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42
The revocation of the Meat Products (No. 3) Order invalidates
the exemption from the need to declare ingredients on labels of
pre-packed sausages and sausage meat given by Table C of the
First Schedule to the Labelling of Food Order, 1950, but as it
is the intention of the Ministry that this exemption should be
maintained a suitable amendment to the Order is being prepared.
The Minister has decided not to make an Order under Regulation
2 of the Defence (Sale of Food) Regulations prescribing a
statutory standard of composition for sausages and sausage meat,
but has made the Offals in Meat Products Order, 1953 (S. I. 1953,
No. 246) which re-enacts (substantially as it appears in the
Meat Products (No. 2) Order, 1952) the prohibition against the
use of certain specified offals in uncooked open meat products.
Prohibited offals are brains, feet, fries, gut (including
chitterlings), manifolds, paunches, udders, sweetbreads, tripe,
melts or lites, spinal cord, uteri, pigs' maws and calves veils.
Infringements of the Offals in Meat Products Order are
offences against the Defence (Sale of Food) Regulations, 1943,
but by Article 9 of the Order proceedings may be brought by
Food and Drugs Authorities in England and Northern Ireland
without the consent of the Minister.
CONDEMNED MEAT
Notification was received in October from the Cuckfield
Urban District Council that condemned meat from the Government's
slaughterhouse at Cuckfield was being sold to a firm in
this borough which previously sold horseflesh for human consumption,
but now sold condemned meat from Cuckfield and
other Government slaughterhouses. Notices inside the shop
stated that the meat was for animals only, and an assistant
told the Sanitary Inspector that customers were informed
accordingly, but a member of the Public Health Department
went to buy some and no statement was made to him. Whilst
a number of customers, interviewed after leaving the shop, all
said that the meat they had bought was for their animals, one
stated that she had been told by other customers that they had
bought the meat for their own consumption.
Several quarters of beef examined were stained green on the
outside, indicating that they had been condemned, and evidence
of gross tubercle on the pleura was found.
The Public Health Committee felt that the Ministry of Food's
method of disposing of unsound meat by public auction was
undesirable. Although the first purchaser undertook not to
use it for human consumption, no such undertaking was required
from subsequent purchasers.