PROTECTIONIST MEAT.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13278, 18 January 1911, Page 4

PROTECTIONIST MEAT.

An article on “Cheap Moat; the Gorman' Briebank,” by C. Smith llossie, in tlie Contom poi'arv Jieview, throws a ghastly light on a little-known instiutc in every German eity. 'the “Friebank” is a free market in the sense that meat may freely be bought there which the law docs not allow to be sold in the ordinary moat markets. Only the very poor may patronise the “fiienbank," and all hotelkeepers, caterers, and restaurant-keepers .arc rigidly prohibited from buying there. The esh of diseased animals is sold in the “fricbank after it has been subjected to scientific sterilising, so as to destroy all the living disease germs. The writer remarks, “Although, to my ideas, this business of treating shady flesh till it becomes harmless food was somewhat revolting, to the sanitarians engaged in it the work is philanthropic, for otherwise what would happen in soueh a country as Germany, where imported cattle cannot enter except under a high tariff? What would happen is this: the people would cat the flesh, diseased or not, and then they would become diseased themselves—or else they would be forced to become vegetarians or revolutionaries.” This article contains a surfeit of horrors. The writer cjuof.es from official documents as well as from ohservattions made during a visit to the “friebaiix in Berlin, the sterilised flesh of tuberculous dogs is officially reported to have been legally ’-ut upon the market as food. For instance, the following is an extract from the ' -.eport of Munich,” page 9, par. 4: “Out of 89 slaughtered dogs 13 were found fault, with on account of pneumonia, antraeosis of the lungs, sarcoma, carcinoma, and disease of the kidneys; and of these two were put aside as unfit for food on account of pneumonia and cancer; but of the rest only the diseased organs were destroyed) '/lie writer records that “it is a law' of Germany that all lost animals found by the police in the city are sent for sale on the friebank after being kept for three weens .to fatten.” Also the writer saw persons eating an the friebank sausages made from the .small pieces of flesh taken from the bodies of swine and dogs for the purpose of being tested for trichinosis. Can the German import duties be maintained much longer, for the sole benefit of the agrarian party in' the Reichstag, in the face of sueh ’a ghastly business as is here described?