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be inspected. The Authorised Officers (Meat Inspection) Regulations,
1960 which came into force on the 12th August, will provide additional
inspectors by creating a new type of officer trained and qualified for meat
inspection only. The arrangements for their training and examination
will be under the auspices of the Royal Society of Health who will award
qualifying certificates to successful candidates. The courses began in
September, and the first examination will be conducted in the Summer
of 1961. While this can be accepted as a temporary bridging of the problem
to ensure that all meat is inspected, it does nothing towards the introduction
of the desirable arrangements for ante-mortem examination of
animals by veterinary surgeons.
Inspection of Meat
The total number of animals slaughtered in 1960 was 6,084, compared
with 7,197 in 1959. Of these 923 (926) were cattle, (1959 figures in brackets)
pigs, 1535 (1,481), sheep and lambs, 3,202 (4,434) and calves 424 (356).
The most striking feature is the virtual eradication of tuberculosis in
cattle and cows. Only three localised cases were diagnosed in the 923
cattle and cows inspected, whereas in 1957, 149 cattle and cows out of
2,167 were found to be infected.
2.35 per cent (1.8 per cent) of pigs inspected were infected with
tuberculosis, all lesions being localised in the head.
Eighteen cases of cysticercus bovis in cattle, a cause of a tape worm
in man, were found a percentage of 1.95 per cent (1.6 per cent) In five
cases the lesions were degenerate and the carcases were released ; the
other thirteen cases were submitted to treatment by freezing.
The incidence of other diseases was twenty per cent (33.5 per cent) in
cattle other than cows, thirty-three per cent (39.5 per cent) in cows, nine
per cent (eighteen per cent) in pigs, and four per cent ( eleven per cent)
in sheep.
All condemned meat was destroyed by incineration at the Wembley
destructor, the total weight disposed being about 3,978 lbs. (8,207 lbs.).
The following is a summary of the return to the Minister of the
post-mortem examination of animals at slaughterhouses.