The health commissioner's refutation of the health commissioner's answer to the Bureau of municipal research on health violations in East Side slaughter houses.

  • Bureau of Municipal Research (New York, N.Y.)
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The health commissioner's refutation of the health commissioner's answer to the Bureau of municipal research on health violations in East Side slaughter houses. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    11/20 (page 7)
    tilizer .... for many years have been equipped with appliances. These odor destroyers were there when you wrote in 1910 Complaints multiply. They were there when in 1910 Sanitary Superintendent Bensel wrote to Acting- mayor Mitchel: It is a matter of knowledge to officers of this department that no such plant has been operated without a nuisance for any considerable length of time, and referred to their powers to destroy as theoretical. Destroyers that do not destroy are no public protection. The very day when the commissioner's letter and the mayor's entirely satisfactory were published in the newspapers those destroyers so failed to destroy that a nuisance was committed all the late after- noon for blocks west of these same destroyers. It is odors outside the plant, not equipment inside, that concern the public. 23. The defense of the odor destroying equipment (for offal boil- ing) breaks down with the commissioner's statement on page 7 the appliances are not fool proof and constant vigilance is necessary. Odors on the outside show that constant vigil- ance has not been given. Superintendent Bensel says that constant vigilance cannot be hoped for. As late as May 15, 1911, the inspector reported: Odors escaping . . . Doors allowed to be left open. Doors in fertilizer shed open. 24. Misstatement is made by the commissioner even in so small a matter as the number of complaints shown on the depart- ment's records. He says (page 8) that from January i, 1910, through June, 1911, five citizens' complaints were received. Yet we published in our report eleven complaints taken from the official records of the department, not including any let- ters that may have been received at the mayor's office and not transmitted to the department. 25. In many respects the most serious effort to evade the depart- ment's responsibility for unsanitary conditions in the east side slaughter houses is evidenced in the ten-line paragraph on page 11 devoted to screens, cuspidors, dirty boots, clothing and medical inspection of employees. These ten lines are meant to answer four pages of specific statements in our report. Here the commissioner not only admits that screens for keeping out flies and other vermin are lacking, but, after pleading the difficulty of screening, actually declares nor is it necessary, although it is desirable, that all foods and food productions should be screened from flies as far as possible. Again the absence of cuspidors is not only admitted but justified. The flippant reference to cleanliness of boots, cloth- ing, employees, etc., not only disregards specific charges in our report and the greater part of the health officer's re- sponsibility for sanitary protection in slaughter houses, but is a distinct slur on the regulations of the United States depart- ment of agriculture, quoted in our report, which require that garments and persons shall be clean and they shall be re- quired to pay particular attention to the cleanliness of their boots and shoes. 26. The existence of absorbent material in the dressing and cooling rooms and the unsanitary condition of woodwork, floors, etc., are entirely ignored by the commissioner. Our