2023 Massachusetts General Laws › Part I - Administration of the Government › Title XV - Regulation of Trade › Chapter 94 - Inspection and Sale of Food, Drugs and Various Articles › Section 146 - Inspections by Local Boards of Health; Fees; Seizure and Condemnation; Appeal; Market Limits

Section 146. Each local board of health by themselves, their officers or agents, may inspect the carcasses of all slaughtered animals and all meat, fish, vegetables, produce, fruit or provisions of any kind found in their town, and all veal found, offered or exposed for sale or kept with intent to sell therein, and for such purpose may enter any place where such carcasses or articles are stored, kept or exposed for sale. The fees for such an inspection shall be set by each local board of health, but in no event shall any such fee be greater than five dollars. If, in its opinion, said veal is that of a calf less than two weeks old when killed, or if on inspection it is found that said carcasses or articles are tainted, diseased, corrupted, decayed, unwholesome or unfit for food from any cause, the said board shall seize and cause the same to be destroyed forthwith or disposed of otherwise than for food. All money received by said board for property disposed of as aforesaid, after deducting the expenses of said seizure and disposal, shall be paid to the owner of such property. If said board seizes or condemns any such carcass or meat because infected with a contagious disease, it shall immediately give notice to the director of animal health stating the name of the owner or person in whose possession it was found, the nature of the disease and the disposition made of said meat or carcass.
Local boards of health, subject to the approval of the department of public health, may make and enforce reasonable rules and regulations as to the conditions under which all articles of food may be kept or exposed for sale, in order to prevent contamination thereof and injury to the public health. Before such a board of health submits such rules and regulations to said department for approval, said board shall hold a public hearing thereon, of which notice shall be given by publication for two successive weeks, the first publication to be at least fourteen days prior to the date of the hearing, in a newspaper published in such town. Any person affected by such rules and regulations, in the form in which they are presented to said department for approval, may appeal to said department for a further hearing, and said department shall not grant its approval to rules and regulations concerning which such an appeal has been taken until it has held a public hearing thereon, advertised in the manner above set forth. The department of public health may, from time to time, review such rules and regulations and if, in the opinion of the department such rules and regulations have become no longer practical or reasonable, the department may declare such rules and regulations null and void. The local boards of health may then revise the rules and regulations and submit the revision for approval to the department in the manner described above. No regulation adopted in accordance with this section shall be construed as preventing the exposure of food articles for sale at retail in the Boston ''market limits'', as defined in the ordinances of Boston, on Saturdays or on the day immediately preceding any holiday observed in Boston, but no area in said ''market limits'', where food articles on June sixth, nineteen hundred and fourteen, were not allowed to be exposed for sale at retail on these days, shall be occupied for the exposure of food articles without a permit from the board of health.