The inspection of milk and meat / report by the medical officer on the statements of deputations who attended before the Public Health Committee, on 3rd November, 1898, on the question of the proposed abolition of private slaughterhouses in London, and on the representations subsequently made to the Committee on the subject.

Murphy, Shirley F.

Date:: 1898

Credit: The inspection of milk and meat / report by the medical officer on the statements of deputations who attended before the Public Health Committee, on 3rd November, 1898, on the question of the proposed abolition of private slaughterhouses in London, and on the representations subsequently made to the Committee on the subject. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$and this is sufficient to demand a careful inspection of carcases at the time of slaughter by skilled meat inspectors. Obviously, inspection of this sort cannot be made in private slaughterhouses. That this inspection is necessary is, as I have said, recognised by the last Commission, who have included it in their reeommendations.* I may now point out briefly the result of the adoption by the Council of the recommendations of the Committee as to meat inspection, these recommendations agreeing with those of the last Royal Commission on Tuberculosis. The flesh of all animals killed in London would be inspected in the public slaughterhouses in which the animals would be slaughtered. This meat after examination would be stamped, and, at the convenience of the butchers, either stored in cold chambers or removed to the butchers’ shops. No cattle would be driven through the streets; they would be conveyed by railway from the Islington market, or from markets outside London, to the slaughterhouses, where they would pass into the hands of the purchasers, whose men could be employed in their slaughter. The meat arriving dead in London would, if killed, inspected and stamped in public slaughter- houses in other parts of the country, be taken direct to the meat market or butchers’ shops. Meat which is killed in private slaughterhouses outside London would not have this guarantee of its fitness for food, and would therefore be required to be taken to meat inspection stations, where it would be stamped us fit or condemned as unfit for food. It is especially this meat that needs inspection, for in the absence of any proper system of inspection, there is nothing to prevent the introduction into London of meat of dangerous quality, and there is indeed no doubt that London does receive such meat from other parts of England. There is not the least prospect that Parliament would give control over this meat until there is a complete system for the examination of all meat killed in London. The system here described is in no sense untried, it is in active operation on the continent, where, as the result of a number of years’ experience, it is found not only a valuable protection to the public, but acceptable to all honest butchers. Itis, moreover, the only system which meets a very legitimate grievance of butchers, to which the attention of the Committee and the Tuberculosis Commission was directed by the butchers’ trade, viz , that men are employed as meat inspectors who have not the proper knowledge, and that there is great want of uniformity in the action of local officers in seizing meat as unfit for food. The inspection of meat in public slaughterhouses can be done by competent veterinary officers without undue cost to the public, and uniformity of procedure can in large degree be ensured. : . The objections of the deputations were, however, directed in the main to the abolition of private slaughterhouses, and among those urged was that this abolition would “practically destroy the purchase of English farmers’ cattle,’ for ‘‘ the only customer practically so far as London is concerned, is the man who has a private slaughterhouse of his own”; the Metro- politan Cattle Market of the City Corporation ‘‘ might almost as well shut its gates”’; butchers ‘‘ would neither take the trouble nor would they go to the extraordinary expense and inconvenience of sending their servants to a public slaughterhouse in order that they might slaughter the animals which have been bought.” Mr. W. Cooper, in his evidence before the last Tuberculosis Commission, explained that the decrease in private slaughterhouses in London which has taken place was due to change in the food requirements of the poorer classes of the London population.t The falling off in the number of anima!s received into the Islington market (see Appendix I. to my report on Slaughterhouses) is evidence that this trade is under existing conditions slowly but surely dying out. If action is to be taken in the interest of the English furmer the question which needs consideration is whether this trade could be revived by the provision of public slaughterhouses which would give opportunity for the slaughtering of cattle to the numerous buichers who have no private slaughterhouses.{ ‘lhe substitution of public for the 425 private slaughterhouses now existing would give opportunity to some 4,500 London butchers who have no slaughterhouses to buy and kill home-produced cattle. Certainly unless some such step be taken it may be expected that the importation of English farmers’ live cattle into London will eventually practically cease. . * Mr. William Cooper, Chairman, Meat and Cattle Trades Section of the London Chamber of Commerce, in a letter to the Tumes (13 January, 1899), states tlat the seizure of tuberculous carcases in the Central Meat Market is not a perceptible percentage of the enormous quantity of beef dealt with. It needs to be pointed out (a) that much of the meat that enters the market has passed through the slaughterhouses in the Deptford and Islington markets, where it has already been lable to inspection by the City Corporation officers. Jor the rest, inspection of the carcases in the market after removal of the viscera, is no sufficient guarantee that the animals were not tuberculous. The first Royal Commission on Tuberculosis reported that they had reason to think that the facts about tuberculous animals in the United Kingdom would exhibit a broad resemblance to those in Copenhagen and Berlin. In Berlin the percentages of tuberculous animals were, oxen and cows 15:1, swine 1°55, calves 0°11; and the percentages of the several kinds of animals condemned on account of tuberculosis were, for oxen and cows 1°26, swine 0°25, calves 0°06. In Copenhagen the percentage for tuberculous oxen and cows was 17°7, ard for swine 15'3. + 1996.—Why are they [private slaughterhouses] diminishing ? That is very easily explained: Thirty years ago, the dead meat trade had scarcely begun. The year 18565 was the year of the cattle plague, and I think that was the thing which gave the dead meat trade its first stimulant by the slaughtering of animals in the country, and the sending them to London. Then another thing which has revolutionised the trade is the large imports of frozen mutton. All the coarse parts of bullocks now have become unpopular with the lower orders. ‘ihe lower orders in London used to be content at one time to eat what we term the coarse parts, that is to say, the interior portions of bullocks. Now there is a great difficulty indeed in getting rid of such things in many parts of London, and butchers who used to slaughter cattle cannot possibly sell the whole of the carcase, so they go to the market and buy as they like in the dead meat market what suits their trade, and they buy that only. That has given a great impetus indeed to the dead meat trade, so that hus ina measure revolutionised the trade. Now, since the arrival of these enormous quantities of foreign meat, as I say, the English farmer with his live meat trade has been practically almost driven out of the trade. t It was stated to the Committee by Mr. Coggan, chairman of the Butchers’ Trade Society, that there are about 5,000 butchers in London. There are 425 private slaughterhouses—hence there are about twelve butchers without, to one butcher with, a private slaughterhouse. _$

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