SECRETARY'S REPORT. 15 



stage of pleuro-pneumonia, and with an ever-increasing scarcity of ani- 

 mal food, it is of daily, or rather of hourly, occurrence, that diseased 

 town dairy cows realize from five to twenty pounds sterling." 



" Live stock insurance companies were formed immediately after the 

 importation of foreign diseases, and these companies found, what farmers 

 had discovered, that it was better to kill for the butcher, than to treat 

 animals affected with disease, so that in many ways, the slaughter of 

 diseased stock as human food has been sanctioned and encouraged." 



Professor Gamgee, a man of high scientific attainments as a 

 veterinarian, and having the confidence of the British govern- 

 ment as such, says : — 



" The traffic in diseased animals is impoverishing stockholders and the 

 country at large. My calculations, made under the most favorable 

 circumstances, show that the United Kingdom never loses less than eight 

 millions sterling (forty millions of dollai'S,) by disease amongst cattle, 

 sheep, and pigs. Half that loss is annually due to foreign contagious 

 diseases." 



"The meat-consuming public is paying fifty millions of dollars a year 

 more now, for the same amount of meat, than it did in 1841, the year 

 before the importation of the disease." 



" One inspector (of markets,) said that if he was called upon to 

 exclude from market, animals affected with contagious diseases, he must 

 exclude two thousand animals out of Islington market, on many a 

 Monday morning." 



" It was altogether a mistake to believe that diseased meat is sold to 

 the poor. There ai'e many diseased cattle eaten, whose real state could 

 only be told at the time of slaughter." 



The contamination of the animal food supplies, " has affected the 

 health of the people to an extent becoming more and more appreciated 

 the more the subject is investigated." 



" The tens of thousands of carcasses of diseased animals, sold in large 

 towns, are stealing life from human beings when and where we least 

 expect it." 



" Last year," says Gamgee, employed in extensive investigations under 

 the authority and direction of the government, "my opinion became 

 confirmed that the flesh of cattle affected with pleuro-pneumonia, when 

 eaten by man, induces boils and carbuncles to an incredible extent." 



His observations were carried on in three establishments — 

 one where fifteen hundred men were known to be supplied with 



