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46
FOOD INSPECTION.
IMPORTATION OF PIG CARCASSES, &c., FROM CHINA.
The s.s. "Graf Muravjef" arrived in the River Thames on the 18th January,
1910, and moored at Greenwich Buoys.
The vessel came originally from Siberian ports, where she had been
collecting salmon, called at Shanghai, and there shipped amongst other cargo
3,647 pig carcasses for London.
These were stated to have been bred in the country district of Hainan
(some 300 miles above Hankow), transported down the river to Hankow,
there killed, frozen and conveyed to Shanghai for transport to London.
On arrival in the Port of London, some of the pig carcasses were examined
by your Medical Officer, when it was found that the backbones of the carcasses
had been removed, and that they were not accompanied by any official
certificate approved by the Local Government Board.
The Public Health (Foreign Meat) Regulations, 1908, require that in the
case of the edible parts of the pig imported into this country in a fresh or
frozen condition, they shall be imported either under official certificate, or in
the form of the entire carcass of the pig with the head in its natural state of
attachment to the carcass, and with the lymphatic glands about the throat, or
any other part of the carcass in their natural position.
The Local Government Board's Circular (Foreign Meat) No. 2, dated
12th December, 1908, states that:—
"The carcasses of pigs which are not imported whole, with the head in
"its natural state of attachment, and with lymphatic glands about the
"throat and elsewhere in situ, come under the category of the Foreign
"Meat, Class II. Carcasses which the Medical Officer of Health ascertains
"to belong to this class are required to be dealt with by Notice, forbidding
"their removal for any purpose other than exportation, as in the case of
"Foreign Meat, Class I."
The carcasses clearly came within the meaning of the Foreign Meat of Class I.,
inasmuch as:—
(1) They were not imported under an official certificate approved by
the Local Government Board.
(2) They were not imported whole.
Your Medical Officer, therefore, had no option but to serve a Notice upon
the importers, forbidding the removal of the carcasses for any purpose other
than exportation, in accordance with the provisions of Article V of the Foreign
Meat Regulations.