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108
but on the whole it must be admitted that the evidence of its unfitness
is weak and ill supported by facts; and as a matter of fact
no objection is made to the sale of the meat for human food.
Many persons knowing the rapid loss of condition and the consequent
depreciation in value of cattle allowed to pass through the
disease, have the affected animals killed in the earliest stage. In
the later stage it would hardly pay to kill them for food: it may be
assumed, therefore, that if the meat of animals affected with this
disease is sent to market at all it will be in the earliest stage of
the complaint, before any changes affecting it injuriously have
taken place—not that I am aware of any ill consequence arising
from the use of the meat at any stage of the disease.
Pleuro-Pneumonia.— A still more interesting question in connection
with the subject of "diseased" meat may be here referred
to, viz., whether the flesh of animals affected with "lung-plague"
(pleuro-pneumonia) is fit for food ? The Special Purposes and
Sanitary Committee of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the
Local Authority for the Metropolis (outside the City) under the
Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878, have recently resolved
no longer to allow the flesh of cattle slaughtered by their
direction, to be sold for human food, as previously had been the
custom, at the discretion of the Board's Inspectors.
Without pretending to decide the question of the fitness of such
meat for human consumption—although I am inclined to believe
that the observation expressed above, in respect of the fitness for
food of the flesh of animals affected with foot-and-mouth disease,
might be applied with safety in this case also—I may say that
it was an anomaly that the sale of it, which had often entailed fine
and even imprisonment on the vendors in the City, had a quasi
legal sanction outside the City boundaries. The desirability of
assimilating the practice all over London was unquestionable:
and it is so far satisfactory that, in making such assimilation, the
benefit of any doubt that may have existed should have been
given to the consumer.*
Whilst on the subject of diseased meat reference may be made to
Trichinosis, the name given to a rare, but very dangerous
* Since the Report has been in type I have learned that the Resolution of the
"Special Purposes and Sanitary Committee," to the effect stated in the text, has
not been carried out: therefore the "anomaly" continues.—T. o. D.