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8
The evidence of the medical officer of health of Whitechapel
ought to be regarded on this point.*
Close inquiry, by means of efficient methods of inspection,
will discover that, at present, animals are killed when
in a dying state, some having been exposed to overcrowding
in railway trains, and get suffocated; others suffering
from febrile changes from want of air, water, and food whilst
in the cattle-trucks, or from bad layerage in transitu. The
loss in this way is considerable, estimated by some butchers at
eight shillings a day in the best bullocks. The damage to the
meat from all these sources is well known to many butchers,
who prefer country-killed meat for keeping longer and better
than that from animals kept and killed in foul places, the flesh
of which sooner commences a putrefractive change.
The remedy for all this points in the direction of efficient inspection
by officers competent to judge of the quality of meat,
and constantly occupicd in this duty, which is expert work,
and cannot be well entrusted to numerous local sanitary inspectors.
For instance, in the northern districts there are
54 slaughter-houses in Kensington, 28 Paddington, 57 Marylebone,
90 St. Pancras, 110 Islington; and to inspect all these
the cattle would have to be seen alive, what are daily going in,
and all that goes out of the private slaughter-houses, night and
day, at all hours—a matter of impossibility where the places are,
as at present, isolated, and it must be remembered, are on private
premises, where it would be too much to grant power of entry
at all times. My own belief is that it is not possible in all cases
to judge of the quality of the meat in the dead carcase; at
any rate, it would be easier to judge from the living animal.
These arguments in favour of special inspection apply with
equal force to measures needful for detecting and preventing
the spreading of cattle diseases—a matter of paramount
importance not lost sight of by the Committee on Noxious
Trades.
Should it be thought advisable to condemn the old system
of killing cattle in private slaughter-houses, and should a
* "Mr. Liddle is of opinion that if private slaughter-houses were abolished,
and only licensed public slaughter-houses were used, competent
officers appointed to inspect the animals before and after killing, and with
power to condemn all meat that was unfit for human food, then it is probable
that much of the bad meat, which now finds its way into some of the
butcher's shops in London, would be prevented, and the sanitary officers
of all local boards would be saved the trouble and responsibility of inspecting
and condemning the bad meat exposed for sale."—Quarterly Report,
January, 1870,