Animals live; they need provisions for life - air, water, food. All animals need these. All do not, however, eat the same food. Science has studied the food-needs of work-animals and food-animals, also the conditions that foster the effectiveness of each; these differ. Animals strengthened for work and toughened by it and exposure are thereby rendered undesirable for food.

Work-animals need health. But for food-animals health is indispensable. Ill animals, even if not diseased in ways to cause the same disease in persons, are unfit food. Human health cannot be promoted by diseased food of any kind. Human health is the purpose of human food. Wholesome-ness of animals themselves, of their environment, of those that care for them, market, and prepare them, will alone produce wholesome food and physical wholesomeness through food.

Food-animals that have died, instead of being killed while in health, are unfit food, for death means that something unfavorable to living interfered with the life of such animals. Only tissue that could live is fit food for living humanity. Animals in health, killed and preserved in a state of soundness without preservatives destructive to their purpose as human food, furnish health-giving animal tissue as meats.

Products of animal life also serve as human foods. Their quality is no less significant than that of meats. This is affected too by the processes of living of the animals producing dairy products. Milk is safe only from wholesome animals. It is clean only as it is kept so. The living conditions and food of animals determine the value of their products as human foods. Poor animals poorly cared for or poorly fed cannot but supply poor, if not dangerous, food.