210 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



who use it as food, or that the meat, if eaten, may sow the 

 seed of such a disastrous disease as consumption in the 

 bodies of those who may unwittingly eat it, the question is 

 at once changed ; and a decision must be made as to whether 

 it is a greater hardship to deprive a man of a piece of prop- 

 erty which has cost him forty or fifty dollars, or to allow him 

 to retain it, or sell it, when by so doing the health of many, 

 many people may be irrevocably ruined. If indemnity is to 

 be i)aid at all, it should be full ; half measures produce, gen- 

 erally, half results; and if it were possible to limit the ex- 

 penditure in this direction to within proper bounds, it might 

 safely be considered that the benefit to the community would 

 oftset its cost to them. But it has been so often found that 

 this payment is accompanied by a carelessness on the part of 

 owners, which really nourishes the disease, and that diseased 

 animals are actually imported on purpose to be sold to the 

 State, that such a law defeats itself and become impracti- 

 cable. 



Massachusetts is a large distributing centre for the cattle 

 trade ; animals go from here to all parts of New England 

 and to Europe, and its supplies are drawn from a great 

 variety of sources. Were the State to quarantine againstJ 

 all of the sources from which animals with tal)erculosis arej 

 known to come to us, this valuable trade, which now gives] 

 profitable employment to so many, would be ruined. Thisj 

 quarantine, for Massachusetts, is not practicable. 



Butchers. 



One of the most serious obstacles to the working out of] 

 the law regarding tuberculous animals has been encounteredj 

 through unprincipled butchers, many of whom' are estab- 

 lished throughout Massachusetts, as they are throughout 

 many other States. These men make a business of buying! 

 up old w^orn-out or sick cows, many of them tuberculous, fori 

 a few dollars each, killing them, and disposing of the meat 

 and other products of the carcass to the best advantage pos-| 

 sible to them. In this way a considerable quantity of the! 

 meat of tuberculous animals is sold, under various forms, to] 

 unsuspecting persons to be used as food. The fact that thes( 

 men are allowed to continue in this business, practicalb 



