Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash].

  • Cash, C.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Our slaughter-house system : a plea for reform / [C. Cash]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/230 (page 31)
    CHAPTER III PUBLIC SLAUGHTERING A SAFEGUARD AGAINST CRUELTY Besides the imjDOssibility of effectual meat inspection there is, however, another evil which results from the want of proper supervision under the private slaughter-house system. That evil consists in the absence of the check on cruelty which publicity or supervision affords. The work of slaughtering is done in private often even without the slaughterman’s employer being present. The sanitary inspector is rarely there, and officers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have no right to demand admission to private premises. We need not insist on the opportunities for undetected acts of cruelty which such a state of things admits of. Butchers naturally resent the imputation that they are cruel as a class, merely because it is part of their work to slaughter cattle. Quite so. Nor are our carters and cabdrivers cruel as a class, and yet in 1904 there were upwards of 5,000 convictions for cruelty to horses alone. Of convictions for cruelty in slaughtering opera- tions there was not a single instance.* Does this mean that not a single act of brutality was perpetrated in any * In 1905 the only conviction for cruelty in slaughtering was in the case of two calves being slowly bled to death. The convictions for cruelty to horses amounted to about 0,000.