PARTICULARLY THOSE
DERIVED FROM DISEASED ANIMALS."

[1] See article by Dr. G. Cooke Adams in Chicago Clinic of August,
1907, pp. 248-251.

A statement like this is calculated to induce serious reflections.
The average reader finds it difficult to believe that, according to
the present interpretation of the law, the flesh of animals found to
be suffering from cancer at the time of their slaughter would be
permitted to pass into the world's food-supply. We are int the
presence of a great mystery. We do not know how the gret plague
originates. But no reflecting man or woman can be insensible to the
significance of possibilities when he learns that cancer affects
animals which are killed for food; that in the majority of cases the
disease affects some part of the digestive tract; that it chiefly
prevails among the very poorest classes of the population, excepting
only those like Italians, who use but little meat; and that, according
to the official regulations of the United States Government in force
to-day, THE FLESH DERIVED FROM CANCEROUS ANIMALS NEED NOT ALWAYS BE
DESTROYED AS UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. The cancerous tumour, the
affected parts, must indeed be cut away, and carefully condemned. The
disposition of the remainder of the meat is left to the decision of
the inspector!

The regulation so far as it applies to meat of this kind, is as
follows:

"ANY ORGAN OR PART of a carcass, which is badly bruised, or which is
affected by tumours, MALIGNANT or benign, ... shall be condemned; but
when the lesions are so extensive as to affect the whole carcass, the
whole carcass shall be condemned."[1]

[1] Regulations governing Meat Inspection, U.S.A. Regulation No. 13,
section 23. See also Appendix VIII., p. 362.

The meaning of this regulation would seem to be perfectly clear.
There is no demand by the Government that the entire carcass of an
animal affected by malignant disease shall be utterly destroyed for
food purposes, unless the disease has involved the entire body,--a
condition as rarely found among domesetic animals, as among human
beings. Otherwise than this, what is there in the official
regulations of the bureau governing meat inspection to prevent such
use of the flesh of diseased animals as the inspector may authorize?

It seems to me that if science is ever to discover the cause of
malignant disease, there should be a careful study of all the
conditions under which the disease now manifests i