BACTERIA IN FOODS 23$ 



occur in the bodies of animals used for human consumption, 

 for in the glands, mesenteries, and other organs they are 

 common. But in those portions of the carcass which are 

 used by man, namely the muscles, bacteria are rare. The 

 reasons alleged for this are the acid reaction (sarcolactic 

 acid) and the more or less constant movement during life. 

 A bacterial disease which, perhaps more than any other, 

 might be expected to be conveyed by meat is tubercle. Yet 

 the recent Royal Commission on Tuberculosis has again 

 emphasised the absence of bacilli in the meat substance: 



" In tissues which go to form the butcher's joint, the material 

 of tubercle is not often found even where the organs (lungs, liver, 

 spleen, membranes, etc.) exhibit very advanced or generalised 

 tuberculosis; indeed, in muscle and muscle juice it is very seldom 

 that tubercle bacilli are to be met with ; perhaps they are some- 

 what more often to be discovered in bone, or in some small 

 lymphatic gland embedded in intermuscular fat." 1 



The only way in which such meat substance becomes in- 

 fected with tubercle appears to be through carelessness in 

 the butcher, who perchance smears the meat substance with 

 a knife that has been used in cutting the organs, and so has 

 become contaminated with infected material. Very instruct- 

 ive also are the results at which Dr. Sims Woodhead arrived 

 in compiling evidence for the same Commission on the effect 

 of cooking upon tuberculous meat : 



" Ordinary cooking, such as boiling and more especially roast- 

 ing, though quite sufficient to sterilise the surface, and even the 

 substance for a short distance from the surface of a joint, cannot 

 be relied upon to sterilise tubercular material included in the 

 centre of rolls of meat, especially when these are more than three 

 pounds or four pounds weight. The least reliable method of 

 cooking for this purpose is roasting before a fire; next comes 

 roasting in an oven, and then boiling." a 



1 Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, Report, 1895, pt. i., p. 13. 

 *Ibid., p. 18. 



