1908.] Importation of Certain Meat Foods. 737 



appears to constitute a definite risk to health. It also hinders 

 equitable administration of public health laws and regulations 

 relating to unsound or diseased meat in this country, because 

 it is obviously a hardship to the home trader that his meat 

 should be seized by local authorities on account of disease or 

 other conditions which rendered it unwholesome, while similar 

 treatment cannot be applied to imported meat of this type. 



At the present time the volume of trade in this commodity 

 is small, and to prohibit its importation would cause little 

 interference with trade. Boneless scrap meat regarded as a 

 portion of our imported meat supply is practically a negligible 

 quantity, and as yet it is only a small portion of the imported 

 meat which finds its way to makers of sausages, minced meat 

 and like articles. If it is urged that this scrap meat is after 

 all for the most part wholesome, the answer is that in that 

 case it is free to come in other forms (e.g., as joints or portions 

 of meat readily identifiable with definite parts of the dressed 

 carcase) which are less open to suspicion. 



Tuberculosis and Imported Pork. — This subject was to some 

 extent dealt with in a previous report on the administration 

 in London as regards tuberculosis, which was summarized 

 in this Journal, March, 1906, p. 747. The regulations of some 

 foreign countries provide a sufficient safeguard against the 

 importation of tuberculous pork in some cases, but in other 

 cases practices are adopted which not only hinder inspecting 

 authorities from according equal treatment to foreign pork of 

 one or another origin, but have created difficulties in regard 

 to the home trade. Thus at Smith field, and in other places 

 where the health authority, in accordance with the recom- 

 mendations of the Royal Commission, 1898, makes it a practice 

 to require surrender of, or to seize, the carcase of any pig 

 showing tuberculous lesions, the home trader has reasonable 

 cause for complaint if at the same time American box pork is 

 allowed to be sold in the same market without hindrance, 

 although it may have been derived from animals which would 

 have been condemned if they had been sent to the market as 

 whole carcasses. 



Dr. Buchanan therefore recommends that conditions should 

 be imposed requiring (a) pork imported as carcasses to be 

 required to consist of entire carcasses, including the head and 

 (3i 10) 3 a 



