Its relation to Consumption in Man. 
319 
Authorities to deal with tuberculous cows kept in dairies for the 
production of milk sold to the public. 
Considerable excitement and alarm have recently been created 
in the meat trade by the action of some Local Authorities in 
confiscating the carcasses of animals as tuberculous and unfit 
for human food, where no suspicion of the disease existed while 
the animal was alive, and the butcher had paid a fair market- 
price, for which he supposed he was buying a healthy animal. 
At the present time there is no provision by which the butcher 
can be recouped for such losses, and in at least two actions 
brought against the sellers recently, the legal decision was 
against the butcher on the plea that no warranty was given. 
It would be an exceedingly difficult matter to arrange for 
compensation to the butcher in such cases. It might be argued 
that, as these tuberculous carcasses are condemned and destroyed 
in the interests of the public health, the ratepayers of the district 
in which they are seized should pay ; but this would naturally 
lead to such animals or carcasses being sent to the districts in 
which the compensation was awarded on the most liberal scale. 
On the other hand, it has been suggested that the seller of the 
animal — and that would mean the farmer or stock-owner from 
whose premises it had originally come — should bear a part, it 
not the whole, of the loss. Were this to be adopted it would 
imply a complete reform and reorganisation of the cattle trade. 
In many cases it would be utterly impossible to trace the 
animal back to the farm from which it came; and even if it 
were traced, would the farmer who had kept it and fed it, for say 
three months, sustain the loss, and the breeder or dealer who sold 
it to him escape ? 
On the Continent — in Denmark, for example — the butchers 
have a kind of a mutual assurance association in which every 
animal has to be insured before it is killed, and from which com- 
pensation—partial or total — is paid if the animal when killed 
is found by the inspector to be diseased. It has been suggested 
that something of the same kind should be done in this country, 
part of the fund to be supplied from the Treasury. 
"With regard to the question of the milk from tuberculous 
cows, the great difficulty lies in not being able to determine 
with any degree of certainty whether any particular cow is 
tuberculous. Even if that could be settled, there is the further 
question whether the milk contains the tubercle bacillus and 
is infective or not. If greater powers were conferred on Health 
Officers and Sanitary Inspectors in dealing with cows in dairies, 
more especially with such as might from their emaciated condi- 
tion be suspected of being tuberculous, they would no doubt have 
