No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICXILTURE. «13 



country was largely responsible for sueli action. Meat for export 

 purposes had to be inspected, and gradually the idea obtained that 

 it was not the proper thing, either hygienieally or ethically, to 

 inspect the meat shipped to other countries, and allow our own 

 people of the United States to use the meat that they rejected. 

 So, by a process of development, considerably accelerated of late, 

 the meat inspection law now covers all the details of the operation 

 of certain packing houses. Under the new law, all slaughter 

 houses, packing houses, and meat canneries that are engaged in 

 interstate or export business, are subject to Federal inspection. 

 This means that packing houses cannot sell their products in a 

 state other than that in which they are located without the stamp 

 of approval of the United States Government. But, so far as 

 an individual state, for example, the State of Pennsylvania, was 

 concerned, any meat prepared in an establishment engaged in 

 trade wholly within this State, whose products are sold only 

 in the state, could not be inspected by a United States inspector, 

 and so the consumer had no assurance that the animals killed 

 were sound and free from disease and that the meat was properly 

 handled. And in this State we get a large part of our meat supply 

 from such local establishments. I don't know how many local 

 slaughter houses there are in the State, but there are one hundred 

 and seventy in Philadelphia and a hundred or more in Pittsburg, 

 and scattered all over Pennsylvania, in the smaller towns and 

 rural districts, there are small slaughter houses engaged in local 

 business. Until the new State Meat Inspection law was passed, 

 these houses were under no supervision whatever. 



Now, it is important from two standpoints that these houses and 

 their products should be supervised, first, from the standpoint 

 of public health, and second, in the interests of the meat producers 

 of Pennsylvania, If pure food laws and hygenic conditions are of 

 any importance at all, they are of the very highest importance 

 with respect to our meat and milk supply, so that from the stand- 

 point of public health, it is urgently necessary that these local 

 slaughter houses shall, &o far as possible, be placed under the same 

 kind of supervision as the packing houses engaged in interstate 

 and in export trade. Then, on the other hand, it is important 

 because the people are rapidly learning the significance and the 

 advantage of the mark of the Federal meat inspector, and are be- 

 ginning to refuse to buy meat from establishments without com- 

 petent inspection. Now, as that sentiment grows, it is at the ex- 

 pense of the local slaughterer, and unless his establishment has 

 reliable inspection, he is at a disadvantage, and this disadvantage 

 will grow until at last he will find himself able only to sell to the 

 least desirable trade in his community. 



The State Meat Hygiene Law is Act No. 187, approved by the 

 Governor, May 25th of last year (1907), It provides for the ap- 

 pointment of ten agents, under tlie supervision of the State Live 

 Stock Sanitary Board, These agents go from place to place as 

 they are assigned, for the purpose of examining slaughter houses 

 and butcher shops in any part of the state. Now, of course, it is 

 not possible for ten men to cover frequently and systematically 

 each locality of the state; the area is too large, but still they are 



