MEAT INSPECTION.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13481, 22 July 1907, Page 7

MEAT INSPECTION.

A TALL AMERICAN STORY.

The Times, under the above heading, states that one result of the recent exposures of the ways and methods of Chicago meat-packers lias been a general reorganisation of the system of Government inspection of meat. If a column of most palpably-inspired reading matter, published in a London daily journal is to be taken as a criterion, the packers are playing the Government inspection system as their trump card. That they should make the most of this is quite reasonable, but they should do it properly. The description given of the inspection of the carcases of pigs is really entertaining, seeing that from it one would gather that the deceased pig, on commencing his journey "on a slowly-gliding bed of wooden slabs" towards his ultimate destination, passes along a sort of avenue of inspectors, lined up on either side of' his path. It would appear that each of these officers ia. a specialist, who- examines only one T>art of the travelling carcase. Thus, r£ is stated "it may be the examination of the ear, the thorax, a lung, a gland, or some section of the viscera. The inspector on the opposite side may be making an examination of the corres--ppading individual part; as his confrere. The inspection goes on like clockwork, etc., etc." This is interesting. One is inclined to wonder r what particular disT eases the ear inspector is searching for. Really the description is so overdrawn and so palpably unreasonable that to thinking people it will do anything but fulfil the purpose for which it was obviously intended. As an advertisement, it deserves to be a rank' failure, the more so as it seeks to show that this perfunctory examination of ears and other parts of steadily travelling carcases is superior to the system of inspection prevailing in other countries where "possibly the inspectors are fewer in number and each one has to examine the entire carcase." Take New Zealand for instance, where each inspector does examine the entire carcase. He may perhaps examine at the outside somewhere about one hundred carcases of pigs per day, having plenty of time to pay close attention to every part of the viscera and every part of the carcase before deciding whether it can be passed or not. The American specialist — according to the London journalist — must make his examination while the carcase is gliding past him. And the same "authority" indicates that these carcases come along at the rate of from 300 to 700 per hour ! Moreover, it is difficult, to understand how the whole of the internal organs still within the carcase can be open to inspection by the serried double line of inspectors without some special provision being made for distending the presumably present extended longitudinal opening in the animal's body to such an

extent as to allow each official to make

an examination of his own appointed portion. The kidney expert, for instance, would need to be particularly deft of hand and quick of eye. Perhaps the pork packers, have altered their whole system of slaughtering!