174 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



proposed the closure of the question which had already exceeded that 

 proposed for the order of the day, namely, the utilization of the fesh. 

 The discussioD was accordingly closed. 



A paper was handed in signed by eleven members explaining that 

 thej' had declined to vote on tuberculosis on the ground of lack of time 

 to suflSciently discuss such an important subject. 



After providing for the next international veterinary congress to be 

 held in Paris, the meeting adjourned. 



REMARKS. 



(The import:) uce of the question of the sale of meat and milk from tu- 

 berculous animals cannot well be overrated. But to control the former 

 we need a complete reformation of our syste n of slaughter in the large 

 cities and villages. One municipal abattoir sliould be established in 

 each great center of population where alone stock should be slaughtered 

 for food and where the carcass and viscera of every animal slaughtered 

 would be examined by a competent veterinary insi^ector. All estab- 

 lishments for the killing of meat to be shipped fresh to the cities, to be 

 salted or canned, should be placed under similar supervision. Meatfrom 

 uncontrolled slaughter-houses should be excluded. ISo far as we know 

 no American city has adopted the system of municipal abattoir and 

 comi^lete veterinary inspection, and the great majority have neither. 

 The expense would be (considerable, though only a trifle as compared 

 with that caused by the sicknesses, incapacity, and death now occurring 

 from a disease which affects one fifth and upward of the population in 

 the great cities. We say nothing of the other contagious diseases from 

 which this measure would protect the people. With regard to the milk 

 supply there should be frequent visitation of the dairies sui)plyiug the 

 large cities, the maintenance of a census of the animals, and an inspec- 

 tion by a competent veterinarian of all cadavers of animals killed or 

 dying by natural cause. Not only would this protect the human popu- 

 lation against infection through the milk, but it would overcome the 

 l)resent great difficulty in dealing with the lung jjlague, which would 

 thus be traced to every center of infection and could easily be stamped • 

 out. The question of the suppression of this disease over the entire 

 national doniain is by no means such an easy one; the task is so gigantic 

 and the outlay w^ould be so vast. In many herds in the Eastern States 

 the proportion of tuberculous animals ranges from 10 to 30 per cent., and 

 in the West with freer range it is doubtless far less frequent, yet if we 

 were to estimate but one infected animal in thirty it would embrace over 

 a million cattle and one and a half million hogs. Iiulemnities alone for 

 this number would amount to from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000, to say 

 nothing of all contingent expenses. That it would pay in the single 

 item of the preservation of our live stock there can be no doubt, while "J 

 its ettect on the health of the population would be beyond all estimate. ' 

 To the professional man, fully acipiainted with the enormity of the evil, 



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