Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 96, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1906 — NEW MEAT INSPECTION- LAW. [ARTICLE]

NEW MEAT INSPECTION- LAW.

Secretary Wilson Anxious to Restore (?oiiAlienee in Our Products. After Hie first day of Ocfolier next every piece"of meat whietr leaves a packing house or slaughter house will hear a brand or label marked ‘T\ S. inspected and passed.” And according to regulations which were issued by the Secretary of Agriculture the other day this brand or label v.III be a notification to the -world that-the United States absolutely guarantees, under its official seal, that the product is clean, wholesome, and that it was packed and slaughtered under the -most careful sanitary conditions which the ingenuity of man can devise. According to the census reports of the y*ar 1900 there were 929 packing plants in the United States. The total capital invested in the industry was $237,099,440, and the value of the annual product of these establishments reached the enormous total of $913,914,024. Of course this included a. great many small establishments which are not affected by the Wads.wo.rth-. Beveridge law, and the Secretary of Agriculture is not prepared to* say at present just how many-of these plants will besutr joct to government inspection, but the Secretary does soy, and he says it with a great deal of emphasis, that no establishment which fails to provide itself with government inspectors will be permitted to ship a ham, a quarter of beef or a can of goods, in which meat enters as a component part, to any place outside the State i'n which the establishment is unless it first provides for government inspecion.

The new law will be put into full force aud effect on the first day of next October. On that day every ham, every side of beef, every strip of bacon, every can of lard, every package of meat food products, in fact, every particle of food of which meat forms a part, whether in as barrel, box, can or canvas sack, or in any receptacle or container, or loose, must boar a government stamp before a railroad company will accept it for shipment to a point outside the State in which it was prepared.