St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-29
ST. PAUL OR KANSAS.
A Serious Matter for Butcher and
Public-Death i'm the Pot.

Just lately there has been shipped to this
market and throughout the whole field sup
piled by this market, large quantities of
dressed meat from Kansas City. The read
ers of the GLOBE have
been informed of this fact
by the market reports and have also intimat-
ed to them the questionable fitness of this
meat for food. A week or two since the dis
gushing appearance of some of this selfsame
meat was described as shipped to the New
York markets and the suggestion has been
made more than once that the authorities
should be asked to protect the city from hay
ing any diseased meat sent here to poison
our people and to cripple our industries.
For while dressed meat, from impurity will
do the one, its lowness of cost will effectual-
ly accomplish the other. Car
cases of cattle under certain
circumstances cannot be, from exterior in
spection, declared to be diseased or other
wise and so it is possible to sell meat from
animals which have suffered from dangerous
diseases, and it is therefore necessary to
protect the public where their own judgment
can not be relied on. That there has been
and still is disease raging in herds which
fe ed the KansBs City market there can not
be doubted, and the question arises is any of
the diseased beef being shipped hitherward?
A few facts will enable the public to judge.
Good cattle to-day are worth in Kansas City
$3.50 and $5.75 per hundred
pounds live weight. Such cattle
cannot be slaughtered and dressed
and sold at less than $3.50 per hundred
pounds. The freight from Kansas City to
st. Paul is 33c per hundred weight, making
the value of dressed beef on arrival here
S982 per hundred pounds, without profit.
Now in the face Of this the Kansas dressed
beef is offered here at Sc and SIC per
pound or one cent less than the value
at Kansas City. What is the inferencel Simply
that the carcasses sent here are such as are
slaughtered in a hurry-slaughtered to save
their lives, and for which there is no sale at
Kansas City or anywhere, where the facts are
known. At Chicago cattle are closely in
spected and all suffering from any cause
'big head' pleuro-pneumenia, epizootic, big
veins, are at once condemned and killed for
the rendering works, but it would be more
profitable to slaughter, dress, and send the
carcasses to market.
Aside from the danger to the public health
the shipping into this market beef at prices
at which good sound healthy cattle
cannot be bought threatens to ruin one of the
most important and growing industries of
this city. 1t has been the ambition of st.
Paul to become live stock centre and more
than one fine abattoir has been built and
others are being contemplated but if
this shipping of the refuse
of the panic stricken prairies of the south
west be continued, q serious injury, finan-
cially as well as in the matter of health, will
be the result. 1t should be stated that the
butchers who buy this SC beef charge IS and
zoe to their customers just the same as those
who pay 10 and 12c.
If ever Boycotting was justified it would be
in this case. Boycott, therefore, all the
butchers who buy this beef. If a house has
in it small pox or typhoid fever, or any in
fictitious disease it is marked. A sign has to
be hung out, warning the people;
and yet the gate way is open wide
for any one who listeth to bring the most
dangerous of diseases into our midst in the
shape of diseased meats. The able letter
from a Veterinary surgeon which ap
peared in these columns a few days
ago clearly pointed out the terrible dangers
to human beings which threaten from foot
and mouth disease in cattle, and since there
is a strong suspicion that the imported meats
are not sold below cost for nothing certainly
not because of their soundness-and as there
is suspicion, if it be ever so faint, that
pleuro-pneumonia does exist in cattle, be
hoves the authorities to guard the public from
the threatening danger.