28 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



butter per annum. From America and Canada we im- 

 port about 60,000 tons of cheese per annum, and from 

 other sources 30,000 tons, which together amount to 

 about four-fifths of our home production. 



Imports op Butter and Cheese into the United 

 Kingdom. 



Butter. Cheese. 



Quantity. Quantity. 



cwts. cwts. 



1861 992,772 706,395 



1871 1,334,783 1,216,400 



1881 2,047,341 1,840,090 



1883 2,334,473 1,799,704 



The value of the butter and cheese imported in the 

 last named year was £16,664,333. 



Diseased Meat as Food. — As their religion forbids their 

 killing animals for food, the Burmese generally eat those 

 ^that have died of disease. 



*The flesh of all animals that have died is not, as 

 generally assumed, necessarily unfit for food. It is an 

 old and widespread popular error that the unfitness of 

 such flesh for human food is due to its not having been 

 drained of blood ; an error that seems to have come 

 down to us from ancient times, when it was held that all 

 diseases originated and were centred in the blood, and 

 that as this contained the materia peccans, the flesh of 

 a diseased animal would be perfectly wholesome if only 

 all its blood were abstracted. Or this general belief 

 may be partly owing to the methods of slaughtering 

 commonly employed. Bleeding is, however, no essential 

 part of proper slaughtering ; indeed, for a time the sys- 

 tem of killing without much loss of blood was strongly 

 advocated and widely practised, more especially in' 

 England, on the ground that the blood itself is quite as 

 nutritious as the meat, and that the latter is far tenderer 

 and better flavoured when a portion of the blood is 

 retained in it. The system of slaughtering with ab- 

 straction of blood holds its own chiefly because meat 

 thus killed keeps longer and is supposed to look better. 



