Report on the Trade in Animals. 
241 
It is, however, equally necessary to exorcise strict supervision 
over the inland trade, and over what may be termed the 
domestic movement of stock, by making proper regulations 
with regard to fairs and markets, the provision of slaughter- 
houses, and other matters now left optional with the local 
authorities. And in all cases it is most desirable that uniform 
action should be secured throughout the country. 
Accordingly, my original report to the Council of the Society 
last November (being an abstract of the facts contained in the 
preceding pages) was accompanied by a draft of a series of 
suggestions based on the principles just stated. Some of these 
suggestions could not, at present, be carried out at all places to 
which they were made applicable, especially in Ireland; but it 
seemed to me that if the places that could not comply with the 
reffulations were therefore abandoned as centres of the cattle- 
trade, the public benefit would be enormous. For instance, 
what possible good can result from the holding of 6000 fairs per 
annum in Ireland alone ? If only one-half of them were aban- 
doned in consequence of the compulsion to divide the fair-green 
into pens, which should be cleansed and disinfected, the only 
persons who would suffer would be the local publicans, and the 
benefit to the rest of the community would be very great. The 
same argument holds good for the rest of the United Kingdom, 
but it has not, probably, the same force everywhere. 
The registration of sales of stock at fairs and markets is also 
another point that would be difficult to carry out in all localities 
under existing circumstances ; but, in my judgment, a mart that 
is too insignificant to sustain the expense of such an arrange- 
ment ought not to be held at all. The probability is that if 
such a system had been in operation at Hull when the ' Joseph 
Soames' arrived, the whereabouts of every animal still living, 
that had been in the tainted market, would have been at once 
ascertained ; and if the authorities had been energetic enough, 
and the law would have permitted the procedure, the whole 
of them would have been " sides of beef " in less than a week. 
The difficulty of securing trustworthy inspectors has been 
frequently quoted as insuperable, and doubtless a coin of the 
realm is an exceedingly bad eyeglass. But if the Inspectors were 
properly paid, and were compelled to make returns of each 
cargo and each market to the local authority and the Govern- 
ment, stating not only the number of diseased animals in each, the 
names of the owners, and the nature of the disease, but also indi- 
cating the stage which the disease had reached, such returns, in the 
case of ports, from the Inspector in Ireland would be a check upon 
the returns made by the Inspector at the English port, and vice 
versa, and thus the inspection would be rendered efficient. 
