294 



Consumption of Food Products. 



for quinquennial periods, while in the latter the averages are 

 taken for groups of three years. An explanation of the 

 methods of calculation by which these estimates are obtained 

 is published in the Minutes of Evidence of the Select 

 Committee on the Marking of Foreign Meat ; briefly 

 stated, the process consists in converting into meat, upon the 

 basis of the ascertained dressed-carcase weight of each class 

 of stock, the nuniber of home-bred animals slaughtered 

 annually for food, as well as the live animals imported, and 

 adding thereto the imports of dead meat. From these 

 statements it appears that the quantity of meat consumed 

 annually per head of the population has risen in twenty years 

 from about 112 lbs. to 122 lbs. It is to be remarked that this 

 increased supply has been derived mainly from foreign 

 sources, and as the bulk of it is cheaper than the home 

 produce, it may be inferred that the increased consumption 

 has been largely due to the fact that meat now figures to a 

 larger extent in the dietary of those classes of the population 

 with whom cheapness is a consideration. In this connec- 

 tion it is hardly necessary to observe that the statement that 

 the consumption of meat has risen from 112 lbs. to 122 lbs. 

 per head does not mean that every individual of the popula- 

 tion consumes that amount of food. In certain sections of 

 the community the amount eaten annually would no doubt 

 work out to a good deal more than 122 lbs. per head, while 

 among some of the poorer classes of the people meat must 

 still be more or less a luxury, though this is probably less 

 the case than formerly, and the quantity consumed by them 

 would represent considerably less than the ration quoted 

 above.* Still it is not assuming too much to infer that meat 

 appears on the table of the poor more frequently to-day 

 than twenty years ago. 



It would seem probable that an increase in the consumption 

 of meat, consequent upon the provision of a new and abundant 

 supply of cheap mutton and beef, would manifest itself, at least 

 in some degree, in a lessened dependence upon what is gene- 



* It may be noted that the ration of 122 lbs. per head includes beef, mutton, 

 pork, bacon, .and hams, and that it amounts approximately to S'3 oz - P er diem of 

 raw meat. 



