Nothing was easy for families on the home front in
World War Two. Much of
their efforts went to stretching their food
ration to feed their families, making do and mending to cope with
shortages,
growing their own vegetables
and keeping chickens
or rabbits for eggs and fresh meat.
World War Two poster encouraging households to collect
food scraps for pig swill. Photographed in the Museum of Nottingham Life.
However, they also pulled together and they participated in national initiatives
to help with food production on the wider home front. One such initiative was
to recycle food scraps for farmers to use for pig food - known as 'pig swill'.
Food waste collection in World War Two
Edmonton:
Can I remember the collection of waste food! I can
still smell it!
In the wider area of Edmonton, north London, where
I lived during the Second World War, the bins for the waste food collection
were provided by the council. They were large, heavy metal, galvanized ones,
rather like milk churns or heavy duty dustbins, and they had heavy lids
to keep out flies. They were spaced out along streets so that each bin was
shared by a number of households. Factories, hospitals and canteens also
had bins.
All sorts of food waste went into the buckets, from
vegetable peelings to scraps of meat, all carried out unwrapped in household
buckets or bowls.
The waste was emptied into large tanks on the back
of trucks, which came along on a regular basis, and the waste was transported
to processing plants around London. In Edmonton our local processing plant
was in Park View Road, Tottenham. The rich aroma could be smelt for miles
around. The waste was poured into trays and baked to sterilise it. At this
stage it was solid, in appearance and resembled bread pudding - known to
us locals as Tottenham Pudding.
The 'pudding' was then sold to pig farmers who added
water to it to feed their pigs.
This type of recycling continued until the mid 1950s.
I'm not sure as to why it was discontinued - maybe the cost of production,
or the cheap imports of Danish bacon that took place around the time.
Peter Johnson
Edgware:
There were bins attached to the lampposts along Edgwarebury
Lane, Edgware which were for everyone to drop in left-over food scraps. These were
collected and used for pig food. They had their own farmyard fragrance,
hard to describe, but I can still smell it! A sort of vegetative barnyard.
Christine Tolton
The initiative was of course particularly aimed at families who did not keep
chickens or rabbits, and at canteens, restaurants and hospitals - wherever groups
of people ate. Peter Johnson, a child at the time, recollects how it worked
in his local area - see the inset on the right.
A bin for food waste for pigs, photographed in the Imperial
War Museum. It looks too new to be authentic and is not at all as recollected
by Peter Johnson and Christine Tolton.
Food waste collection for pig swill was also in operation in Edgware while
I was growing up. I don't remember it, though, as the public bins were not on
our route to the shops. Christine Tolton recollects them along Edgwarebury Lane,
which was a well-used thoroughfare leading out from the centre of Edgware with
housing on both sides and with roads of houses at intervals leading off it.
The location must have been ideal as numerous women would not have been far
from a bin.
An adventure in pig swill!
There were pig swill bins at the top of our street
in Edgware. One was tied to the last tree close to the intersection of Vancouver
Road and Bacon Lane.
It must have been around 1947
or 48, and I was 5 or 6 years old. One day, we kids were playing 'Tin Can Copper' in the street. This involved throwing an old tin
can and everyone hiding. The tin can was thrown and everyone dashed off.
Some hid among the street trees, now long gone, and I was the last to hide.
Without thinking, I saw the pig swill bin, ran over to it, threw the lid
off and jumped right in. Being so small, I could fit in.
There was a sudden splash as I launched myself in -
and then the smell hit me! I was soaked in pig swill. The worst part was
walking back home to number 79 Vancouver Road, and confronting my
mother!
Dave Miller
Street bins for collecting food waste for pigs.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Castle Museum.
Pig swill banned
The Government announced today that it will ban pig
swill, identified as a key link in the chain of infection which spread foot–and–mouth
disease across the country.
The Independent, 27 March 2001
Council collections from the pig food bins. Photo courtesy
of Bruce Castle Museum.
This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as
Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.
The 1940s and 1950s are also written as the 1940's and 1950's.
