Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash].

  • Cash, C.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/230 (page 2)
    THE PRIVATE SLA I'GIITE P-HO I \SE and Cattle Markets, by the late Hr. Oscar Schwarz, which has been admirably translated into English, but which is somewhat too technical for the general reader, there is no book, so far as we know, which treats of the subject generally. The public press, moreover, is averse to discussing a question of a repellent nature, and even those journals which are devoted to the cause of preven- tion of animal suffering shrink from dwelling on the forms of cruelty found in private slaughter-houses. In making this statement we except the publications of the Humanitarian League, which has done most excellent work in calling attention to the evils of our slaughtering system. The general public, therefore, remains ignorant of the subject and indifferent to it because of its ignor- ance. The result of such indifference in a country like our own, where reform depends so largely upon public opinion, has been deplorable. Medical officers have protested against the existing state of things on sanitary grounds, and humanitarians have pleaded for improved methods of slaughter, but as yet no real reform has been effected. The slaughter-house system which prevails in England to-day is, in fact, an anomaly and an anachronism—an anomaly because, while we pride ourselves on our regard for sanitary principles, we tolerate a state of things which sets sanitation at defiance ; and an anachronism because our system is a crude survival of medieval methods which have been discarded for years past by other European countries. The slaughtering system which exists, generally speak- ing, in England at the present day is known as the private slaughter-house system, as opposed to the public slaughter-house or abattoir system. Under the private system each butcher has his own