possibility unimaginable before mechanical refrigeration.