MEAT INSPECTION. 
489 
them from foreign or inter-State commerce tends strongly to 
vitiate and deteriorate the inter-State or local meat supply. 
In effect the United States Meat Inspection Law throws back 
upon the State any animal which may be unfit for human 
food, and unless the State maintains rigid meat inspection 
laws (and most of them do not) this provision renders our 
local meat supply worse instead of better and benefits only 
the foreign or extra-State consumer. 
The Mosaic laws interdicted the use of diseased meats by 
the Jews themselves, but permitted them to sell it to aliens 
while our national meat inspection law reverses this order 
and forces diseased meats upon the local markets. 
These provisions will doubtless lead to the enactment of 
other laws adapted to relieve local meat consumers from this 
danger. 
The mode of inspection is a question upon which most 
>anitarians readily agree. There are certain diseases of ani- 
nals which admittedly render their meat unfit for human food 
md which being readily recognizable during the life of the 
mimal warrants the inspector in condemning and killing the 
mimal and destroying the carcass. Other animals require a 
)ost-mortem examination in order to verify a diagnosis or to 
liscover diseases not discernible during life. 
The principal question, the vital one in meat inspection, is 
vhat meat shall be excluded from use as human food ? The 
ecent meat inspection law of the United States merely excludes 
he meat of diseased animals without enumeration or classifi- 
ation, and without dictating what use shall be made of the 
ffected animals or their meat or food products. 
Dr. Schwartzkoff, in his previously mentioned paper read 
efore this Association, attempted a classification which to 
le mind of your chairman seems quite arbitrary, impractic- 
ble and open to considerable criticism. 
He divides the whole category of disease animals into 
iree classes: 
(i) Diseases in which animals should be condemned, killed 
nd the carcasses effectually destroyed, viz.: Anthrax, rabies, 
4>ticaemia, cattle-plague, glanders, small-pox in sheep, swine- 
'ague, and hog-cholera and unborn animals. 
