Tuberculosis: Meat as a Soarce.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 1 July 1903, Page 80

Tuberculosis: Meat as a Soarce.

Whether the bacilli which produce tuberculosis in c?tt!e> are capable of producing the same disease in man is cue of the tilings •which have recently demanded re investigation, euice Profe.^or Koch has raised tho question and answered it in the negative. He has only a, few followers, however, end while there is a. doubt in the- matter it behoves Us for the public safety to assume that we were, right till wo can definitely and without a grain of doubt be shown rto be AvroiNj. For tliis> reason we treatc-d the infectmty of milk as if Koch 'had never rai=ed a. doubt, and wo shall again treat tl.c problem of meat as a souicc of infection on the same aasiimption. Tiiere is no doubt that boy ne -tulxrculos s can be communicated to other susceptible animals, and there- is much evidence which appears to show that it is timilarly capable of attaekmg man ; but it is not open to experiment on man a? on animals, and therefore- there is room for doubt at present. A Royal Commission is now labouring at the matter, with all the arei-stameo of the Government. Investigations of a similar nature are bc-irig carried on in America and' Germany, and we hope that within the ne\t year or two tLcre ■will be accumulated enough evidence to r u t le matter beyond doubt.

When an animal euffeis from acute tuberculosis the whole tissucp of the body are liable to be infected, and therefore they are all un.«afe if eaten raw. This is even more .pronounced in localised dieraee in so far as the local diseased parts aie concerned. But when it is localised it hte been found possible to remove tho diseased parts with clean knives aaid leave the. carcase almost completply safe. Thorough cooking of the meat renders it innocuous, but it is difficult to raise- the central parts of a joint to tho temperature winch kil's the bacilli. The joint, then, which is most un=afe, provided careful cooking is csxiied cut, is one with tubercular mate-rial in the heart of it, and, as a matter of fact, this is not likely to occur unices in "rolls" mad© from pnimals with tuberculosis of the pleura and peritoneum, since it is iu-t this part which is usual-ly rut into the inner part of the "roll." If diseased meat is to 'be ured. oil the diseased parts ehould be carefully removed by a properly-trained official, who should urae a clean knife and cut freely clear of tho infected part. If he were to cut through a tubercular nodule his knife would become ■smeared with the material, and, on proceeding further with his cute, he would smear the carcase with di«easc-ladei>i material, and instead of pi eventing would be the- means of spreading the disease.— Liverpool Mercury.