Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1900.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 136, 9 June 1906, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1900.

THE MEAT MATTER. .» In April the earthquake which laid San Francisco in ruins was registered all round the world as a more or less faint tiremor by the sensitive instruments of modern science, and it was well for the human race that outside of the doomed city and its immediate neighbourhood the movements were not more distinctly traceable. The revelatlions of human greed, filth, and crime which opened at Chicago during the following month sent a tremor of another kind thrilling round the globe, which it) has Tequired no skilled observers or scientific appliances to discern and record ; and it is to bo hoped that the impression made upon the hearts of men may be as lasting as it has been striking in its immediate effects. That "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth a*e set on edge" is a hard saying which epitomises the mystery of hereditary suffering, but) the principle of vicarious suffering, though equally inscrutable in certain of its aspects, has sometimes ifs brighter side, as the people of this colony may realise if tlhe historian of the near future is able to record that the Yankees' stomachs have been filled with diseased meat, and the meat supply of New Zealand has been purified thereby. There is indeed good reason to believe that) the nauseating stories that have been reaching us from Chicago during tho last ten days may have this wholesome result. Official optimism has not) been proof against the strong chorus of adverse testimony with regard to local conditions which grows steadily day by day, and in some respects official opinion has helped to swell .he chorus of alarm and indignation. Mr. Gilruth, for instance, is a man as little inclined to give way to panic as to blink at plain facts, and in his various statements during the present week he has not) attempted to paint everything witlh a rosy live, any more than he has been accustomed to do so in his official reports. In Australia Mr. Seddon has been proclaiming in his loudest tones that "there re no place in tJhe world where the same rigid inspection of slaughtering obtains as in New Zealand" — ft statement intended for British consumption, and far truer in that application than for domestic use, the fact being that here, just as in the United States, the Government! takes very careful precautions with regard to meat destined for export and is negligent only of tlhe domestic supply. If Mr. Seddon's statement is to be taken as covering the whole ground, then it is as remote from the trutJh as the most imaginative, of his statements to.the.jjeo-

pie of Australia. "Every abattoir is under Government) inspection," says Mr. Seddon, but he does not tell the Australian public what everybody in New Zealand knows by this time, that slaughtering takes place freely outeide the abattoirs and absolutely uninspected. That diseased meat may trnd its way, and actually does find its way, into tlhe market from the private slaughterhouses of the colony must be regarded as absolutely certain ; and the exposure of Chicago's shame should be turned to the removal of our own instead of inspiring us with fairy-tales of our own Utopian purity. The extent to 'which the colony has been roused upon the question may be gauged from the fact that the Minister of Lands and Agriculture is actua'ly awakening to a sense of his responsibilities. There is hoj>e indeed when the Minister who is specially concerned with the live stock of the colony begins to see that something must bo done. A Press Association message brought the welcome news from Oamaru yesterday that the Hon. Me. Duncan had informed an interviewer that "a Bill was in preparation providing for the compulsory inspection of pigs for slaughtering." It is time that the mysteries that may lurk in potted ham were more closely probed than lias hitherto been the case in either Chicago or New Zealand; and it ia also time that the local consumer of bacon was given tho same protection as a rigid system of inspection already provides for our foreign customers. The Government's Bill promises no more than this, and the country will be content with nothing less. Ihe Minister is less satisfactory with regard to other kinds of live stock, for all he has to say on tliis subject is that "he will introduce a clause compelling Wellington to erect abattoirs." Wo have always regarded Mr. Duncan as a dangerous man — if he had a mind to be, but fortunately ho rarely seems to have a mind. Now, however, he is out for scalpa, and wo are pleased to see such energy; but we venture to suggest that the first scalp he should take is that of the Minister whose persistent obstruction in the years 1901-3 prevented the Wellington *City Council from obtaining an abattoir under the special facilities then allowed by law. He knows perfectly well that he need not go outeido his own door in order to find the scalp in question, and we have no space at present to explain the facts to those who have not the same familial ity with them as himself. The Minister need attempt no Seddonian bluff at tho expense of the city that he has wronged; but if he desires to make the abattoir system compulsory all round, we are entirely with him, and we believe that ha can also rely upon the support of a large majority of the citizens of Wellington.