Report to the Public Health Committee on the inspection of meat and the need for public abattoirs in Aberdeen / by W. J. Simpson.

  • Simpson, W. J.
Date:
1885
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the Public Health Committee on the inspection of meat and the need for public abattoirs in Aberdeen / by W. J. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    5/18
    r Being asked by the Public Health Committee to draw \ip a state- f ment as to the measures adopted to check the sale of diseased meat r in the city, I beg to report as follows :— I 1. The slaughter-houses are periodically visited, and the carcases and animals are examined. 2. Information is obtained from the Police and other persons as to any carcases brought into town at night, or under suspicious circumstances, and these are frequently traced to their destina- I tion and then examined. 3. Butchers’ shops where diseased meat has previously been dis- ^ covered are occasionally visited. 4. If complaints are made of meat obtained from any particular shop, j the general character of the meat in that shop is supervised ^ for some time. J 6. There are numerous sales of cattle and carcases taking place every I day in the week, at the several auction marts in the city ; these are not visited, unless a direct complaint is made at the (Sanitary Offices, as to diseased carcases being on sale : some- times the complaint proves to be well founded, at other times it is not so. ] The methods here indicated are certainly unsatisfactory and are I not the most successful in securing the sale of good meat. The ' methods lack system, and in my opinion it is impossible to have any effective system with seven slaughter-houses in different parts of the town and with no general dead meat market to which it is compulsory to bring, for the purpose of inspection, all carcases whether k lied in the slaughter-houses, or brought into the town from the country. The proper inspection of meat is so intimately conjoined with the » question of public abattoirs, that I have no other suggestion to make than what I made more than two years ago. An inspector might, however, be temporarily appointed whose chief duty would be to supervise the business in the slaughter-houses and in the cattle marts. There would still be channels and opportunities for those determined to successfully evade the law, though in the meantime this kind of supervision would be, I believe, more effective than the one presently existing.