202 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1899. 
evidence outweighs any dictum of Mr. Rogers that there is no proof that 
tuberculosis can be conveyed to human beings by the food consumed. Mr. 
Rogers referred to the large decrease in consumption, and in pulmonary 
consumption there has certainly been a decrease, owing to improved sanitary 
arrangements. Pulmonary consumption is generally supposed to be taken in 
through the medium of the air breathed into the system. Now, there has been 
an immense decrease in it, a decrease in England of something like 45 per cent. 
In the form of tubercular diseases, which are mainly given to children through 
milk, there has been an enormous increase, an increase through a series of years 
of 27 per cent.; that means that the closer herding of cattle is no doubt clearing 
off the children of the world in greater numbers than formerly used to go otf 
from this cause. I have taken out the Queensland figures, and it is pertectly 
shocking to note the proportion of infant deaths which have arisen from tuber- 
culosis diseases, which no doubt were largely preventible. We had a little child 
in the Brisbane Hospital only three weeks ago full of tubercles, and we had it 
sent out into the country. Its father lived ina healthy place, but on inspecting 
his cows two of them were found to have been rotten with tuberculosis. Why 
should our children be killed? The same arguments brought up by Mr. Rogers 
shave been brought up against all inspection. They were the same arguments 
that were brought against the Slaughtering Bill and the Factory Act. If man 
people were to see some of the dairies of the country, they would never drm 
milk again. Did we not send an inspector to South Brisbane only to discover 
cows rotten with disease, the matter from their udder sores dripping into the 
milk buckets? That any man can stand up here and oppose efforts at the 
remedying of the disgusting condition of many of the town dairies, I can hardly 
understand. 1 have been in New South Wales, where there is an extremely 
stringent Act, but I never heard a farmer say he haa any objection to inspection, 
and several of them have told me that they would now do of themselves what 
the inspector requires them to do if he were not there—that is, they recognise 
that what is insisted upon by the Government is really for their own benefit. 
Of course, there is a much meaner way of looking at this inspection, and that is 
at the benefit it confers on our trade. It is notorious that 25 years ago the 
United States had practically the monopoly of cheese in the English market. 
But the United States forgot to inspect, and the consequence was they lost all 
their export trade in cheese to England; Canada, a country with much less 
natural advantages, being their successor. On the Continent there is a Goyern- 
ment inspection of the very strictest sort, and I hope we shall yet see an Act mm 
Queensland which will compel dairymen to turn out of their herds cancerous and 
tuberculous cattle. 
(Mr. Chataway then temporarily left the meeting for the purpose of opening 
the show of the Pioneer River Farmers’ Association, his place in the chair being 
filled by Mr. P. McLean. ] 
Mr. R.S. Arken (Gooburrum): I think Mr. Rogers’s paper has been 
criticised by the Chair under a great misapprehension. Mr. Rogers is @ 
stranger to me, but I do not think he intended to convey the ideas suggested by 
Mr. Chataway, and in any event I feel sure that the paper has been written in 
the interests of those who are engaged in dairying at the present time. 
Mr. C. Arrow (Brisbane): The main idea that has been conveyed here 
to-day is that the dairying and pig industries have been tremendous successes. 
They have. And probably the greatest blessing arising from the prosperous 
condition of these two industries is the provision they give to farmers to settle 
their sons on the land. The inspection of dairies is essential, and in places 
where it is enforced I do not think it has ever become oppressive, the 
inspector standing between the seller and the buyer, Previous to the com- 
-mencement of inspection around Brisbane, the condition of many of the dairies 
was simply disgraceful. | : 
Mr. §. E. Toor (Pialba): In my district we combine dairying and general 
farming, and I think it is time something was done to put an end to the filthy 
way in which many dairies are conducted. I have seen butter, cheese, and 
