The number of cattle in Great Britain was estimated by Youatt (1838) at upwards of eight millions. 160,000 head of cattle are annually sold in Smithfield alone, without including calves, or the dead market, i.e., the carcases, sent up from various parts of the country. 1,200,000 sheep, 36,000 pigs, and 18,000 calves, are also sent to Smithfield in the course of a year.
A tenth part of the sheep and lambs die annually of disease (more than 4,000,000 perished by the rot alone in the winter of 1829-30), and at least a fifteenth part of the neat cattle are destroyed by inflammatory fever and milk fever, red water, hoose, and diarrhœa.
If a tithe of the sheep and lambs, and a fifteenth of the neat cattle die of disease, what proportion are slaughtered and sent to market in the earlier stages of disease; and, in fact, in all the stages antecedent to those which are the immediate cause of death?