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10
For the latter amended clauses in the promised Public Health
Bill, to be considered in Parliament, would readily meet the
case without special legislation. What clauses should be introduced
to regulate all noxious trades 1 need not here occupy
your time to consider more in detail, than remark that they
must be based upon the known facts and experience now before
Parliament and the public, and must afford a better guarantee
for the prevention and removal of nuisances than we now
possess.
Another of the most objectionable features of private
slaughtering of cattle not to be forgotten, and the cause of
serious nuisances to a neighbourhood, arises from inefficient
means for the disposal of blood and other kinds of offal, of
which the quantity is very large.
Blood is not only a valuable commodity wasted. It is
worse than wasted, inasmuch as it is washed down into drains
and sewers, creating and keeping up dangerous nuisances at a
distance along the whole line of sewerage. Even when it is
saved in barrels or tubs, and carted away with the fat in
uncovered carts, it is in such a decomposed state as to be unfit
for passing through public thoroughfares. The absence of
any proper means at hand for utilizing this substance for its
albuminous properties, or for making artificial guano, brings
about another evil, namely, the blood and offal from many private
slaughtering places is often in a partially decomposed state
given to pigs. This rough and disgusting kind of pigfeeding
brings into the market a low class of bacon, tempting to
poor people for its low price, although far from being cheap at
any price. The butcher's offal-fed pig would soon disappear
from the market if facilities were placed at the disposal of
butchers to use the blood for its albumen value or for artificial
manure. As soon as economical methods of storage and proper
apparatus are provided in the neighbourhood, of a well-regulated
public abattoir, a large number of noxious trades will cease to be
public nuisances. The products of slaughter-houses can not only
with facility be converted into artificial manure by methods free
from smells, if properly carried out, but have a high commercial
value, and a ready sale as agricultural fertilizers in
every place where they have been tried.
Taking into consideration the blood and offal converted into
artificial manure, the tallow and fat rendering-down, before it
became putrid, and what are called the scraps, which can be
sold for food for fowls and pigs, the butchers will find, upon
due inquiry into the result attained in other large cities, that
their own interests arc not so much, if at all, endangered, as