Beef and mutton are doubtless two of the best meats which can be eaten. The diet of these animals is the cleanest; and their tissues should be the “cleanest,” in consequence. Beef is, of course, the most widely eaten of all meats; and, more than that, we feed upon or utilise almost every conceivable part of the animal. As Dr Brush so well said[45]:
“We are veritable parasites on this animal. We milk her as long as she will give milk, and we drink it; then we kill her, and eat her flesh, blood, and most of the viscera; we skin her, and clothe ourselves with her skin; we comb our hair with her horns, and fertilise our fields with her dung, while her calf furnishes us with vaccine virus for the prevention of smallpox!”
Is it any wonder that we manage to contract some of the diseases from which this animal suffers? The only wonder is that we escape at all! The same thing may be said in a lesser degree of mutton, veal, pork, and, in fact, all the animal substances. They all contain, along with a small amount of nutritive material, a large amount of poisons and excreta.
When we come to pork, bacon, ham, etc., there is no longer any excuse for the practice at all. If it is felt that meat must be eaten, let it be clean meat, such as beef or mutton, without turning to the pig for our supply! Nothing so lacks excuse as this. Writing upon the practice of pork-eating, in her “Diet Question,” Dr Dodds says:
“The hog is a scavenger by nature, and by practice; it is his proper mission on this earth, not to be eaten, but to eat up that which the nobler animals disdain to touch. Indeed, he adapts himself to circumstances, devouring whatever comes in his way. He is equally well pleased with the clean ears of corn, or with the seething contents of the swill pail; he will dine on live chickens or devour carrion. Nothing is too fine or too foul to suit his undiscriminating palate; he has been called ‘the scavenger-in-chief of all the back-boned animals.’ Truly he is omnivorous....
“Will anyone give an intelligent reason why people should eat him, and from choice? If we must dine on our fellow-creatures below us, are there not decent, clean-feeding animals, as the ox, and the sheep, that we could take in preference?
“From a sanitary point of view, the condition of the hog, in his best estate, is not flattering. His scurvy hide (which is perhaps the cleanest part of him), his foul breath, and his filthy feeding habits—are not these enough to bar him from our tables? Or must we wait for such logical sequence as is sure to follow the violation of physiological law? Wait till diseases are multiplied in kind, and intensified in character, till we are fairly driven from the no-longer questionable provender? Wait till our nearest friend is stricken with supposed typhoid fever, and dead of veritable trichinosis? There can be no doubt that a number of persons have sickened and a number died, of what was thought to be typhoid fever, when really the disease was due to the presence of these parasites (the trichinæ) in the system; for the symptoms in the two diseases are quite similar.
“As stated in the last chapter, one of the principal objections to the use of animal flesh as food, is the fact that it is filled with the debris of the vital organism, working its way through the capillaries into the various excretions, and out of the domain of life. Now, if this effete matter is objectionable, even in clean-feeding animals, what must be its condition as it is thrown off from the tissues of scavengers? And what the nature of the tissues themselves, when they are not only made out of, and nourished by a diet of garbage, but are thoroughly saturated with the almost putrescent matters with which the venous blood is laden? It is a fact that we seem rather slow to recognise, that the quality of all animal tissues partakes of the character of the materials out of which they are made. In other words, if we expect sound bodies, with good firm tissues, we must look to the nature of the food we eat....
“Nor is it enough that we devour the several parts of the animal, even to his liver and kidneys; we strip the intestines of their fat, melt it down, and use it in the form of lard! This latter is the very quintessence of the swine; it is the diseased product of all his filthy feeding; and it is the article that forms a staple in almost every American family. It shortens the biscuits, the plain cakes, and the pastries; and it even finds its way into the loaf bread. It oils the bake-pans, it fries the drop-cakes, the doughnuts, the Saratoga potatoes, and all the other ‘fried things,’ or nearly all. In short, there is neither breakfast, dinner, nor supper without it, in some form or other.
“Do the people wonder that they are afflicted with scrofula; and that it crops out, full-fledged, in a single generation? Oh, for a Moses among the Gentiles, to forbid them, by legal enactment, the use of this vile thing, swine’s flesh!”