Suspended Animation

The scene is the Manhattan laboratory of Atlantic Coast Fisheries Co. The characters are Lawrence V. Burton, Associate Editor of McGraw-Hill's Food Industries, and Harden F. Taylor, Atlantic Coast Fishery's Vice President.

Fishman Taylor (indicating lamb chops in refrigerator): See these lamb chops?

Editor Burton: Yes.

Fishman Taylor: These lamb chops are one year old.

Editor Burton: Indeed.

Fishman Taylor: Now we are going to have them for lunch.

Editor Burton (to himself): Why did

I ever come to this place? Year-old lamb chops!

The chops are cooked, served. Courageous, Editor Burton eats of them. They are juicy, succulent, delicious. They produce no ill aftereffect. The year-old lamb might have come not last year, but last week, from green field and babbling brook.

While Fishman Taylor freezes lamb chops on a small scale, he uses the same method in freezing fish on a large scale. Onetime (1918-22) Chief Technologist of U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, he is generally admitted to be the Man Who Knows Most About Fish. Mr. Taylor began his scientific career at Trinity College (now Duke University) in 1911 where, as a laboratory assistant in biology, he spent most of his time catching frogs and tadpoles for others to experiment on. Since 1915, however, when he joined the Bureau of Fisheries, he has been Fishman Taylor in most of his waking moments. Once, when showing a friend through a fish plant, he picked up a handful of fish meal (a hash-like, dry composite of ground up heads, tails and other fishy by-products), remarked: "Isn't it beautiful?" And when, last week, Atlantic Coast Fisheries Co. announced an offering of new stock, the Taylor Process of fish freezing was prominent among its assets.

Fish, being cold-blooded animals, decompose rapidly after removal from their watery homes. To be transported, they must be frozen. Of several fish-freezing methods, the Taylor Process is speediest. The fish are docked, bathed, chopped up, unedible portions being removed and fillets (steaks) left. Then the fillets are put on a flat aluminum plate, on which they travel slowly through the freezing room, like amusement park visitors riding on a scenic railway. Interesting, too, is the scenery, as the walls and ceiling are covered with glittering stalactite formations. But the aluminum boat travels not over water but over calcium chloride at a temperature of 25DEG below Zero. Having finished their 40-minute ride through the freezing room, the fish, well and quickly frozen, are shipped in a special type of refrigerator car in which a below-freezing temperature is always maintained. The importance of 40-minute freezing lies in the fact that when fish are frozen, icy-crystals form inside them, break down the cell walls and allow flavor-giving juices to escape. The quicker the freezing, the smaller the crystals and the less the breakage. Old time freezing methods took 36 hours; other quick-freezing methods take 100 minutes. Mr. Taylor has cut an hour from the previous record. Thus the inland housewife can buy fish which, though frozen, are still essentially fresh, have the flavor and quality of fish newly caught. The Taylor, Birdseye and other quick-freezing processes have been important factors in the recently renewed prosperity of the fishing industry. Back in 1918, the fish industry was practically for sale with no buyers. Last week Secretary of Commerce Lament said fishing was in the soundest position of its history. Some 127,000 commercial fishermen catch three billion pounds of fish annually. The catch is valued at about $113,000,000. Chief fish landed in New England ports is not the famed cod but haddock, one month's catch showing 75% haddock, 16% cod, 5% flounders. The oldtime fishing dory is also outmoded in large scale fishing. Large beam trawlers drag the sea floor with nets, haul up masses of fish in which the smaller fish are often squashed and suffocated. Atlantic Coast Fisheries trawlers have a capacity of 200,000 pounds of fish per trip. They keep in touch with home ports by wireless; bring in as much fish as is needed to keep the factory busy. Atlantic Coast Fisheries Co., organized in 1922, last year showed net sales of $7,969,767, net earnings of $637,085. The company was bought in 1923 by Ira Maurice Cobe, after Leonard Wood Jr., famed son of the late great Philippine Governor General, and various other predecessors, had failed to keep Atlantic Coast Fisheries from bankruptcy. Under the Cobe-Taylor management the company has prospered and expanded.