DISEASED STOCK.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 10, 9 June 1894, Page 3

DISEASED STOCK.

PUBLIC ABATTOIRS. Much attention has lately been directed to diseased and inferior meat being sold in the towns of the colony, and its supposed terrible effects on the people. That cancer is too common is doubtless true, and the sooner it is traced to a cause —there is a cause the better for all of us. Lumpy jaw or cancer has been common among cattle from the earliest days of New Zealand settlement, and animals afflicted with cancer in its early stages have, up till lately, been commonly sold to the butchers —often unknown to both buyer and seller.

Cancer may exist in the cavity of the lower jaw some time before it shows, or becomes large enough to be called lumpy-jaw, and would seem at first to be of slow growth. It is after it begins to show and become a large lump under the jaw that the animals lose condition, and in from one to two years die. In its earliest stage, before it can be seen, it may be felt with the fingers in the cavity of the lower jaw. As the disease becomes more advanced it often discharges, and not unfrequently an osseous growth takes place, completely covering the cavity in the lower jaw.

There are few men that have had as large experience in this disease as the butchers killing at the Woodlands Meat Preserving Works in the early seventies. Nearly 25,000 head of cattle per season were killed there for three or four years running, and most of them fell to the knives of David Neale, now of Dunedin, and John Waddell, of Woodlands. In the slaughter of so many cattle they saw a great deal of cancer, or lumpy-jaw, in all its stages, and probably one per centum of the large numbers they slaughtered were afflicted in a greater or less degree. In the early sixties a number of cattle were carried off by a “ pining ” or “ plain disease,” as it was called. Well conditioned cattle took it, and in less than a twelvemonth pined away to death. It was also known as the plain disease, because mostly seen on the Mataura Plains. Since cultivation it has disappeared from the plains. In ’65 and ’66 large numbers of cattle died from pleuro-pneumonia in Southland. It was introduced by imported cattle from Victoria. The fattest and best cattle were generally the first attacked. It was usually fatal within from seven to fourteen days, and but few recovered from it. It was highly contagious, and directly animals were attacked it could be quickly detected by their quick and short breathing, with more or less of frothy discharge from the mouth and nostrils. Cattle that had it recovered, became fat again, and gave evidence of former disease, by the appearance of the lungs, after killing. Part of the lungs was smaller and firmer in substance, and the respiratory cells blended or grown over. Public abattoirs are a great deal spoken of, and would be doubtless a step in the right direction. Stock could be regularly inspected while on foot, and again in the carcase. Slaughtering would be done in a more cleanly manner, the yards and buildings kept clean and wholesome, and lime-washed as required. A correct record could also be kept of the brands, age, colour and sex of all stock passed through the yards. This would be useful as a means of tracing stolen or strayed stock if they came to the works, the inspector having power to retain hides or skins he had reason to suspect should not be there. With reference to the cattle and sheep bought by the butchers of Invercargill cattle-breeders, farmers, and stock-owners well know they buy nothing but the best quality, and are hard to please even with that. Any defect, either in condition, lumpyjaw, or otherwise, is very quickly detected by them, and the animals objected to, at once, thrown out of the purchase. Moreover, most of the stock killed by the butchers is young —-generally not more than full-grown —and even if disease existed in the constitution of the animal in a latent form, it has hardly had time to develop or manifest itself by outward, and very slightly, if at all, by inward indication. It is a matter of question if much fault can be found with the quality or wholesoraeness of most of the meat that passes through the butchers’ shops of Invercargill. It is generally from another direction inferior, aged, and consequently more likely to be diseased, meat finds its way into town —meat the butchers and freezing companies will not buy, hence its appearance in auction rooms and sale to the highest bidder. Meat taken from stock that is losing condition from shortness of grass, etc.,

will not be so healthy and tasteful as beef and mutton that has been improving—taking on flesh —in good pasture. Loss of condition through want of grass or feeding, does not imply ill-health or disease, nor is it so dangerous for human consumption as loss of flesh from actual disease and suffering, which is developed and consuming the animal, and effectually doing its deadly work.