MICROBES IN MEAT.

NZ Truth, Issue 81, 5 January 1907, Page 5

MICROBES IN MEAT.

Somnolent Inspector's Who See Nothing Wrong.

A correspondent is justly indignant as to the somnolence of those whose duty it is to see that the city's foodstuffs are kept untainted and free from all injurious matter. Particularly is this so witti meat. About twelve months bade all butchers' shops manufacturing sausages and small goods were ordered to register their premises as factories, under the Factories Act. Yet the auction marts about Wellington, where meat is knocked down to the highest bidder, are allowed to pursue their jaunty, iointv ways unrestricted, apparently. In these places, usually large open buildings wbigre all sorts of lumber is tossed about, meat is dumped down m utter disregard of health. Motheirs of families and hash house keepers resort there and buy the stuff, regardless of the fact that dust of an indescribably dirty nature has settled over it, thereby introducing microbes of all descriptions to it. Cheapness is the cause of custom to these auction marts, a reduction of a penny a pound beinc the prime consideration with most patrons. Usually the meat is of the most inferior class, even before the microbes have encamped on it. Naturally, butchers who have to keep proper sanitary premises, pay high wages to employees, and buy from the wholesale companies "through the nose," cannot compete against the marts. Yet the extremely intelligent G~>vernnient inspectors give the butcher no rest m 'heir exoeedino; desire that the public shall have- good nvcat— and forget the mart with its microhic mass of attenuated bull or worn out ram.