Handbook of meat inspection / by Robert Ostertag ; authorized translation by Earley Vernon Wilcox : with an introduction by John R. Mohler.

Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Handbook of meat inspection / by Robert Ostertag ; authorized translation by Earley Vernon Wilcox : with an introduction by John R. Mohler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    that, formerly, farmers iu various countries opposed the intro- ductiou of meat inspection. Thus it also comes about that iu countries without meat inspection the farmer is in other respects at the mercy of the butchers. It is sufficiently apparent from legal proceedings that butchers have sought to secure a great reduction in price on account of slight defects which were discovered after slaughter, while at the same time they offered the whole animals for sale to the original owners who lived some distance away. Thus, certain cattle dealers were convicted of fraud in twelve cases in which they had pretended to the farmers that the cattle which they had bought of them had been found to be diseased when slaughtered. Such business methods are rendered impossible bv the regulation of meat inspection. To the credit of the butcher's profession, however, it should be mentioned that the corporation representatives of butchers in Germany repeatedly appeared before the Reichregierung in the interests of the introduction of meat inspection. 3. It is the function of meat inspection to furnish valuable assistance to the veterinary police and to veterinary hygiene. Through the regular investigation of numerous animals, especially through the opportunity to determine the condition of the internal organs of such animals, meat inspection is in a position to detect cases of animal plagues which escape the notice of veterinary police. The detection of glanders offers, perhaps, the best proof of this statement. Moreover, the reduction in the number of cases of pleuro-pneumonia and the systematic warfare waged by veter- inary police against tuberculosis is made possible only on the basis of a regulated meat inspection. The value of meat inspection for veterinary police appears in recent times fco be underestimated. The words of Gerlach should, therefore, be borne in mind, that the successful labor of veterinary police is absolutely impossible in the present business operations without the control of the slaughter of animals. The Detection of Epizootic Outhrealcs by Meat ImiKction.—In the years 1892 to 1895, aside from foot-and-mouth disease and swine plague, there were detected by meat inspection in Germany 168 cases of anthrax, 54 cases of glanders, 28 cases of pleuro- pneumonia, 10 cases of horse mange, and 55 cases of sheep scab. From 1896 to 1899, 212 cases of anthrax (including black-leg and hemorrhagic sejiticeraia), 96 of glanders, 26 of pleuro-pneumonia, 11 of lioi sn iiiaiigp, niv\ 54 of sheep soib wore detecteil. In this