View report page

259 [1906
Butchers Shops and Shops where Food is sold.—These include,
in addition to the butchers shops and fish shops, other places where foods such
as preserved meats and sausages are sold or prepared for sale, as well as shops,
street stalls, and similar places, where perishable food-stuffs are exposed for sale.
They have been carefully and systematically inspected during the year and as
many as 6,968 visits have been paid to them.
A fall list of the foods that were di-covered to be unfit for food is set out
in table B of Inspector Wilkinson's report, and they include 26 pigs heads,
2 pigs carcases and various quantities of beef, mutton, pork, as well as various
cooked meats. There were also rabbits, bacon, eggs, margarine and cheese
included in the list.
Cowhouses.—These numbered 9 at the end of the year, which is the
same number as existed in the preceding year, although five years ago there
were four more.
During the twelve months under review there was an average of 93 cows
producing milk in the Borough, but the Inspector has estimated that this
number shows a reduction of fully 29 per cent. in five years.
If one were satisfied with the inspection of cowsheds, and places where
the milk of cows is kept, and that they were rigidly inspected and kept
scrupulously clean, in the country, it would not be a matter of regret that the
cowsheds as well as the number of cows had grown fewer in Islington, for of
course the ideal place, and the natural place, for a cow is in the country; but
in view of the fact that many rural authorities do not fulfil the obligations cast
on them by the Dairies, Cowsheds and Milkshops Order, it is regretable that
the numbers should decrease, for so long as they were kept under observation
in Islington, so long could the public be assured of a comparatively pure supply
of milk.
The administration of the law respecting cowsheds and the keeping of
cows has been so frequently brought under the notice of the Local Government
Board that the President not long since was enabled to announce that
regulations are now in force in all but 340 out of some 1,800 urban and rural
districts. It is improbable, however, that they will be largely enforced by the
rural authorities, recollecting that their members are for the most part farmers
engaged in producing milk, and who themselves would be liable to be dealt
with by the authorities of which they are members.
S 2