DISEASED MEAT.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1997, 17 December 1863, Page 3

DISEASED MEAT.

(From the Melbourne Argus, 10th Nov.) The present condition of the meat-market, in Melbourne is, to say the least of it. eminently unsatisfactory. The favourite diet of John j Bull is under a cloud. The "roast»beef of old England" is a hollow mockery and a perilons delusion. There is disease on the spit, if not death in the pot. There is no longer any confidence to be placed in your plump sirloin, your juicy steak, or your toothsome brisket. The

foul fiend pleuro-pneumonia has laid its hand upon our beeres, and our chief staple of life is threatened with extinction. The canker of suspicion has invaded the joint of the British domestic circle ; and even the eye of hunger quails before the once familiar roast beef. The day is gone when our national dish was the type of everything that was honest and sound and manly. The dread vision of plsuro-poeumonia is what no appetite can withstand ; and it is now the ever-present accompaniment of all Melbourne beef. Pew stomachs can stand even the suspicion that there is something juicier in the joint than is reasonably accounted for by grass or cookery— something richer itt the ox-tail than is normal to that part of the ox. Every undue tenderness may suggest disease, and every flavour more exquisite breath© of pleuro-pneumonia. The prevalence of the disorder among toe cattle sold for the purposes of the Melbourne butcher, we have reason to believe, is far beyond what the public have suspected. It i» not pleasant to disturb any faith so old-estab-lished and universal as that in beef, but from all we can learn from good aathorities, it a probable that not more than half of the number, of animals disposed of in our cattle-yards are free from some taint of pleuro-pneumoma; . Some of the details which have been furnished are absolutely sickening to write of. Or the . cattle sold every day some, apparently fat and I in good health, are so diseased that they drop down dead in the yards before they can be re- • moved hy the purchaser. Others, of the same herd, less far advanced in the disorder, reach , the wholesale butcher without accident or question of their soundness. Of those who die m the yards, the flesh is sometimes (although apparently healthy and in good condition) SO rotten with disease as that a man might push hU finger easily ioto it Of those who do not dieinomt?(J»lely, but are cleared off for future disposal to tins rKail butchers, who shall say how many escape tb< j i> c» eye «f our Macadam, „ and form part of the Uaily food <.■{ the citizens? Who can doubt that a very large proportion is - sold without scruple as human food, and enters into the composition of our cheap dinners? It surely cannot be said that the public are sufficiently protected against so foul an abomi- j nation as this. We have ho doubt that there ./ are some among our butchers jealous enough / of (heir own interests, or honest enough in their/ business, to take all possible precautions againstl supplying themselves with pleuro-pneumonia-J tainted beef; but the best of butchers are fallible f nor is it every expert in beef who can teti, vrithj out examination of the whole animal, whether any particular part of it be diseased or not. There may be butchers in Melbourne magnanimous enough to reject a whole round because . of disease in the lungs ; but as the law is at "*'~^ present constituted, the public have very Httle *r security except in the generosity of the butcher^^' themselves. Every man cannot be expected to be a cow-doctor or an analytical chemist ; not have we had from Dr Macadam, any simple and easy tests by which the ordinary beefeater may distinguish between meat with pleuropneumonia and meat without. It is no wonder, therefore, that the public should be suspicious of all beef so long as the present alarm lasts- — that it should even tnaguify the peril and exig. gerate the evil out of the extremity of its fear and the depth of its ignorance. It must still eat beef, however, even if it eats tremblingly and suspiciously, The Acclimatisation Society has not yet succeeded in creating a new article of animal food ; and the science of dietetics is but in its infancy among ordinary Englishmen. At present we have but a small choice of meals. The cattle are tainted with pleuro-pneumonia — the sheep are afflicted with hyatids — the fowls have the pip ; by and by, the pigs will catch the measles. Who can tell what to eat or what to avoid ?