FOOD HORRORS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1806, 12 July 1906, Page 3

FOOD HORRORS.

MORE NAUSEATING REVELA TIONS.

Ox telegraph, Praia lAh'k, .Copy Ugh London, July 10.

OHIOAGO DISCLOSURES.

DETAILS BY MAIL.

I Under date New York, Juno 1, iho fol I lowing further details of the Ohioagc I tinned meat horrors are lo hand ; I The whqle country is deeply stirred I over the horrors of Chicago aod the great 1 Chicago meat establishments recently reI vealed. It is now known that Mr Roosevelt for months past has been quietly investigaij ing matters on his own account, and has received suob shcckiog reports that he is determined to put an end to the exieting conditions. It should be remembered that every variety of tinned and potted meat comes from the trust’s yards, aod it is in these that the greatest contamination oan be most easily conoealed. PEW ORDERB FROM ENGLAND.

I The newspapers are devotiog columns to the packing house exposures, quoting [ o piously from the Juogie, and urging the publio to beware of snob Chicago dainties as potted chicken made of diseased veal, sausages made of unfit materials and treated with cbemioale, and potted bam made of beef gullets and ground potato* skii s, dyed red. These revelations are causing a great falling eff in the consumption of potted

meals and other Cbioago produote, and it is reported chat already a reduoticn of 33 per cent, in Germany and Eigland, two of tbe largest foreign consumers, has oooutred. Almost incredible stories of tbe horrors of the packing housis are related by Mr and Mrs Bloor, who made a preliminary

investigation for Mr Sinclair, and whose ! experiences form part of bis story. They ■ esided at Cbioago for some time, assooiaied with packing-house workers, and obiaiuc d astounding revelations. One man confessed that unborn oalyes were largely utilised in the potted meat departments, and that quantities of chickens, so decomposed as almost to be dropping apart, were frozen solid, deodorised, and tinned.

FARCICAL INSPECTION.

Investigation has disolosed the faot (hat tbe conditions of tbe meat-packinghouses in New York and other large cities aro fully as bad as in Chicago. The present inspection system is utterly inadequate and farc’cal. S x inspectors in New York examined 493,001 car-loads of packinghouse products last year, in addition to several thousand live oattle daily.

Over eleven million pounds of meat were condemned as diseased or otherwise Unfit during the reemt investigation of tbo Cbioago slaughter-houses, Ojc of Mr Roosevelt’s commissioners witnessed the inspection of 31 diseased oattle having large lamps on the jaws. Only seven were rejected.

In Omaha, one of tbe largest meatcentres of the West, there has been no inspection at all for over 10 years. 11 UNSPEAKABLY HORRIBLE.” The Sseretary of the New York Butohers’ Association, in an interview today, declares that tbe conditions of tbe New York sausage factories are unspeakably horrible. " Many places have no sewer connections, ani keep huge cesspools, filled with reeking, decomposing matter. In one establishment rata swarm over the tables on whioh tbe meats are

thrown for grinding, and no attempt is ' made to remove tbe filih whioh oollects. If a dozen rats are caught in the machinery, they are ground up with the reel. " Large quantities of refnsp, brought from hotels and restaurants, are mixed with sausage-meat. Not a Biogle sausagemaker thinks of eating his own sausages.” Mr Thomas Dolan, formerly killing superintendent of one of tbe largest Chicago packing houses, says that thou sands of oattle pass inspection suffering from tnberouloeis, gaDgrene, and other diseases. Animals unfit for cate’ meat are boiled down and tbe nutriment used for soups and beef extracts, while the dry, worthless palp remaining is mixed wuh gelatine, tinned, and advertised as jellied beef. Diseesid meat, condemned by the iuspeotore, is systematically smuggled back and tioned.

CHOPPED BAU 3AGE MEAT AND FROZEN PIGS “The ohief danger 10 the British publio lies in the use by oertain sausage-makers of the American chopped sausagemaat, as to the composition of whioh no one knows anything, and in the sale of boned meat, of whioh the coosnmption is very large in the North of England, and caroases of pigs in such a hard frozen state as not to admit of proper inspection here,’’ writes a Linden meat trade expert, He adds : By far the greater part of the American meat oome3 into this country in the form of quarters of beef, which as a rule are entirely free from evidence of disease; but of late years there has been an increasing trade in sausage meat chopped and put up in tios, and various goods packed in boxes, whioh is not so satisfactory. These consist of sheep’s attd lambs’ plucks, ox livers, ox and pigs’ kidneys, loins of pork, pork outtings which profess to be the trimmings of hams and sides of becm, and, worst of all, quarters of beef with the bones taken out.

All of these are put into boxes soft, frozen up hard, and sent here in a condi* lion which precludes the possibility of inspection, so that the qnly guarantee of their soundaess is an adbesise label of the American department of meat inspection stuck on the outside of the box, and capable of being transferred from one box to another A similar label is tied on the ca-casca of potk, whioh are sent here fr. zmhard. Very recently a meat inspector was desir ous of showing an official of the L:cal Government Board how utterly impossible it was to form any opinion as to tbe soundness of these, end took him into the shop of one of the large importing firms for that purpose. Tnere be found OQe carcase which, having hung from tbe previous day, bad thawed and become soft. This, though still carrying the American label of inspection, was obviously badly diseased. Then.as to the booed beef. The Royal Commission on Tuberculosis made among others this recommendation, “ In the case of foreign dead meat seizure shall ensue in every case where the pleura has been stripped.’” WHOLE TRUTH UNPUBLISHABLE

The N.w Yoru correspondent of tbe London Times, writing on May 28, says: The revelations now being made will, it is Certain, result in legislation, and it is to be confidently hoped, in the punishment of the blaokgnarcjs who have been accumulating great fortunes by selling unwholesome food to tbe Amerioan people. So far as the newspapers are oonoarned, the half bat net been told, and I am in a

position to say that the whole truth oan never be told io print, for tbe reason that it would transoend tbe bounds of deoenoy. Bui what we have learned already is enough. The New York Times this morning devotes an entire' page to tbe subject. We rrai of oaroases of hogs whioh bad disd from cholera made into lard, and into grease, which is used in making sardine oil; of bams in a putrefied condition injeoted with chemioals which made them odourless ; of tbe use of other chemioals for dyeing bad rqeat; of potted “bam” m-de from monldy portions ol -mnlrpd beef; of tinned beef from cattle which died from disease ; of mutton which is really goats’ flesh; of sausages manufactured front scrapings of floors liberally treated with embalming chemicals; of in spectors parsing as lit for food animals af fected with tuberculosis ; of operatives bo ing caught in machinery and mutilated and of the machinery not oven bein' stopped set- that human flesh is mi\cin the canned food and sausages. Thes allegations are supported by document supplied by Mr Upton Sinclair. I hav token a few instances of what has bee going on absolutely at random. J,n ljj

Reports of Inspectors of factories are revealing a filthy oondition in sovoral of Iho British and Irish jam factories and bakehouses, and Gorman sausage shops in Whitcohapol.

nowspapor reports iho groat packing houses arc all mentioned li.y name, and it is assortod that tho conditions aro tlio

sanio in praoticnlly every large establish moat. It fa surprising that Americans are more wrought up by those rovolntions than by any otlior scandal of recent years Europe, of course, is deeply interested in the matter on account of tbo enormous quantities of food ft receives from this emintirv.