be enlarged as the work progresses. The building and management investigations have only begun.

The Dairy Division has been able to make but little headway during the year toward indexing dairy literature as proposed in the report for the previous year, but plans are made for carrying out the project. A comprehensive index of dairy literature would be of great value and assistance in the work of the division and to dairy writers and investigators, as there is no such index in existence.

The efforts of the Dairy Division so far have been mainly along the line of the handling and marketing of milk and the manufacture of milk products. The whole subjects of dairy husbandry, the production of milk, the influence of breed and feed on quality and quantity of milk, the encouragement of farmers to know more about their stock, and other important lines of work, are as yet untouched by the division, except that a beginning has been made for the year 1907 in the study of milk as it may be affected by the period of lactation and the breed of the cow.

Two new lines of work are planned to be undertaken during the fiscal year of 1908-namely, investigations in milk production and in the manufacture of condensed milk and cream.

In order to extend the present work and to take up the new lines of work that are indicated, a considerable increase in the amount of appropriation available for the Dairy Division will be necessary.

PUBLICATIONS.

Several of the publications issued or prepared during the fiscal year have already been mentioned. Besides these, the Twenty-first Annual Report of the Bureau for 1904 was issued, and the Twentysecond Annual Report (1905) was prepared for publication. These annual reports are volumes of several hundred pages, containing special articles and miscellaneous information relating to the livestock industry and the work of the Bureau. Among other important publications prepared during the year are a bulletin on Tuberculosis of the Food-Producing Animals, by Dr. D. E. Salmon (this work having been undertaken while he was Chief of the Bureau and only recently completed), and a revision of Bulletin No. 27, Information Concerning the Angora Goat, made in pursuance of a resolution of Congress.

The new publications issued by the Bureau during the twelve months ending June 30, 1906, were 70 in number, consisting of the Twenty-first Annual Report of the Bureau, the annual report of the Chief, 13 bulletins, 19 circulars, 3 Farmers' Bulletins, 31 orders and regulations, and 2 Yearbook papers, aggregating 2,099 printed pages.

NEEDS OF THE BUREAU EXPERIMENT STATION.

The work required of the Experiment Station has increased until the facilities, both as to laboratory and field room, have become inadequate. The addition of a second story to the laboratory building is greatly needed, and there is some doubt as to whether the current appropriation act confers authority for such work or for the erection of new structures of any kind. More land is also needed, not only to allow room for the proper arrangement and separation of animals under experiment with contagious diseases, but to provide for the production of green forage for the animals, which are necessarily confined to small paddocks. Increased space would lessen the danger of the accidental spread of contagion, as well as effect a large saving in feed bills, and the purchase of additional land is therefore considered the part of wisdom and economy. I recommend that Congress be asked for authority for such purchase, also for authority to make alterations to existing buildings and to erect new structures as necessity may arise.

PROPOSED

EXPERIMENTAL

FARM FOR BREEDING, FEEDING, AND DAIRY
INVESTIGATIONS.

As the work in animal breeding and feeding progresses it becomes evident that the Bureau will need an experimental farm near Washington for investigations of this class, aside from the cooperative work being done with the State experiment stations. Experiments in breeding and feeding have been carried on in a small way at one of the Bureau quarantine stations and at the Bureau Experiment Station for contagious diseases, but it is obviously very undesirable and unwise to keep animals for experiments of this kind on the same premises where animals are undergoing quarantine or where experiments are being made with contagious diseases. It therefore seems that the time is soon coming when the Bureau should be provided with a separate farm for investigations in breeding and feeding live stock and in dairying.

9043-07-5

THE FEDERAL MEAT-INSPECTION SERVICE.

By A. D. MELVIN, D. V. S.,

Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry.

THE IMPORTANCE OF MEAT AS A FOOD.

a

Meat forms a larger part of the food of the people of this country than is the case with any other country except Australia. Two recent estimates in this Department have placed the total consumption of meat (in terms of dressed weight) in the United States for the last census year (1900) at 13,611,703,000 pounds and 14,116,886,000 pounds, respectively. The first of these does not include lard, while the other does. These estimates represent a per capita consumption of 179 pounds in the one case and 186 pounds in the other. It is calculated that meat constitutes about 30 per cent of our total nutritive material and costs about 30 per cent of the total.

THE OBJECT OF MEAT INSPECTION.

Meat animals are subject to many diseases which impair or destroy the wholesomeness of their meat as human food, but the presence or the effects of disease are not always discernible in the dressed carcass. A piece of meat may carry the germs of a dangerous disease without giving any indication of this fact to the consumer. To detect disease there should be an expert inspection at the time of slaughter.

To protect the people at a point where they are unable to protect themselves is, generally speaking, the object of meat inspection. Diseased meat is the direct cause of disease in those who eat it. The consumer, being himself unable to determine whether or not the meat he buys is diseased, demands that he be protected by the Government from the cupidity or ignorance, or both, of those from whom he buys.

Let us consider, then, the importance of maintaining over this large and expensive portion of the food of the people-a portion that is subject to diseases that the people themselves can not discover—a constant vigilance by men able from long study and training to detect such diseases where the layman sees nothing unusual.

a Twenty-second Annual Report, Bureau of Animal Industry (1905), page 283, and Bulletin 55, Bureau of Statistics.

Since before the time of Moses the necessity of an official meat inspection has been recognized. Without going into the history of enactments by tribes, by municipalities, States, and national governments, it may be said that meat-inspection legislation has more or less kept abreast of increasing knowledge, and that, although Federal legislation in this country has not at all times kept even pace with science, the present law is as advanced a measure as the medical profession and sanitarians demand, and is, perhaps, the most stringent and far-reaching of existing laws on the subject.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PACKING INDUSTRY.

Meat inspection in the United States falls naturally into three periods: (1) From the opening of the Union Stock Yards in Chicago in 1865 to the year 1890, when the first Federal meat-inspection law was passed; (2) from the latter year until the passage of the law of 1906, and (3) from then until the present time.

By the year 1851 the packing industry had become firmly established in Chicago, and it grew steadily until in 1865 the several railroad companies centering in Chicago and some of the managers of the small stock yards agreed to combine for the building of the Union Stock Yards, which were opened on Christmas Day of that year. Meat packing had by that time also become an important part of the business of Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, St. Joseph, and Cincinnati. An idea of the growth of the industry may be gathered from the increase in the number of cattle received in Chicago. From 1851 until the building of the Union Stock Yards the total number of cattle received in Chicago was 1,691,410; of these 566,379 went to the packing houses, of which number 291,035 were consumed in the city. In the succeeding twenty years the number of cattle received was 20,024,774, of which 7,000,000 were slaughtered in Chicago. In 1906 the number of cattle received was 3,329,250, of which nearly 2,000,000 were slaughtered.

With the establishment of the Union Stock Yards meat packing was reduced more to a system, and it is recorded that the city health. authorities instituted an inspection of the packing houses, an inspector being stationed at each of the two gates through which animals passed from the railroad on their way to the stock pens. These health officers were "practical butchers whose experience enabled them readily to detect any cattle or hogs that might be suffering from disease or were not fit for human food."

The first statistics of cattle inspection were compiled in 1881, when of nearly 2,000,000 cattle inspected for slaughter in Chicago 515 were found to be diseased.