U.S. Assumes Poultry Tasks N. Y. Gave Up

Secretary of Agriculture Wallace today announced that inspection of all live poultry, a service recently abandoned by the New York City Health Department, had been placed under the authority of the NRA code for the New York live poultry industry.

This action follows a recent hearing in New York on code amendments called by Undersecretary of Agriculture Tugwell.

A licensed inspector of the Department of Agriculture will resume the inspection work abandoned by the city.

Under the code amendment, selling of uninspected or diseased poultry in the New York market is made a Federal offense. Approximately ninety per cent, of the live poultry in this market is sold to the Jewish trade.

The new code provision says no live poultry shall be unloaded from railroad cars, trucks or other vehicles of transportation or kept in a slaughter house or offered for sale or sold therein or by any member operating a slaughter house unless it has been inspected and passed as to crop and health and feather condition and as to sanitary conditions of the coops and crates.”

Provision is made for tagging inspected coops of poultry and “the absence of an inspection tag on any coop, crate or basket of poultry for the poultry contained therein shall be prima facie evidence that such poultry has not been inspected as required.”

Other amendments include requirements for filing and posting prices by slaughter house operators and a definition of trade buyers to include a commercial buyer as distinguished from an ultimate consumer.

Another provision says “no member of the industry shall enter into any agreement, understanding, combination or conspiracy to fix or maintain price terms nor cause or attempt to cause any member of the industry to change his price terms by the use of intimidation, coercion or any other influence inconsistent with the maintenance of the free and open market which it is the purpose of this section to create.”