SUPERVISION OF KILLING

Southland Times, Issue 22991, 10 September 1936, Page 6

SUPERVISION OF KILLING

DISEASE RISK IN PIGS SOUTH ISLAND METHODS CONDEMNED A complaint of lack of control by health authorities in supervising the killing of pigs in many parts of the South Island, with a risk of allowing meat infected by tuberculosis to be sold to the public, was made in an interview last night by two visitors prominent in the pig marketing industry. Messrs A. W. Hasting and W. A. Phillips, of the New Zealand Cooperative Pig Marketing Association, who arrived in Invercargill last night, told a reporter that they were astonished that some sort of official supervision of the killing of pigs on farms was not carried out. Pigs were killed on farms and sold to butchers in parts of the South Island without any proper inspection, they said. In other parts of New Zealand pigs intended for human consumption were killed in abattoirs or freezing works under the strictest supervision. Farmers were not allowed the same latitude with the sale of other meat, they said, and it was in the public interest that there should be supervision of the killing of pigs. Last year just under 5 per cent, of the total number of pigs examined by inspectors had been rejected. Without inspection such pigs might have been sold for human consumption, and this was the risk that the public was subjected to in parts of the South Island, especially in some districts of Otago and Southland. Apart from the 5 per cent of carcasses condemned entirely, a further 10 per cent of pigs’ heads were condemned because of disease. Without supervision tlie»e heads could go to the butcher, and be sold, carrying disease to the public. The local bodies or health authorities should step in and remedy the trouble, they claimed. A suggested remedy was that butchers should display in their shops notices that pigs bought by them had been inspected for disease. That would give the public some protection, for it could know the shops from which it could buy with safety.