1 Jay., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 59 
It is needless to enumerate all the diseases which might centre at a 
slaughter-house; but two more maladies—i.e., hog cholera and swine plague— 
demand attention. 
Many slaughter-houses drain directly into creeks. If hogs suffering from 
hog cholera or swine plague are killed and the entrails thrown into a yard 
draining into a creek, it inevitably follows that the creek becomes contaminated, 
and the disease then spreads to farms lower down the creek, and an outbreak 
of disease will follow. The same remarks apply to wire worms insheep. Thus 
the farmer suffers loss in his stock, against which he can only be protected by 
a rigid inspection of country slaughter-houses. 
In his book on “ Pigs and their Management,” Mr. W. R. Robinson, of 
Toowoomba, says: Farm and dairy-fed swine are always worth more than 
those fed on meat and offal; they are also subject to less disease, and the time 
is not far off when offal-fed pigs will have to be very carefully inspected before 
being allowed to go into consumption. Slaughter-yard, meat-works, and general 
offal-fed pigs certainly put on condition very quickly, but I maintain they are 
not fit for human food. The manner in which the brutes are fed is simply 
disgusting. Pigs are naturally clean animals; but if we confine them to dirty 
yards and compel them to eat all sorts of filthy food, we alter their nature, and 
at the same time alter the quality of their fat and flesh—Ed. Q.A.J. 
