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Abstract
Extract
Madam;– The Cysticercus ovis survey of McNab and Robertson,(Citation1)conducted in New Zealand from 1967-70, concluded that meat inspection results seriously underestimated the incidence of C.ovis, and that the true incidence could be 5-10 times that based simply on routine inspection. This survey found that figures were 50% higher on average than the figures produced by the specific works on that day, indicating that an interested observer looking for only T.oviscysts, could find more cysts than the meat inspector. From 190 carcases that had no observable cysts at meat inspection, 50(26%) were found to contain cysts when finely sliced. The estimate of true incidence was therefore based on the combination of these two factors. No figures were available for the prevalence of cysts in sheep and lambs, and neither were the figures available to relate the number of cysts observed at meat inspection to the number of cysts actually present in the carcase. An estimate, based on figures supplied by Gemmell, (2) lead us to suspect that lambs that had five cysts observed on the carcase might have as many as 45 more cysts deep-seated in the musculature. Because the export criterion for lamb carcases is "no more than five observable cysts on the carcase, excluding head, heart and diaphragm", it is of interest to know the relationship between numbers of cysts on the carcase and numbers of deep-seated cysts within lamb carcases.