Oss is home to one of the more surprising chapters in Dutch industrial history. The pharmaceutical company Organon grew directly out of the meatpacking trade: when the Zwanenberg slaughterhouse began processing cattle and pigs on a large scale, someone noticed that the leftover glands could yield hormones and other medically useful compounds. By the 1920s, a serious pharmaceutical operation had taken root in the town.
Organon went on to develop some of the most widely used pharmaceuticals of the twentieth century, including early oral contraceptives. The company was eventually absorbed into Merck and then spun off again, but its facilities remain a significant presence on the north side of Oss. The local museum covers this history well, and the scale of the original factory complex — still visible from the ring road — is a reminder that this quiet Noord-Brabant town shaped lives far beyond the Netherlands.