504 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



from meat, and that this view is still acted upon in certain places. 

 Undoubtedly we are not prepared to recommend that indiscriminate 

 traffic in tuberculous meat should be permitted, or that inspection 

 should be more lax than it is at present. On the contrary, we 

 strongly urge that inspection should not only be more general and 

 systematic, but that all inspectors should be qualified by special 

 training. We hold, however, that it should be conducted on 

 better-defined principles, and that some limit should be observed 

 in the latitude permitted to medical or veterinary officers in fixing 

 independent standards of soundness in different places. 



In making suggestions, they say they kept in mind the 

 remarkable returns of the rigid but discriminating inspection 

 in 29 towns in Saxony in 1895. Meat inspectors in these 

 towns were all qualified veterinary surgeons. Tuberculosis 

 was found to exist in 22,758 carcasses (being 27.48 per 

 cent, of the whole number slaughtered). The whole of 

 them, according to the practice of some authorities, would 

 have been confiscated and destroyed without compensation ; 

 but in Saxony they were dealt with as follows : of the total 

 number of 22,758 carcasses showing tuberculous lesions, 

 21,062, or 91\ per cent., were passed as fit for food; 1,256, 

 or about 5| per cent., were disposed of as inferior meat, at 

 a fixed cheap rate ; the remainder, 440 carcasses, or 2 per 

 cent., were condemned and destroyed. 



With regard to public slaughter houses they say : — 



It is scarcely necessary to point out how greatly the exclusive 

 use of public slaughter houses contributes to efficiency and uni- 

 formity of inspection. Naturally those who have vested interests 

 in private slaughter houses object to interference with their 

 property. But instances might be given in which these objections 

 have been satisfactorily overcome. The municipality of Glasgow, 

 for example, erected public slaughter houses more than forty 

 years ago, before they had obtained power to suppress the private 

 establishments. They admitted owners of these establishments 

 to the use of the public slaughter houses, compensating them for 

 the closing of their premises by charging them lighter dues than 

 others who had lost nothing. There was no dissatisfaction, and 

 the butchers now express a strong preference for the public 

 slaughter houses over the old system. So long as private slaughter 

 houses are permitted to exist, so long butchers, from use and 

 wont, will continue to use them, and so long must inspection be 



