If poultry carcasses were split wide open as with beef or mutton, drawing might not prove as satisfactory as the present method, but since this is not desirable, and since ordinary laborers will break the intestines and spill their contents over the flesh, and otherwise mutilate the fowl, all those who have had actual experience in the matter agree that drawing poultry is unpractical and undesirable.
As far as danger of disease or ptomaine poison is concerned, chances between the two methods seem to offer little choice.
The Bureau of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has conducted a series of experiments along the line of poultry storage. So far as the results have been published, nothing very striking has been learned. From what has been published, the writer is of the opinion that the somewhat mysterious changes that were observed in the cold storage poultry were mostly a matter of drying out of the carcass.
Poultry Inspection.
The enthusiastic members of the medical profession, and others whose knowledge of practical affairs is somewhat limited, occasionally come forth with the idea of an inspection of poultry carcasses similar to the Federal inspection of the heavier meats.
The reasons that are supposed to warrant the Federal meat inspection are precaution against disease and the idea of enforcing a cleanliness in the handling of food behind the consumer's back, which he would insist upon were he the preparer of his own food products.
No doubt there is well established evidence that some diseases, such as the dread trichinosis, are acquired by the consumption of diseased meat. As far as it is at present known there are no diseases acquired from the consumption of diseased poultry flesh, but, as we do not know as much about the bacteria that infests poultry as we do of that of larger animals, there is no positive proof that such transmission of disease could not occur. Thorough cooking kills all disease germs, and poultry is seldom, if ever, eaten without such preparation.
The idea of protecting people from uncleanly methods of handling their foods, concerning which they cannot themselves know, is somewhat of a sentimental proposition. In practice it amounts to nothing, save as the popular conception of this protection increases the demand for the product which is marked "U.S. Inspected and Passed."
It may be interesting to some of the reformers of 1906 to know that the meat inspection bill then forced upon Congress by a clamoring public was desired by the packers themselves. Because Congress would not listen to the packers, and the Department of Agriculture, the Chief Executive very kindly indulged in a little conversation with a few reporters, the results of which gave Congress the needed inspiration.
It cost the Government three million dollars to tell the people that their meats are packed in a cleanly manner. If the people want this, it is all well and good. The tax it places upon the price of meat is less than half of one per cent.