EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7492, 15 April 1899, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Tha "Prime Canterbury" mntton which Sergeant O'Grady had on his table for dinner the other day would have sickened a vulture. Having been provided by the butcher, whose rider out probably poised it affectionately on his two hands as he passed it to the purchaser, ießt so delicious a morsel should be contaminated through contact with anything common, we may follow it through the next Stages of its career. How this toothsome delicacy in the shape of a leg of mutton sang joyously in the oven, how it was done to a turn, and appeared on the dish a rich brown, shedding a fragrance all around which invaded the neighbors' domiciles and created universal envy. How, when all "had become comfortably seated, with unfolded serviettes, and glorious anticipations of the pleasures of appeasing hunger," the carving ;knife "struck a patch "in the heart of the leg which caused consternation and a sickening sensation and a disappointment and disgust which were keen and long and strong. How it was taken to the doctor, post-mortemised, and buried. How it was the subject 'matter of a serio-comic, anxious, and scientific debate in the chamber of the Municipal Council, whose members did riot show any anxiety to unearth it for closer investigation and ocular and olfactory demonstration. How nothing Jwas done, except the leg of mutton —we had well-nigh forgot: and the purchaser —All these things are now matters of history which tends to "make you careful." The story of this abscessed leg reminus us of the hydatid-infected loin of pork that was supplied last year, as a favor, to a good customer by a celebrated and highly respectable Wellington butcher. However, that is a mere trifle-- a paltry incident—nothing to make a fuss about. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and so is a little investigation coupled with nO action at all. If the respected sergeant had only partaken of the leg of mutton, perhaps there would have been a vacancy which some patient aspirant would be delighted to fill. What was the use of making such a fuss ov6r the discovery of a modest inflammatory tumor, when one probably consumes _ consumption all the year round, together with a variety of other microscopical monsters too numerous to mention, just by way of a change ? Ignorance is certainly bliss if the only result of the discovery of the horrors which lurk in butchers' meat is to make people look askance at the succulent chop or juicy steak. The inspection of meat is the greatest sham ever perpetrated this colony. In the first place the law is absurdly inadequate ; in the second place, bad as the law is, it is neither enforced nor respected. What necessity is there for butchers to be careful as to the quality of the meat they sell when tbey can_ sell diseased meat with impunity 1 There is no one to say whether meat is diseased or not, save" where the local authorities have taken the matter in hand ; and even when the sale of dangerously diseased meat has been known to the authorities, they, out of sympathy with the butchers, or for some other corrupt reason, have allowed the matter to drop. It is the Bame in the Legislature. We have not wholly emerged from the savage state and lisen to that height of niceness which would I impel us to abhor even the risk of contami- I nation by anything uncleanly. There is a | good deal of the animal about man.