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600 private slaughter-houses, besides the two semi-public ones, belonging to the Corporation of London, at Deptford and Islington.
Formerly these places were subject only to the inspection of the Vestry; now they are liable to be inspected by the officer of the County Council, by the Medical Officer of Health, and by the Privy Council Inspectors for diseased cattle. But as Dr. Tidy, himself a Medical Officer of Health, said, there are so many slaughter-houses in Islington, that it is impossible to keep a man at each to see that all the meat that comes out of them is fit for human food. Thus the existence of these 600 private slaughter-houses in London is a direct encouragement to the trade in diseased meat. Contrast with this state of things the arrangement at the public abattoir at Manchester, where no animal can possibly enter without being supervised by an inspector; and generally it may be affirmed that the only real safe-guard against the sale of flesh which is utterly unfit for human consumption lies in the establishment of large abattoirs, such as exist in many of our large provincial towns, and in most foreign capitals. Even then, however, it appears to be impossible to prevent the killing of tuberculous cattle for human food, and consumption is supposed to be readily transmissible by eating the meat or drinking the milk of such animals. Professor Fleming's evidence tends to show that about at least five per cent. of British cattle are tuberculous.
Besides this terrible danger to which the meat-eater is subjected, owing to the existence of private slaughter-houses,
