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CREW ACCOMMODATION.
The Port Health Authority has continued to enjoy a close and constructive
collaboration with the Inspectors of the Board of Trade; a collaboration which is quite
essential if the objects in view, the general improvement in the living conditions of
crews, are to be brought about.
VII.—FOOD INSPECTION.
Public Health (Imported Food) Regulations, 1937.
These Regulations came into force on the 1st April, 1938, and the Minister of
Health has now issued a number of Circulars (particulars of which are given below)
containing in the Schedules thereto descriptions of certain certificates, labels, marks
and stamps which are to be recognised as "Official Certificates " for the purposes of
the Regulations.
The definition of "Official Certificate" under the Regulations is:—
"A certificate, label, mark, stamp or other voucher which is affixed by a competent
authority to any oversea meat or meat product or to a package containing such meat
or meat product, and is for the time being recognised by the Minister as showing:—
"(a) that the meat to which it relates or the meat from which the meat
product to which it relates was prepared, was derived from animals inspected
ante and post mortem, and passed in accordance Avith criteria satisfactory to
the Minister; and
"(b) that all necessary precautions for the prevention of danger to public
health were taken in the dressing or preparing and packing of the meat or meat
product."
Under the Regulations of 1925 and 1933 the importation of certain classes of meat
was prohibited by the First Schedule and official certificates were required with classes
of meat specified in the Second Schedule as " Conditionally Admissible Meat." Other
classes of meat, including the whole carcase (with the head attached), bacon, ham and
similarly prepared pig meat, sausages and other products prepared or manufactured
from meat, sausage casings, oleo oil, oleo stearine and premier jus, have been admissible
without the Official Certificate.
The new Regulations remove the exemption given to these articles, and the
effect of the Regulations will be not only to prohibit the importation of the kinds of
meat specified in the First Schedule, but also of any meat or meat product as defined
in the Regulations, unless it is accompanied by an Official Certificate.
*
The Schedules are as follows:—
FIRST SCHEDULE.
Prohibited Meat.
(a) Scrapmeat, that is to say meat which consists of scraps, trimmings or other pieces (whether
with or without bone) of such shape or in such condition as to afford insufficient means of identification
with a definite part of a carcase.
(b) Meat comprising the wall of the thorax or abdomen from which there has been detached any
part of the pleura or (except in the case of meat derived from a pig) the peritoneum, other than a
part necessarily removed in preparing the meat.
(c) Meat from which a lymphatic gland, except a gland necessarily removed in preparing the
meat, has been taken out.
(d) The head of an animal without the submaxilliary gland.