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chance of being discovered and prosecuted. At the present time the
purchaser of meat in London has no means of knowing whether it has
been subjected to inspection; and the need for this inspection is amply
testified to by the records of the amount of diseased and unwholesome
meat seized ot surrendered within the Metropolis. Adequate inspection
can never be provided in the existing private slaughter-houses, and
this is the great argument in favour of the provision of municipal
abattoirs.
No premises are registered for the sale or storage of milk unless
certain structural conditions are complied with.
Milk may be the medium of transmitting tuberculosis, and other
conditions of relatively trivial importance, from cows to man; and it is
a medium by which disease of human origin continues to be transmitted.
More especially do the insanitary conditions often present in
connection with dairy farms involve a risk of the spread of typhoid
fever should any of the dairy hands be suffering from a mild and
unrecognised type of this disease. With reference to the danger of
tuberculosis being conveyed through milk, the Royal Commission, in
their Second Interim Report issued in 1907, pronounced as follows:—
''There can be no doubt but that in a certain number of cases the
tuberculosis occurring in the human subject, especially in children, is
the direct result of the introduction into the human body of the bacillus
of bovine tuberculosis, and there also can be no doubt that in the
majority at least of these cases the bacillus is introduced through
cows' milk. Cows' milk containing bovine tubercle bacilli is clearly
the cause of tuberculosis and of fatal tuberculosis in man." If the
sole source of infected milk were cows suffering from tuberculosis of
the udder, the danger and difficulties of controlling it would be considerable;
but, unfortunately, the source of infection is a more general
one, and the difficulties are greatly increased from the circumstance
that the main danger comes from the dung of tuberculous cattle, which
may contain millions of tubercle bacilli long before tuberculosis can be
recognised by any means other than the tuberculin test. It is in this
way that one tuberculous cow may be capable of infecting the herd and
the entire milk, supply of a dairy, to which a certain amount of cow's
dung almost invariably gains access The extent to which the danger